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Title: Changes in American Families and the Growth in the Gender Gap in Early Childhood Behavioral Skills
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Owens, Jayanti
Changes in American Families and the Growth in the Gender Gap in Early Childhood Behavioral Skills
Presented: San Francisco CA, Population Association of America Meetings, May 2012
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Population Association of America
Keyword(s): Attention/Attention Deficit; Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Cohabitation; Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-B, ECLS-K); Gender Differences; Health/Health Status/SF-12 Scale; Parental Influences; Parental Marital Status; Parents, Behavior; Parents, Single; Sociability/Socialization/Social Interaction; Socioeconomic Factors

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Attention, concentration, and social skills are important indicators of school readiness. Boys have long fallen behind girls in the development of these skills, but prior research has not examined whether changes in American families—namely, the rise of cohabitation and single parenting from birth, as well as the presence of a social as opposed to biological father beginning in early childhood—are associated with a growth in the gender gap in behavioral skills. This study uses two national datasets of children followed from birth to age 6 to examine how changes in family structures, parental conflict, economic resources, parenting, and child health are associated with the gender gap in behavioral development. The study finds that the gender gap in behavioral development has grown between the late 1980s and the mid-2000s, and that changes in families explain much of the growth. Implications for the gender gap in later achievement and delinquency are discussed.
Bibliography Citation
Owens, Jayanti. "Changes in American Families and the Growth in the Gender Gap in Early Childhood Behavioral Skills." Presented: San Francisco CA, Population Association of America Meetings, May 2012.