Family Science in the News: Fathers' Cautionary Tales, Financial Disagreements, and Racial Divisions in the Working Class

Research from NCFR's scholarly journals and NCFR members has been making headlines over the past month, as Family Science continues to shape and support stories in the news media. 

  • A study at Ohio State University led by Alexandra Kissling with NCFR journal author Corrine Reczek, Ph.D., examined how parents shape the health of their grown children. In interviews with 45 married couples ranging in age from 40-60 years old, Kissling and Reczek found that mothers have an overall postive influence on their children's health. Fathers however, tend to provide a "cautionary tale" by displaying unhealthy behaviors. Their findings were published in the Journal of Family Issues. Read more.

  • NCFR member Jeffrey P. Dew, Ph.D., was quoted in a TIME magazine feature on how married couples manage their financial resources. His 2012 longitudinal study, published in Family Relations is also cited for its finding that "financial disagreements are stronger predictors of divorce relative to other common maritial disagreements."

  • A study published this week in JAMA Pediatrics used sophisticated brain scans to find a link between screen time and children's development. Read about it in the New York Times.

  • Research from the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University was cited in a piece from CNN that sought to isolate the "secret" to the long and successful marriage of former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter. The couple recently celebrated their 73rd wedding anniversary.

  • Finally, NCFR Fellow Andrew J. Cherlin, Ph.D., has released a paper that examines the role that both racial divisions and economic factors played in election results from 2016. Cherlin's findings demonstrate the extent to which these two factors are not separate, but are in fact, intertwined. The paper was informed by Cherlin's research in two adjacent communities in Baltimore County, Maryland, one predominantly black and the other predominantly white. Read more.

This is only just a few of the news stories where Family Science is making an impact. If you've seen a new story that we should include on our website or in Zippy News, please email Trip Sullivan, NCFR's communications manager.