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Author: Scarr, Sandra
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Scarr, Sandra
On Comparing Apples and Oranges and Making Inferences About Bananas
Journal of Marriage and Family 53,4 (November 1991): 1099-1100.
Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/353012
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: National Council on Family Relations
Keyword(s): Adolescent Fertility; Attrition; Child Care; General Assessment; Maternal Employment

An exchange on Maternal Employment and Young Children's Adjustment. The article by Belsky and Eggebeen reports analyses from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data set on the effects of early maternal employment on children's adjustment at ages four to six. The paper is written as though the results can be generalized broadly, when the samples, the measures, and the attrition imposed by the authors create severe limitation on the generality of this research. The lack of comparability of employed and unemployed mothers is truly an apples-and-oranges problem. and one does not use comparisons of apples and oranges to make inferences about bananas. Although hardly mentioned in the text, this research is based on a large sample of young mothers (30%< 19 years), who are largely uneducated (37% < high school graduation), unmarried (33% not living with a spouse), and poor (71% < $20,000 per year family income). They are atypical U.S. parents, because they represent only the first wave of births to the young age cohort in the NLSY sample. As one would expect, these mothers are the youngest and most disadvantaged members of their cohort.
Bibliography Citation
Scarr, Sandra. "On Comparing Apples and Oranges and Making Inferences About Bananas." Journal of Marriage and Family 53,4 (November 1991): 1099-1100.