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NPR: Moms in Flint, MI get cash aid for a year

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NPR: Moms in Flint, MI get cash aid for a year

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Every new mom in this U.S. city is now getting cash aid for a year

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Flint, Mich., aims to be a model for wiping out deep poverty during a crucial time for child development. The new benefits start during pregnancy to encourage prenatal care.

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Wall Street Journal: America’s First IVF Baby Is Fighting for the Treatment That Gave Her Life

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Wall Street Journal: America’s First IVF Baby Is Fighting for the Treatment That Gave Her Life

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America’s First IVF Baby Is Fighting for the Treatment That Gave Her Life - WSJ.pdf

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Pew Research: Americans are divided over gene editing

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Pew Research: Americans are divided over gene editing

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Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

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(iStock)

Americans strongly support using gene editing techniques for people's therapeutic needs. But, when it comes to their potential use to enhance human health over the course of a lifetime by reducing a baby's risk of getting serious diseases or conditions, as many Americans think this would be a bad idea for society as say it would be a good idea. The public is also closely divided over whether they would want this for their own baby. As with previous Pew Research Center surveys on this topic, women and more religious Americans are less accepting of gene editing for this purpose.

Scientific advances in the use of CRISPR technology are expanding the possibilities for using gene editing. These techniques are currently in development for therapeutic needs. Clinical trial data suggests that gene therapy can be effective in treating some heritable blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia. Other trials have shown promise for treatment of life-threatening rare diseases.

There are a large number of potential applications of gene editing techniques for humans. One includes the possibility of using gene editing to prevent, or greatly lower the probability, of developing serious disease. If such applications become widespread it would potentially change the trajectory of human health, greatly reducing the prevalence of serious disease.

The current survey asked respondents to consider one possible use of gene editing techniques: changing the DNA of embryos before a baby is born in order to greatly reduce the baby's risk of developing serious diseases or health conditions over their lifetime.

Among U.S. adults, equal shares (30% each) say the widespread use of gene editing to greatly reduce a baby's risk of developing serious diseases or health conditions over their lifetime would be a good idea or bad idea for society. About four-in-ten (39%) are not sure how they feel about using gene editing for this purpose.

Americans are about evenly divided over whether they would want to use gene editing in this way for their own baby, if it were available to them. Overall, 48% say they would definitely or probably want this for their own baby; a similar share (49%) say they would not.

Parents of a minor-age child are a bit more hesitant: 42% say they would want this kind of gene editing for their own baby, while 55% say they would not. ( See details in Appendix.)

Although Americans are closely divided over whether they themselves would want gene editing to reduce the risk of disease for their own baby, a majority thinks that most parents would feel pressure to get this type of gene editing. Nearly three-quarters (73%) think most parents would feel pressure to get gene editing to reduce their baby's risk of developing disease if its use becomes widespread. Far fewer (25%) think most parents would not feel pressure to use gene editing for their baby.

A 2016 Center survey also focused on the idea of using gene editing to enhance health by greatly reducing a baby's chance of developing serious diseases over their lifetime. Americans were also closely divided over whether or not they would want this kind of gene editing for their baby (48% would and 50% would not). However, the current survey and past Center surveys on American's views of gene editing in babies have found large differences in views depending on the intended purpose of the genetic modification.

Concern about potential widespread use of gene editing to reduce a baby's health risk is stronger among those with high religious commitment

One of the largest gaps in views of gene editing to reduce a baby's risk of developing serious disease is between those with higher and lower levels of religious commitment. Those with higher levels of religious commitment (a three-item index based on the importance of religion in their life and their frequency of religious service attendance and prayer) are much more likely to call the widespread use of gene editing in this way a bad idea than a good idea for society (46% to 14%). By contrast, those with low levels of religious commitment are about twice as likely to say it's a good idea for society than to say it's a bad idea (43% to 20%). Between 36% and 41% of those across levels of religious commitment say they aren't sure about their views.

On balance, men are more likely to call the use of gene editing to reduce the risk of disease in babies a good (36%) rather than a bad idea (29%). Women tilt in the other direction, with more saying the widespread use of gene editing for this purpose would be a bad idea than a good one (32% to 24%).

Among those with at least some college experience, views are slightly more positive than negative about the use of this technology. People with a high school diploma or less education are more negative than positive about the implications for society from the widespread use of gene editing in this way.

Just 8% of U.S. adults say they have heard or read a lot about using gene editing to greatly reduce a baby's risk of developing serious diseases or conditions over their lifetime, while 47% say they have heard a little and 44% say they have heard nothing at all about this.

People more familiar with the concept of gene editing for babies to reduce the risk of serious diseases or health conditions during their lifetime are more likely to say it is a good idea than bad idea for society (43% to 31%), while about a quarter say they're not sure (26%). Among those who hadn't heard about this idea prior to the survey, 28% think the use of gene editing in babies would be a bad idea for society, compared with 23% who think it would be a good idea; nearly half of this group (49%) say they aren't sure.

Americans foresee both positive and negative implications from widespread use of gene editing to enhance human health

While gene editing techniques hold the promise of reducing the risk of serious disease over a person's lifetime, the public is not entirely convinced that this would lead to a higher quality of life for people.

Overall, 39% of U.S. adults think the widespread use of gene editing to greatly reduce a baby's risk of developing serious diseases or health conditions over their lifetime would lead to a better quality of life for people. However, 40% say quality of life for people would be about the same as now if this technology were widely used, and 18% say it would be worse.

Further, about half of Americans (52%) say that "this idea is meddling with nature and crosses a line we should not cross." By contrast, 46% say their views are better described by the statement "as humans, we are always trying to better ourselves and this idea is no different."

A majority of those high in religious commitment (72%) consider this use of gene editing to be inappropriate, crossing a line we should not cross. By contrast, a majority of adults with low levels of religious commitment (64%) take the opposing view and describe this use of gene editing as no different than other efforts to better ourselves.

Asked to think about a future where gene editing to reduce the risk of babies developing serious diseases or health conditions is widespread, the public sees both positive and negative impacts as likely to happen. But one negative outcome is seen as particularly likely: the use of these techniques in ways that are morally unacceptable.

Overall, 84% think that even if gene editing is used appropriately in some cases, others would definitely or probably use these techniques in ways that are morally unacceptable.

Nearly seven-in-ten (68%) say these gene editing techniques would definitely or probably go too far eliminating natural differences between people in society.

At the same time, 66% say the development of these techniques would definitely or probably pave the way for new medical advances that benefit society as a whole, and 65% say these techniques would likely help people live longer and better-quality lives.

In thinking about access to these techniques, 55% of U.S. adults say that if the use of gene editing to reduce a baby's risk of developing a serious disease during their lifetime becomes widespread, the gap between higher- and lower-income Americans would increase. About a third (35%) say the widespread use of this technology would not make much difference in the gap between higher- and lower-income Americans; 8% say it would decrease this gap.

Majority backs higher standard for testing use of gene editing in babies, major role for medical scientists in setting standards

In line with concerns about the possible misuse of gene editing, a large majority (80%) of Americans say that gene editing techniques to greatly reduce a baby's risk of serious diseases or conditions should be tested using a higher standard than those used for other medical treatments to ensure their safety and effectiveness. Only 17% say gene editing should be tested using existing standards for medical treatments.

When asked who should be responsible for setting standards regarding the use of gene editing, two-thirds of Americans (67%) believe that medical scientists should play a major role, while another 21% say they should play a minor role.

Over half (55%) say the people who get these gene modifications should play a major role in setting the standards for how they are used; 29% think they should play a minor role.

Fewer than half say the companies that develop gene editing techniques (44%) and federal government agencies (41%) should have major roles in setting standards. However, majorities of Americans say both of these groups should play at least a minor role in setting standards for how gene editing techniques are used.

Americans are closely divided when it comes to their greater concern about government regulation in this area. In all, 51% say that if this use of gene editing becomes widespread, their greater concern is government will not go far enough regulating its use. Nearly as many (47%) take the opposite view and say their greater concern is that government regulation will go too far.

Democrats and Republicans differ widely on this question, consistent with their broader views on government regulation. A majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (62%) say that if gene editing to reduce a baby's risk of developing a serious disease or condition becomes widespread, their greater concern is that government will go too far in regulating the use of this technology. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners, 63% say their greater concern is that government regulation will not go far enough.

Consent, control and heritability matter in thinking about the potential use of gene editing to reduce the risk of developing disease

Overall, 53% of U.S. adults say the use of gene editing would be more acceptable to them if it were only used in adults who could consent to the procedure, rather than for babies; 34% say this wouldn't make a difference in their view and 11% say it would make the use of gene editing less acceptable to them.

About half or more of both those who say they would and would not want to use gene editing for their own baby say the idea of adult consent for this use of gene editing would make it more acceptable to them.

Roughly half (49%) of Americans also say the use of gene editing to reduce disease risk would be more acceptable to them if people could choose which diseases and conditions are affected. A similar share, 48%, say it would be more acceptable to them if the effects were limited to the person receiving the treatment and not passed on to future generations, a key concern among genetic experts when it comes to the societal and ethical implications of gene editing in babies.

About seven-in-ten Americans favor the use of gene editing to treat serious diseases

When asked to consider some other possible uses for gene editing (beyond use on babies to prevent the future risk of disease) the public is broadly supportive of using gene editing to treat conditions a person already has, but they are broadly opposed to using it to make a baby more attractive.

About seven-in-ten Americans (71%) say they would favor the use of gene editing to treat serious diseases or health conditions that a person currently has. Just 10% say they would oppose gene therapy, and 18% say they're not sure.

Gene therapy aims to treat disease by correcting an underlying genetic problem. It is in use or in an experimental development phase for a range of diseases including immune deficiencies and cancer.

A 57% majority of those with high levels of religious commitment on a three-item index favor the use of gene editing to treat a current disease or health condition, as do large majorities of those with medium (71%) and low (83%) levels of religious commitment.

By contrast, a large majority (74%) in the U.S. say they would oppose using gene editing to change a baby's physical characteristics to make them more attractive. Only 5% would favor this (20% say they're not sure).

These findings are broadly in line with a 2019-2020 Center survey which found majorities in the U.S. and many other places surveyed thought the use of gene editing in babies to make a baby more intelligent would be taking technology too far but that gene editing for treating a baby's serious disease or health condition would be an appropriate use of the technology.

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7. Americans are closely divided over editing a baby's genes to reduce serious health risk

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Americans strongly support using gene editing techniques for people's therapeutic needs. But, when it comes to their potential use to enhance human health over the course of a lifetime by reducing a baby's risk of getting serious diseases or conditions, as many Americans think this would be a bad idea for society as say it would be a good idea.

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PBS: Prenatal Testing in the post-Roe v. Wade United States

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PBS: Prenatal Testing in the post-Roe v. Wade United States

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, many health care providers say an increasing number of patients are deciding the fate of their pregnancies on whatever information they can gather before state abortion bans kick in.

But early ultrasounds show far less about the condition of a fetus than later ones. And genetic screenings may be inaccurate.

When you find out your fetus has a serious problem, "you're in crisis mode," said doula Sabrina Fletcher. "You're not thinking about legal repercussions and (state) cutoff dates, and yet we're forced to."
WATCH: Study estimates 64,000 pregnancies from rape in states that enacted abortion bans post-Roe
About half of states ban abortion or restrict it after a certain point in pregnancy.

This leaves millions of women in roughly 14 states with no option to get follow-up diagnostic tests in time to feasibly have an abortion there if they wanted, a paper published last March in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology found. Even more states have abortion cutoffs too early for mid-pregnancy ultrasounds.

"More people are trying to find these things out earlier to try to fit within the confines of laws that in my mind don't have a place in medical practice," said Dr. Clayton Alfonso, an OB-GYN at Duke University in North Carolina.

Checking for prenatal problems

When done at the right time, doctors said prenatal testing can identify problems and help parents decide whether to have an abortion or continue a pregnancy and prepare for a baby's complex needs after delivery.

One of the most common tests is the 20-week ultrasound. It checks on the fetal heart, brain, spine, limbs and other parts of the body, looking for signs of congenital problems. It can detect things like brain, spine and heart abnormalities and signs of chromosomal problems such as Down syndrome. Follow-up testing may be needed to make a diagnosis.

The earlier ultrasounds, in the first trimester for example, are not standard practice because it is too soon to see many of the fetus' limbs and organs in detail, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says.

It's impossible to spot problems like serious heart defects much before mid-pregnancy because the fetus is so small, said Dr. Cara Heuser, who practices maternal-fetal medicine in Utah. Nonetheless, she said, more patients are having ultrasounds at 10 to 13 weeks to get access to abortion if they choose.
READ MORE: In states with abortion bans, rape exceptions 'fail to provide reasonable access' to survivors, researchers say
Experts say there are no statistics on how many people opt for early ultrasounds or make choices based on them. But some health care providers say they've noticed an uptick in requests for the scans, including Missouri genetic counselor Chelsea Wagner. She counsels patients from around the nation through telehealth.

But she said doctors can't provide patients with "an everything looks good' or a clean bill of health off of an ultrasound at 10 weeks."

Doctors also can't make a firm diagnosis from a genetic screening, which is done at 10 weeks gestation or later. These screenings are designed to detect abnormalities in fetal DNA by looking at small, free-floating fragments circulating in a pregnant woman's blood.

They screen for chromosomal disorders such as trisomy 13 and 18, which often end in miscarriage or stillbirth, Down syndrome and extra or missing copies of sex chromosomes.

The accuracy of these tests varies by disorder, but none is considered diagnostic.

Natera, one of only a handful of U.S. companies that makes such genetic tests, said in an email that prenatal test results are reported as either "high risk" or "low risk" and that patients should seek confirmatory testing if they get a "high risk" result.

Some may be pretty accurate, doctors said, but false positives are possible. In 2022, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about the screenings, reminding patients and doctors that results need further confirmation.

The agency is poised to release a new regulatory framework in April that would require prenatal screenings, and thousands of other lab tests, to undergo FDA review.

An 'awful' decision to make

In states with tough abortion laws, health care providers said, there's more urgency because of the timing of diagnostic tests.

CVS or chorionic villus sampling, is offered at 10 to 13 weeks gestation. Initial results take a few days and more detailed ones around two weeks. Amniocentesis is typically done at 15 to 20 weeks, with similar timing for results.

If a state has a 12-week abortion ban, for instance, "some people may have to act on a screening," Alfonso said.

Wagner said she's had to counsel patients who couldn't afford to travel out of state for an abortion if they waited for diagnostic testing. "They are forced to use the information they have to make choices they never thought they'd have to make," she said.
READ MORE: What to know as the battle over abortion rights shifts to state ballots in 2024
Some states restrict abortion so early that women would not have the chance to get any prenatal testing done before the cutoff.

That was the case for 26-year-old Hannah in Tennessee, which has a strict abortion ban. An ultrasound in late November, at about 18 weeks, revealed she had amniotic band sequence, when very thin pieces of the amniotic membrane get attached to the fetus. In Hannah's case, the bands were attached to many of her baby's body parts and ripped open multiple areas of his body.

After calling clinics in Ohio and Illinois to terminate the pregnancy, she finally found one 4 ½ hours away in Illinois and had the procedure in early December at 19 weeks gestation. Results from the amniocentesis - which was done to look for the cause of the problem - came back the day after her abortion, and other results after that.

Hannah, who didn't want her last name used for fear of backlash, said it's "awful" to have to think about state timelines, and to travel long distances when dealing with something like this. But she's grateful she had enough information to feel confident in her decision.

"I know some women are not that lucky," Hannah said. She named her son Waylen.
Ungar reported from Louisville, Kentucky.

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More patients rely on early prenatal testing as states toughen abortion laws

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Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, many health care providers say an increasing number of patients are deciding the fate of their pregnancies on whatever information they can gather before state abortion bans kick in.

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VICE Video: Controversial Future of Genetic Testing

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VICE Video: Controversial Future of Genetic Testing

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The Controversial Future of Genetic Testing

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NYTimes: How Other Nations Pay for Child Care

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NYTimes: How Other Nations Pay for Child Care

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How Other Nations Pay for Child Care. The U.S. Is an Outlier. (Published 2021)

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Rich countries contribute an average of $14,000 per year for a toddler's care, compared with $500 in the U.S. The Democrats' spending bill tries to shrink the gap.

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Pew Research: Parenting in America Today

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Pew Research: Parenting in America Today

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Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project

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Mental health concerns top the list of worries for parents; most say being a parent is harder than they expected

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid reports of a growing youth mental health crisis, four-in-ten U.S. parents with children younger than 18 say they are extremely or very worried that their children might struggle with anxiety or depression at some point. In fact, mental health concerns top the list of parental worries, followed by 35% who are similarly concerned about their children being bullied, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. These items trump parents' concerns about certain physical threats to their children, the dangers of drugs and alcohol, teen pregnancy and getting in trouble with the police.

By significant margins, mothers are more likely than fathers to worry about most of these things. There are also differences by income and by race and ethnicity, with lower-income and Hispanic parents generally more likely than other parents to worry about their children's physical safety, teen pregnancy and problems with drugs and alcohol. Black and Hispanic parents are more likely than White and Asian parents to say they are extremely or very worried about their children getting shot or getting in trouble with the police.

(Differences in parental worries, approaches to parenting, and parents' goals and aspirations are explored in more depth later in this report. The chapters focus on distinctions by gender, race and ethnicity, and income level.)

When asked about their aspirations for their children when they reach adulthood, parents prioritize financial independence and career satisfaction. Roughly nine-in-ten parents say it's extremely or very important to them that their children be financially independent when they are adults, and the same share say it's equally important that their children have jobs or careers they enjoy. About four-in-ten (41%) say it's extremely or very important to them that their children earn a college degree, while smaller shares place a lot of importance on their children eventually becoming parents (20%) and getting married (21%).

There are sharp differences by race and ethnicity when it comes to the importance parents place on their children graduating from college: 70% of Asian parents say this is extremely or very important to them, compared with 57% of Hispanic parents, 51% of Black parents, and just 29% of White parents.

In a nod to the adage about family life that parenting is the hardest job in the world, most parents (62%) say being a parent has been at least somewhat harder than they expected, with about a quarter (26%) saying it's been a lot harder. This is especially true of mothers, 30% of whom say being a parent has been a lot harder than they expected (compared with 20% of fathers).

At the same time, most parents give themselves high marks for the job they're doing, with 64% saying they do an excellent or very good job as a parent; 32% say they do a good job, while just 4% say they do an only fair or poor job as a parent. Mothers and fathers give themselves similarly high ratings, but there are differences by income and by race and ethnicity (upper-income and Black and White parents are the most likely to say they do an excellent or very good job).

While a relatively small share of parents place a high level of importance on their own children having children one day, the vast majority - including among mothers and fathers and across income and racial and ethnic groups - describe being a parent as the most (30%) or one of the most (57%) important aspects to who they are as a person. Mothers (35%) are more likely than fathers (24%) to say being a parent is the most important aspect. And Black (42%) and Hispanic (38%) parents are more likely than White (25%) or Asian (24%) parents to say the same.
How Today's Parents Say Their Approach to Parenting Does - or Doesn't - Match Their Own Upbringing
These are among the major findings of the nationally representative survey of 3,757 U.S. parents with children younger than 18, conducted Sept. 20-Oct. 2, 2022, using the Center's American Trends Panel. Other findings from the survey:

Parents often don't adhere to a specific parenting style. When asked whether they're a parent who tends to stick to their guns too much or give in too quickly, praise or criticize their children too much, be overprotective or give too much freedom, and push their children too hard or not hard enough, shares ranging from 34% to 53% say neither option best describes their parenting style. Still, more than four-in-ten parents (45%) say they tend to be overprotective, compared with 20% who say they tend to give too much freedom. And somewhat larger shares say they tend to give in too quickly (35%) rather than stick to their guns too much (30%), praise their children too much (26%) rather than criticize them too much (20%), and not push their children hard enough (30%) rather than push them too hard (25%).

There are wide differences in some of the ways mothers and fathers describe their parenting style. For example, about half of mothers (51%) say they tend to be overprotective, compared with 38% of fathers. In turn, fathers (24%) are more likely than mothers (16%) to say they tend to give their children too much freedom. Mothers are also more likely than fathers to say they tend to give in too quickly (40% vs. 27%, respectively), while fathers are more likely to say they stick to their guns too much (36% vs. 24% of mothers).

Roughly as many parents say they are trying to raise their children in a similar way to how they were raised (43%) as say they are trying to raise them differently (44%). Fathers are more likely to say they are raising their children in a similar way to how they were raised (47%) than to say they are raising them differently (40%). In turn, 48% of mothers say they are trying to raise their children differently from how they were raised, while 40% say they are trying to raise them in a similar way.

There are also differences along racial, ethnic, and income lines. About half (49%) of White parents say they are raising their children in a similar way to how they were raised, compared with 42% of Black parents, 37% of Asian parents and 32% of Hispanic parents. And while 51% of parents with upper incomes say they are trying to raise their children similarly to how they were raised, smaller shares of those with middle (46%) and lower (35%) incomes say the same. (For more on the ways in which parents are trying to raise their children in a similar or different way to how they were raised, see How Today's Parents Say Their Approach to Parenting Does - or Doesn't - Match Their Own Upbringing.)

Parents are more likely to say they feel judged by family members than by their friends, other parents in their community or people they interact with online. About half of married or cohabiting parents (52%) say they feel judged by their spouse or partner for how they parent their children at least some of the time, with 18% saying they feel this way always or very often. About four-in-ten or more parents also say they feel judged by their own parents (44%) and their spouse or partner's parents (41% among those who are married or cohabiting) at least sometimes. Smaller shares say they feel judged at least sometimes by other parents in their community (35%), their friends (29%) or people they interact with on online groups or message boards (25% who offered an answer, excluding those who said this didn't apply).

Among married and cohabiting parents, fathers are more likely than mothers to say they feel judged by their spouse or partner at least sometimes for how they parent their children, but mothers are more likely than fathers to say they feel judged by people other than their spouse or partner. There are also some differences by race and ethnicity, with Asian parents more likely than other racial or ethnic groups to say they feel judged by their own parents and White parents more likely than other groups to say they feel judged by other parents in their community.

While about half or fewer parents say they regularly feel judged by different groups, a majority of parents (57%) say they think their children's successes and failures reflect a great deal or a fair amount on the job they're doing as a parent. About a third (34%) say they reflect some, and just 9% say they do not reflect much or at all on their job as a parent.

The vast majority of parents say being a parent is enjoyable and rewarding all or most of the time, but substantial shares also find it tiring and stressful. About four-in-ten parents (41%) say being a parent is tiring and 29% say it is stressful all or most of the time. Mothers and fathers are about equally likely to say being a parent is enjoyable and rewarding, but larger shares of mothers than fathers say parenting is tiring (47% vs. 34%) and stressful (33% vs. 24%) at least most of the time.

Experiences also vary based on the ages of the children. Parents with children younger than age 5 are more likely than those whose youngest child is 5 or older to say they find parenting to be tiring and stressful. A majority of those with children in the youngest age group (57%) say being a parent is tiring all or most of the time, compared with 39% of those whose youngest child is 5 to 12 years old and 24% of those whose youngest child is a teenager. And while about a third (35%) of those with a child younger than 5 say parenting is stressful all or most of the time, about a quarter of those whose children are all 5 or older say the same.

In thinking about the kind of people they hope their children will be as adults, parents place the most emphasis on their children being honest and ethical. About two-thirds of parents (66%) say it's extremely important to them that their children grow up to be honest and ethical adults. About half (48%) say the same about their children being hardworking, while about four-in-ten say it's extremely important to them that their children become the kind of people who are accepting of people who are different from them (42%) and who help others in need (40%). A smaller share (27%) place this level of importance on their children being ambitious as adults. Majorities ranging from 65% to 94% say it is at least very important that their children have each of these traits as adults.

Parents place less importance on their children growing up to have religious or political beliefs that are similar to their own. About a third (35%) say it is extremely or very important to them that their children share their religious beliefs, and 16% say the same about their children's political beliefs. Republican and Democratic parents are about equally likely to say it's at least very important to them that their children share their political beliefs.

About four-in-ten Black (40%) and Hispanic (39%) parents say it's extremely or very important to them that their children share their religious beliefs; 32% each among White and Asian parents say the same. White evangelical Protestant parents (70%) are more likely than White non-evangelical Protestant (29%) and Black Protestant parents (53%) to say it's very or extremely important to them that their children have religious beliefs that are similar to their own as adults. About a third (35%) of Catholic parents and just 8% of those who are religiously unaffiliated say this.

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Mental health concerns top the list of worries for parents, followed by concerns about their children being bullied. The vast majority of parents say being a parent is enjoyable and rewarding all or most of the time, but substantial shares also find it tiring and stressful.

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APA: Urgent Necessity for Paid Parental Leave

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APA: Urgent Necessity for Paid Parental Leave

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The fight to provide U.S. parents with paid leave, now more than 100 years old, has stalled yet again. Despite widespread public support and strong evidence of its mental and physical health benefits, the United States remains one of just six countries worldwide that do not offer paid parental leave.

"We have this whole abundance of child development research about the importance of early attachment, but our policies aren't lining up with that," said Darby Saxbe, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Southern California who studies family environments and transitions.

President Biden's Build Back Better Act, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2021 but now stuck in the Senate, aims to provide 4 weeks of paid family leave to all U.S. employees. Without it, workers are guaranteed only unpaid leave-up to 12 weeks without losing their jobs-through the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), passed in 1993.

But many people can't afford to take unpaid leave, and about 44% of U.S. workers don't even qualify for benefits through FMLA, which excludes smaller employers and many part-time workers ( Employee and Worksite Perspectives of the Family and Medical Leave Act, Abt Associates, 2020). Nine states and the District of Columbia have established paid family leave programs, typically between 8 and 12 weeks.
[Related: How employers can support paid parental leave]
Psychologists have built a key part of the multidisciplinary evidence base that shows how beneficial paid leave is for the physical health, mental well-being, and stability of the entire family. Now, psychologists are increasingly working to refine and disseminate those findings to make an impact on both policymakers and organizations.

"Paid parental leave can reduce financial stress, allow parents to focus on bonding with their child, and increase gender equality when fathers have more time to participate in child care duties," said psychologist Ashley Schappell D'Inverno, PhD, a behavioral scientist in the Division of Violence Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "All of these positive effects trickle down to benefit the child and the family as a whole."

Health benefits of paid leave

The transition to parenthood is a critical juncture that shapes adults' physical and mental health-including sleep changes, weight gain, hormonal shifts, and mood disorder risk-for years to come (Saxbe, D., et al., American Psychologist, Vol. 73, No. 9, 2018). Paid leave can help parents briefly shift their focus from earning income to bonding with their child and adapting to the demands of parenting.

Plenty of research shows that mothers fare better when they have paid time off after giving birth, including a 51% decrease in the risk of rehospitalization (Jou, J., et al., Maternal and Child Health Journal, Vol. 22, 2018). After Norway replaced its 12-week unpaid leave policy with 16 weeks of paid leave, many facets of new mothers' health improved, including blood pressure, pain levels, and exercise and smoking behaviors (Bütikofer, A., et al., American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2021).

"Even if it goes well, pregnancy and birth is a really serious event. It can be an assault on your body, and you need time to recover," said Tiffany Green, PhD, an economist and an assistant professor of population health sciences and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Parental leave policies are also linked with better mental health. Women who aren't able to take as much time off-especially those who return to work in under 2 months-face more depressive symptoms and more marital and self-esteem problems (Bullinger, L. R., Journal of Health Economics, Vol. 66, 2019; Feldman, R., et al., Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 4, 2004). Even 2 to 3 years later, women who took shorter maternity leaves report more psychological distress (Whitehouse, G., et al., Journal of Family Issues, Vol. 34, No. 10, 2013).

Research suggests that underprivileged families may benefit most from parental leave policies, starting with better birth outcomes, including fewer early term births, possibly owing to decreased stress during pregnancy (Stearns, J., Journal of Health Economics, Vol. 43, 2015).

But these families are often ineligible for such benefits because of the limits of the FMLA and inconsistency in state and employer policies. People who get paid leave are much more likely to be affluent, well educated, and White. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicate that about 47% of White parents, 41% of Black parents, and just 23% of Hispanic parents have access to paid leave (" Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Access To and Use of Paid Family and Medical Leave," Monthly Labor Review, 2019). Although factors like higher education levels and socioeconomic status can help buffer against the stressors of parenthood, people of color are more likely to face additional stressors such as racial discrimination.

"We're essentially taking our most vulnerable new parents and giving them the least access to things like rest, restoration, and support," Saxbe said.

Not only can parental leave policies bolster physical and mental health among lower-income parents; they can also improve household security. After California passed its paid family leave law, poverty risk among mothers of infants decreased by more than 10% (Stanczyk, A. B., Social Service Review, Vol. 93, No. 2, 2019). Paid leave is also associated with greater relationship stability and may even help reduce intimate partner violence (Petts, R. J., et al., Journal of Social Policy, Vol. 49, No. 4, 2020; Schappell D'Inverno, A., et al., Preventive Medicine, Vol. 114, 2018).

Changes in fathers' brains

Increasingly, psychologists are studying how offering leave to fathers can benefit the whole family. What they've learned about the so-called "fathering brain" provides insight into how parental instincts develop and why family leave is a crucial part of that process.

"Like any kind of learning, a parent's brain grows and changes with new experiences," Saxbe said. "We develop responses to our babies because we're in charge of them, not because moms are perfectly designed to be the primary caregiver."

An Israeli team collected fMRI data from both same-sex and heterosexual parents one year after their child's birth, finding that "primary caregiver" gay fathers displayed amygdala activation similar to the mothers in the study, whereas "secondary caregiver" gay fathers had brain activity that more closely resembled heterosexual fathers. These results indicate that brain patterns thought to exhibit emotional attunement in moms can also be seen in dads.

Bonding with an infant during the postpartum period appears to be a key part of that growth. Among all fathers in the study, more time spent on child care predicted more connectivity between the amygdala and the superior temporal sulcus, a key empathy pathway in the brain (Abraham, E., et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 111, No. 27, 2014).

These findings hold up even when dads don't self-select but are directed to spend close bonding time with their infants. In a randomized, controlled trial of first-time fathers, those who carried their babies in a soft carrier attached to their bodies showed more amygdala activity when they heard babies crying than those who used a carrier seat (Riem, M. M. E., et al., Psychoneuroendocrinology, Vol. 132, 2021).

"This strongly suggests that it does not matter who you are, but it does matter what you do," said Marian Bakermans-Kranenburg, PhD, a professor of neurobiological and environmental determinants of parenting and child development at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a principal investigator of the study. "Fathers who have the opportunity to do more will adapt themselves better to parenthood."

When men take leave, their partners also benefit. Following a Swedish policy reform that increased fathers' ability to stay home, mothers had fewer physical health complications and were less likely to take prescription medications for anxiety (Persson, P., & Rossin-Slater, M., NBER Working Paper No. 25902, 2019). Saxbe, her graduate student Sofia Cardenas, and their colleagues also found that moms reported less depression and stress, and dads reported less daytime fatigue, when paternity leave was available (Journal of Child and Family Studies, Vol. 30, 2021).

But paid leave is even harder for fathers to obtain, which particularly harms same-sex male couples, who receive less leave than heterosexual or same-sex female couples in many countries (Wong, E., et al., Journal of Social Policy, Vol. 49, No. 3, 2020). Research is scant on how paid leave may function differently for same-sex couples, adoptive parents, and other family arrangements.

Benefits for children

All the mental, physical, and relational benefits adults reap ultimately trickle down to their children. Paid leave is associated with lower infant mortality rates and higher rates of vaccination, especially for families below the poverty line (Khan, M. S., Child and Youth Services Review, Vol. 116, 2020; Choudhury, A. R., & Polachek, S. W., , Vol. 39, No. 21, 2021). Women with access to more paid leave also breastfeed more, which can boost a child's immunity and development (Paid Family Leave: A Crucial Support for Breastfeeding, CLASP). Improvements in child physical health carry through at least until elementary school, according to a cross-sectional study of health outcomes before and after California implemented its paid family leave policy (Lichtman-Sadot, S., & Bell, N. P., Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 36, No. 4, 2017).

An abundance of psychology research has demonstrated that parent-child bonding in the first months and years of life is crucial for the development of healthy cognitive, behavioral, and socioemotional skills and can even dictate mental health over the life span (Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R., "Attachment Theory," in The Cambridge Handbook of Personality Psychology, 2020).

Compared with unpaid leave, paid maternal leave is also associated with a distinct profile of brain activity in infants that may indicate more mature early cognitive functioning. Natalie H. Brito, PhD, an assistant professor of applied psychology at New York University, and her colleagues found that patterns of infant electroencephalogram (EEG) activity were different across paid and unpaid leave groups, even when controlling for income, education, occupation, perceived stress, and other factors. Mothers who took leave also showed less physiological stress and had more sensitive interactions with their infants. The paper is currently in press with Child Development ( PsyArXiv Preprints, 2021). "Paid leave was most likely to predict this pattern of infant brain function over and above everything else," Brito said.

Differences in early brain activity were also reported among infants in the Baby's First Years study, an experimental trial of universal basic income for low-income mothers, further suggesting that monetary support can influence early brain development (Troller-Renfree, S. V., et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 119, No. 5, 2022).

Brito's research also shows that parents' paid leave is associated with better language skills in toddlers and fewer infant behavioral problems for mothers with less education (Kozak, K., et al., , Vol. 26, No. 4, 2021). Further studies suggest that longer maternal leaves are linked to fewer cognitive and behavioral problems, even when controlling for factors like the quality of child care and the home environment (Berger, L. M., et al., The Economic Journal, Vol. 115, No. 501, 2005; Brooks-Gunn, J., et al., Child Development, Vol. 73, No. 4, 2002).

"It's the resources and the time that families have after childbirth-during one of the most important periods of brain development-that really matter," Brito said.

Influencing policy

With such a strong evidence base for parental leave, some psychologists are shifting their energy toward research questions with more policy-relevant end points. For Saxbe, that often involves "putting a brain on it"-demonstrating how paid leave can change a parent's or child's brain, which may hold more weight with the public than self-report data. It also involves thinking critically about how to quantify the benefits of a universal paid leave policy.

"What do policymakers actually care about? A lot of the time, it's cost-effectiveness," she said. For example, can paid leave reduce the rates of chronic stress-related illnesses that cost billions of dollars each year to treat? More collaboration with economists might help quantify outcomes in a way that's meaningful on a policy level, Saxbe suggests.

Green also recommends the Scholars Strategy Network as a way for researchers to connect directly with civic leaders. "If we can make a case that this is going to benefit society-through reductions in health care costs, more happiness, and retention on the job-those are some of the arguments that might convince policymakers and leaders of organizations," she said.

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The urgent necessity for paid parental leave

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Employers and policymakers need to more strongly consider paid parental leave, which can help parents briefly shift their focus from earning income to bonding with their child and adapting to the demands of parenting.

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WBUR: Advocates Testify for Childcare Assistance in Massachusetts

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WBUR: Advocates Testify for Childcare Assistance in Massachusetts

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Parents, teachers and advocates are sharing their support for legislation in Massachusetts that would help make child care more affordable for families - and increase pay for early childhood educators in the state. They shared their personal stories for hours on Tuesday before the legislature's joint committee on education. This comes as much of the pandemic-era aid that kept the industry afloat has ended.

Here & Now 's Deepa Fernandes shares some of the testimony.

This segment aired on October 18, 2023.

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'The math is pretty simple': Advocates testify for child care assistance in Massachusetts

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This comes as much of the pandemic-era aid that kept the industry afloat has ended.

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NPR: Military Childcare Model for the Nation? (Updated Article Link)

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NPR: Military Childcare Model for the Nation? (Updated Article Link)

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Military’s Preschool Program Considered A National Model

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There are two million children of U.S. military servicemen and women. And by many accounts the military has long done a good job of helping with their education, especially in preschool.

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NPR: Military Childcare Model for the Nation?

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NPR: Military Childcare Model for the Nation?

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Pre-K: Decades Worth Of Studies, One Strong Message

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What happens when a group of the nation’s leading pre-K experts get together to lay out a blueprint for what parents, and educators, can learn from decades of research?

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NPR: Why I'm Taking More Parental Leave than My Wife

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NPR: Why I'm Taking More Parental Leave than My Wife

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My wife and I just had a baby. And, thanks to a generous parental leave policy hammered out between my union and my employer back in 2021, I'm about to take six months of paid leave. It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance for me to help our new son thrive during the critical early months of his existence.

For you, Planet Money newsletter readers, this means the newsletter's frequency of publication will be temporarily scaled back - from once a week to once a month - until I return.

For me, it means I'm going to be spending a lot less time reporting and writing, and a lot more time changing diapers, rocking my crying baby to sleep, and being the best father (and husband) I can be.

Even before I started looking into the numbers on paternity leave, I knew, anecdotally, that my ability to do this was an incredible privilege. It's a shining opportunity to bond with my new child, support my recuperating wife, develop critical parenting skills, and, honestly, cope with inevitable sleep deprivation. Given the exorbitant cost of childcare in this country, it's also, frankly, a huge money-saver for our young family.

After looking at the numbers on paternity leave in the U.S., however, I feel more than privileged. I feel like a unicorn who won the lottery under the glow of a solar eclipse. I mean, it's really rare for any American worker, mother or father, to be able to get this amount of paid time off to take care of their newborn.

Only about a quarter of American workers - regardless of gender - have access to paid parental leave, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most new parents in America have to cobble together other leave, like vacation or sick leave - or simply take unpaid leave - if they want to take time off to care for their newborn. This is particularly the case for fathers, as only around 13 percent of private employers provide paid paternity leave. While there are clearly other factors at play, including traditional gender norms and stigma against male caregivers, the lack of paid paternity leave is one crucial reason why more than 70 percent of American fathers return to work, full-time, less than two weeks after the birth of their child.

The United States is literally the only rich country in the world without a national paid leave program for new parents. Even many poor countries have paid parental leave programs. True, the U.S. does have a national policy, called the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which was signed into law in 1993 - but that only provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. Even if workers are eligible for this program - and that's no guarantee, because you have to have worked for your employer full-time for at least a year and "work at a location where the company employs 50 or more employees within 75 miles" - the unpaid part makes it a financial non-starter for many American families.

As a result, many parents are forced to divide and conquer, with one parent quickly returning to work while the other - almost always the mom - forgoes income, puts their career on the back burner, and stays home for an extended period to care for their newborn. According to one study, the average American mom takes parental leave that is three times longer than the average American dad.

From a health perspective, of course, the fact that mothers take more leave, on average, makes sense. Those who give birth must recover from it, after all, and, if the mother is breastfeeding, that comes with its own physical and logistical demands. This gendered division of labor often makes rational economic sense too, especially since women, on average, have lower-paying careers than men. In a system without paid leave, families need to get by somehow.

However, a mountain of research finds this age-old pattern of mothers spending much more time to care for kids than fathers is one of the causes - if not the main cause - of the gender pay gap. It's a big reason why a host of countries have been working to incentivize fathers to take leave and contribute more when raising kids. The theory is this policy will rebalance the division of labor at home and give women a more equal opportunity to focus on their careers, put men and women on more equal footing when it comes to employer perceptions of their likelihood to take leave during childbearing years, and help close the gender pay gap.

Paternity Leave Around The World

As a father, while I may be a unicorn in the United States for getting a long period of paid parental leave, I'd be more like a somewhat average horse in many other rich countries. Nations overseas have long provided generous leave benefits to new mothers. But, driven by concerns about gender inequality as well as plummeting birth rates, countries in Europe and Asia have been increasingly expanding paid paternity leave and trying to persuade fathers to take it.

In 1974, Sweden became the first nation in the world to offer fathers an extensive period of paid parental leave. It axed its maternity leave program and adopted a parental leave program that was more gender neutral. Both mothers and fathers were given an equal opportunity to exit the workforce and divvy up between them, as they saw fit, what was then six-and-a-half months of paid leave. Other Nordic countries soon adopted similar policies.

By the mid-1990s, however, it became clear that, despite adopting this gender-neutral policy, fathers were opting out, and mothers were still using the vast majority of their family's allotted leave. Whether it was because of traditional gender norms, or stigma, or anxiety that leave would damage their careers, most fathers were choosing to go quickly back to work, and hand paid leave and childcare to their wives.

For the equality-minded Scandinavians, this was a problem, because it meant that women were still systematically shouldering the burden of raising a child and interrupting their careers for much longer than men. That, they believed, was perpetuating gender inequality at home and in the labor market.

So, in 1993, Norway led the charge and introduced what's known as a " daddy quota." The government gave fathers four weeks of paid leave that only they could use. They could not transfer it to their spouse. If they didn't use it, their family would lose it. This proved to be a powerful incentive. Before the introduction of the daddy quota, only about 2.4 percent of Norwegian fathers took paternity leave. After its introduction, however, more than 70 percent started taking leave. Since then, Norway has expanded its daddy quota from 4 weeks to 15 weeks (after this 15-week period, fathers and mothers can divvy up a much longer period of parental leave, which is gender-neutral). And more than 70 percent of Norwegian fathers are now taking their full 15-week paternity leave benefit, or more.

Since Norway introduced the daddy quota, many other countries around the world have adopted a similar use-it-or-lose-it leave program targeted at new fathers. These countries have seen similar surges in fathers taking leave after adopting the policy. After Sweden and Iceland adopted the daddy quota, for example, they saw a "doubling in the number of parental leave days taken by men," according to the OECD. Quebec, Canada, saw a 250 percent increase in fathers using paternity leave after it introduced a daddy quota in 2006.

In 2019, the European Union issued a directive to all its member states that they establish a minimum of four months of parental leave - with two months reserved specifically for each parent. "The purpose of ensuring that at least two months of parental leave is available to each parent exclusively and that cannot be transferred to the other parent, is to encourage fathers to make use of their right to such leave," the directive states. This directive, which encourages new daddy quotas across Europe, took effect last year.

A De Facto Daddy Quota

Even though NPR's parental leave policy is gender neutral, in a way, my family is seeing the power of the daddy quota. If I don't take this paid leave, my family will lose it. Moreover, my wife is only entitled to six weeks of paid parental leave through her employer - and I can't transfer any of my ample NPR leave to her. So, in effect, I'm facing a sort of daddy quota: this large chunk of non-transferrable paid leave that only I, the daddy, can take. It's an incredibly powerful incentive to step up to the plate, care for our child, and save our family thousands of dollars in childcare. As a result, I will now become part of the rarefied group of fathers who will take a much longer parental leave than their baby's mother.

Of course, economic incentives aren't the whole picture. Japan and South Korea now have the longest paternity leave programs in the world, yet fathers there continue to take leave at very low rates. Even in progressive Scandinavian countries, there is still a sizable population of fathers who don't take it. In Norway, for example, more than 20 percent of fathers still take no leave at all.

Traditional cultural values and gender norms surely play a role. But research on these fathers reveals that a huge reason they don't exercise their right to leave is because they're anxious about losing goodwill with their employers. This is especially the case in Japan and South Korea, where, despite government policies, workplace cultures often strongly discourage taking leave. Fathers, often quite rationally, fear that their careers will be damaged if they take time off (after all, as the research shows, the careers of many mothers have long taken a major hit).

To be honest, when my wife got pregnant, and we began thinking about me taking leave, it did cross my mind that taking this time off could be bad for my career. However, that anxiety was mostly ameliorated by the fact that I'm far from the first Planet Money staffer to take parental leave. In fact, we've had something of a baby boom at Planet Money over the last five years, and many of our staffers, including two of our managers, have taken the maximum allocation of leave offered by our organization. My managers personally encouraged me to take this leave.

So, yeah, facing powerful economic incentives, an encouraging workplace culture, and a desire to take care of my infant son, I'm taking leave for the next six months.

Interestingly, some countries have focused on expanding paternity leave with the hope that it will lower the cost of having kids and thereby reverse their plummeting birth rates. However, two recent studies in South Korea and Spain, which have both pursued expansion of father-specific leave policies in recent years, find that those fathers who take extended leave are less likely to want to have more kids. Apparently, caring for a baby is no walk in the park. Wish me luck!

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I'm a new dad. Here's why I'm taking more parental leave than my wife.

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More than 70 percent of American fathers return to work less than two weeks after having a baby. Here is why I'm not one of them.

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WBUR: Why more Americans are Choosing to Live in Multi-Generational Housing

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WBUR: Why more Americans are Choosing to Live in Multi-Generational Housing

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One in five Americans now live with their parents, grandparents, or adult children - all under one roof.

It's a remarkable change from a few generations ago.

What's driving the change, economically, and socially?

Today, On Point: Why more Americans live in multi-generational housing. We'll hear your stories about the challenges and benefits of life under one roof.

Ammylou Daludado, third grade teacher. Lives with her children and her in-laws in a multigenerational household.

Michelle Singletary, personal finance columnist for the Washington Post. Author of " The 21 Day Financial Fast." Her column "The Color of Money" is syndicated in newspapers across the country. (@SingletaryM)

Hope Harvey, assistant professor of public policy at the University of Kentucky.

Matthias Daludado, 16-year-old who lives in a multigenerational household in New Jersey.

Anastasia Daludado, 13-year-old who lives in a multigenerational household in New Jersey.

Nikki Carpenter, who grew up in a multigenerational home on Chicago's South Side.

Lina Guzman, head of the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families.

Pooja Makhijani, lives in a multigenerational household with her 11-year-old daughter and her parents.

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: On most Saturday nights, Pooja Makhijani and her family enjoy a tradition. They all gather around the TV to watch a Bollywood movie together.

POOJA MAKHIJANI: Bollywood movies tend to be long. They tend to be like 2 to 3 hours long. So it's like a whole night's production. There's like lots of popcorn and candy and it's fun.

CHAKRABARTI: Pooja is 45. She's a writer, and she and her 11-year-old daughter live with Pooja's parents in their house in central New Jersey. They moved in in 2016 after Pooja separated from her then husband.

MAKHIJANI: It was a situation that was really familiar to me. My family is Indian American and multi-generational living arrangements are commonplace culturally. I grew up in a multigenerational home with my paternal grandparents, so it was a situation that felt familiar and that I felt I can navigate, especially at a time that I was feeling really vulnerable.

CHAKRABARTI: Pooja says living under the same roof as her parents has practical benefits. They divide the housework and the childcare. She's noticed some cultural benefits, too, especially for her daughter.

MAKHIJANI: We speak Sindhi, which is a South Asian language, and I code switch when I speak to my parents, so I speak partially in English and ... we go back and forth and my daughter has picked up Sindhi, which is like a lesser-known South Asian language, just because it's in her world and she has an affinity for South Asian food. You know, I don't think she could live without my mom's Biryani now.

CHAKRABARTI: But there are challenges too, and they are challenges familiar in families: such as negotiating boundaries.

MAKHIJANI: I think that sometimes they forget that I'm 45 years old and they kind of revert to old parental roles and sometimes that happens, and I have to call that out. I'm also giving up sort of a little bit of my privacy and a little bit of space, too. And then as an adult, as an American adult, I think that's also been despite my cultural upbringing, being, you know, having been raised in this country, I think that I, you know, struggle with that a little bit.

CHAKRABARTI: This is On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarti. Pooja is one of a growing number of Americans who are living in homes with multiple generations under one roof. That number is now almost 60 million Americans, almost one in five people in this country, according to an analysis of census data by Pew Research. And that's more than double the percentage of what it was in the early 1970s. Pew also found that nearly one third of all Americans aged 25 to 29 live in multigenerational households, now a third of them. And the percentage is higher for young men than young women.

Almost 40% of young men compared to 26% of young women. So, the American nuclear family has been undergoing a quiet transformation driven by larger changes in the economy and society. And in a sense, national policy has always been driven by the expectation that family has always been the ultimate safety net in this country. Well, we can now see both the benefits and the costs of that assumption in the lives of 60 million Americans. And that's what we're going to talk about today.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, joining us now is Ammylou Daludado, and she is a third grade teacher, joining us from New Jersey. Ammylou, welcome.

CHAKRABARTI: ... Tell me a little bit about who is all living under the same roof in your home.

AMMYLOU DALUDADO: Sure. So it's my husband and I, and we have three children ages 16, 13 and 12. So needless to say, there's a lot of, you know, teenage hormones going around the house. But in addition to that, we also have my husband's parents. They're about in their mid-seventies now. So we're all just one big family in our house here in New Jersey.

CHAKRABARTI: And has this always been the case? How ... did this come about?

DALUDADO: So I think a lot of factors played into how they moved. And first, it just so happened that my father-in-law, mother-in-law, was retiring and it was time for a change just downgrading from a house. You know, they didn't want to have to take care of landscaping and taking care of just like a huge house and paying the bills of having a house that only both of them are living in.

And it just so happened that our kids also needed childcare. And we had a space and the home that we had bought around the time, I want to say closer to the pandemic or right before that. So I felt like there were benefits for both of us. They were able to live in a home where they weren't by themselves, and they got to downgrade. And they also, you know, spend time with grandkids. And in essence, for us, we had childcare, which, you know, the best childcare grandparents you could ask for.

CHAKRABARTI: So this the sort of mutual benefit and especially when it comes to the need for different kinds of care, it's something that comes up over and over again when people talk about why they're living in multigenerational households. Now, I should say, that you very kindly asked members of your family if they would be willing to be interviewed by you for us.

I understand that your in-laws respectfully declined, which is totally okay. But your son, who's 16, did answer some questions that you put to him. And so here's a little bit of what he said about what it's like living with both his parents and grandparents.

MATHIAS: Well what I like about it is that like, before they lived far away. It was really hard for me to spend time with them and see them and like, visit them. But now since they're literally just downstairs, I can go down whenever I want, I can play chess with my grandfather whenever I want. I can talk to them whenever I want. I can see them like, anytime.

AMMYLOU: Any favorite things that you like about having a grandma who is a really good cook?

MATHIAS: (LAUGHS) Well, that. Like, it's just like so much food and it's all made with love and care and she's always making food and having us go downstairs. And there's always something good there. And she's always invited me down to eat.

AMMYLOU: Maybe you can talk a little bit about how your teammates from wrestling and from football also experience some of that?

MATHIAS: After weigh-ins, you know, in wrestling, you have to cut down to make the weight. My grandma would always prepare grilled cheeses for me initially but then I couldn't finish them all. So I would give them to my teammates and they loved them. And more and more people just started finding out-more of my teammates started finding out about it. So I'd be handing out like eight grilled cheeses every match day.

CHAKRABARTI: Shout out to grandmas who feed the wrestling team. By throwing shade on your own cooking there, like in comparison.

DALUDADO: (Laughs). You know, that was a moment of reflection for me when I realized that, hey, my son's not asking me for food.

CHAKRABARTI: He outlines a bunch of the clear benefits there. First of all, the relationship it sounds like that he has with his grandparents, that is communicated through lots of things, love and food especially. What other benefits do you think there are for your kids right now?

DALUDADO: So I think, you know what I've been noticing they have more moments to talk with their grandparents. I feel like if they were far away, they don't really get a chance to ask them about their childhood. I know my daughter was sick for a few days and she hung out with them, so she just asked her grandparents, Hey, how was life like in the Philippines?

And of course, that was a great question because they have a lot of stories to share. So she came back upstairs and couldn't wait to tell me. So I think that's one of them, just preserving some of those cultural heritage that they otherwise may not have the chance to be exposed to had they been far away from their grandparents.

CHAKRABARTI: I completely understand that. And it also seems like there might be some great benefit in having multiple adults around, with maybe a similar set of values but different perspectives as being guides in your children's lives. Your daughter, though, whom you also kindly interviewed for us, who's 13, mentioned some of the other the pluses we talked about food, but also talked about one, you know, potential delicate disadvantage.

ANASTASIA: Getting lectured all the time. Like, if I go downstairs where my grandparents live and I get one thing, they'll turn it into a lecture like, if they see something, they're like, 'Have you been eating?' Or, 'You're not eating enough.'

CHAKRABARTI: Seems like a pretty gentle lecture actually. But what are the kinds of things that you do have to negotiate as a family with multiple generations living together?

DALUDADO: I think parenting styles are very different. Their background, I guess they have a certain expectation about how children should treat their elders or adults and the kids just communication wise there. That seems to be a point where we have to negotiate where, you know, your grandparents are coming from a place where they want to care for you in this way. But for them, it could be seen as overbearing. So it's like giving each other the space to think about where each other is coming from.

Parenting styles for us also, you know, I was just saying we have an app that tracks our kids, but for grandparents, it's like every time you step out of the house, you should tell us where you're going, Who are you going to be with and how long are you staying there? You know, did you talk to their parents? Have you seen their parents? And that's fine. Obviously, those are things that we also care about, but I guess not to the degree that they expect. I said, you know, we have them on track. We know they're moving. I see it on the tracker. So those are some things that I think can be a point of contention and just have to just negotiate kind of like what's a good fight and what's not.

CHAKRABARTI: Do you anticipate other forms of potential pressures arising as your in-laws themselves get older, like they help you provide care for your kids? Well, do you anticipate having to provide care for them in the future?

DALUDADO: Yeah, something we're definitely thinking of as they're growing older. And, you know, our children are also growing older so we can expect them to be caregivers. I think that roles will be switching very soon in the near future.

CHAKRABARTI: There's been a really profound growth in the number of Americans who are living in these situations. And we're talking about why that is today, what the benefits are and what the costs are. And boy, did we ever hear from you listeners about this. For example, here's Nikki Carpenter. She grew up on the South Side of Chicago.

When she was around seven, she and her mom and dad moved in with her great aunt and two cousins because her great uncle had died. Then when Nikki's mom got divorced, they moved in with her grandma and she says it wasn't always easy. But now that she has a five year old daughter of her own, she sometimes gets nostalgic about it.

CARPENTER: At the time I probably didn't appreciate it like I do now, now that I'm a mom. I was just well cared for. Whether it came down to like dinner being made or laundry or hair. My aunt was like very intimate with me, like she would like, lay me on her lap and like, clean out my ear. And my grandma would give me these lectures. And then my mom was in my ear. All around I had these amazing Black women. And then my dad as well. Now, it's my husband, myself and my daughter and sometimes I just look around like, 'I need some more hands here.'

CHAKRABARTI: That's Nikki Carpenter. Well, joining me now is Hope Harvey. She's assistant professor of public policy at the University of Kentucky, and she's with us from Lexington, Kentucky. Professor Harvey, welcome to you.

HOPE HARVEY: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: And also with us today is Michelle Singletary. She is the nationally syndicated personal finance columnist at The Washington Post.

MICHELLE SINGLETARY: Oh, it's always so good to join you. Thank you for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: We really wanted you to join us today in our conversation with Professor Harvey, because you're living the multigenerational life, too, right?

SINGELTARY: All three of our adult children, 27, 24 and 22 living with us. They're all graduated from college and they're not living here because they have any student loan debt or trying to get out of debt. They send them to school with no debt. But we as a family decided that it was best economically rather than them having pay the average rent in the D.C. area is about $2,500. So instead of paying that they're paying themselves, they're putting that money in the bank. So when they launch, they can go and maybe not come back.

CHAKRABARTI: I'm going to ask you in a few minutes what some of the delicate negotiations in a multigenerational household look like. But let me just get down to brass tacks with you quickly, Michelle. So this was an economic decision that the family made together, which makes me wonder. Let's say that rents weren't sky high in the D.C. area. Would you still have wanted your children to be living with you as adult children under the same roof at this point?

SINGLETARY: I actually would have, because we talked about if they stayed here for several years and saved the majority of their paycheck because staying here, we don't charge them rent. We don't charge for the utilities with the idea that they going to save, you know, upwards of 80% plus of their take home pay. And with the idea that once they left, they would have enough to buy a house either outright or close to it so that by their late thirties, early forties, if they did have to get a home loan, they would be done and they would not have the most expensive part of their budget in their budget, which is housing, except for taxes, of course.

And so ... we talked to them, we wanted them to leverage these years where they don't have to have a place by themselves so they can take that money and when they might be in a better position, think about it. It would be a game changer for them if they don't have a mortgage or rent for the majority of their adulthood, which means they can save for retirement. They could retire early if they get married and one of them wants to stay home and watch the kids and not work, they can live on one income. It gives them more financial choices.

CHAKRABARTI: There's this underlying truth about. Financial choices, the structure of the economy today and the sort of the cost benefit analysis that families have to constantly do. Point taken. And we're going to dig into that a little bit more because it's something that many folks we reached out to reflected on. For example, Lina Guzman, who directs the Hispanic Institute at the. At the research organization Child Trends, says that a lot of times Latino families may live together also for financial reasons.

LINA GUZMAN: Having multiple workers to help make ends meet. Having a grandparent who may be receiving Social Security, which may be providing a very stable source of income or the only source of income for an extended family. Many Latino families live in cities where housing, the housing market and rent are quite high. And so to reduce the burden that rent plays or has on a household's income, you know, families can choose to pull together resources so that they can together pay more for housing, rent or mortgages.

CHAKRABARTI: Again, that's Lina Guzman, who directs the Hispanic Institute at the organization Child Trends. Now, Professor Harvey, you know, I would love to step back for a second in order to understand where we are now by looking where we have been. I mean, because I don't want to come off as saying multigenerational housing is like suddenly a thing in the United States and it never was before. Can you give us just a short history of what that's looked like in this country?

HARVEY: Yes, certainly. So the type of multi-generational families that I study are families with children who are living in three generation households. So that means a household that includes a parent, a grandparent and a child. So rates of multigenerational co-presidents today, these three generation households, about one in ten kids live with a parent in a multigenerational household today.

So these rates are extremely high. They're about as high as they were around 1950, which is the historical peak of multigenerational co residents. And they're more than double what they were in the around the 1980s when a historic low of around 5% of kids were living in these households. So what we're seeing today is really sort of a return to the historical peak that we saw.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So let's talk about what happened in that postwar period, essentially is what you're talking about, because that's the era where we have the emergence of this concept of the nuclear family, the rapid expansion of suburban housing, more people going to college due to the G.I. Bill. I mean, so it sounds like there were a lot of forces in play to make multigenerational housing, not so much the necessity that it was prior to 1950.

HARVEY: Yeah, certainly. And in recent decades, we've seen increases in both multigenerational households that are in the grandparent household with the family moving in. And multigenerational households that are in the parents' household with the grandparent moving in. So both of these have been increasing in recent decades.

CHAKRABARTI: So then what would you say are the things that began changing in the 1980s that began the rise in the number of multigenerational households?

HARVEY: You know, I think that that's still an open question and an area that still needs a lot more research. I will say that in recent decades, there are a few things that I think have been contributing to it. First, we've seen housing costs growing far more quickly than wages. We've seen higher childcare costs. And so living in these multigenerational households through economies of scale and through help with childcare, that can lower both of those.

There has been some great research ... that [has] linked the increases in multigenerational households in recent decades to higher rates of unpartnered parenthood. So parents who might need the economic and childcare assistance that multigenerational households can provide. And then that research has also linked the rise of multigenerational households to a rise in Social Security receipt, which may give the grandparents more economic stability.

CHAKRABARTI: Let's keep that in mind and turn back to Lina Guzman, who's the again, the head of the Hispanic Institute at the organization Child Trends, because she told us that about 15% of Latino children in the United States live with a grandparent, 10% live with an unrelated adult. Lina says, though, that in addition to the economic factors, those numbers may be partially rooted in culture.

GUZMAN: There has been a cultural and historic norm to be living in multigenerational households or to be living very close to one's grandparents or aunts and uncles in many Latin American countries and cultures. It's a very oriented, very much towards the family. So the family unit and thinking about the family first. So, for example, it will be unexpected to pull resources to benefit the family as opposed to benefiting the individual.

CHAKRABARTI: Michelle, I want to turn back to you, because, you know, there are definitely cultural reasons to stay together as well. I mean, my parents are South Asian. Growing up in India was like everybody living around them, had multigenerational households. So it was the norm. But it feels like especially given the history that Professor Harvey was just describing, that it wasn't necessarily considered the norm for a big chunk of the 20th century in this country. Are there parts of you, Michelle, that think that, you know, what's happening here is economic factors that are preventing my children from being, quote unquote, independent in the way that we might have previously expected young American adults to be able to be.

SINGLETARY: Yeah, You know, I think for African American households, there was a lot of multi-generational living just because we couldn't get homes, people wouldn't rent to us. So you did live with, you know, your grandparents and aunties and uncles. I am very dismayed at how we characterize this housing as it relates to young adults, as if somehow, they have failed. If they don't launch soon enough, in our opinion, and at the same time, we are quite aware, particularly since a lot of the young adults like to be in more metropolitan areas, that the cost of living is so expensive.

So on the one hand, you go out there, 18, and you know, learn to be on your own. On the other hand, rent is really high, Food costs a lot of utilities and many of them have student loan debt. And so there's a disconnect and that we criticize them. I mean, I was really struck by the percentage of, you know, more men living at home. And so you hear of jokes like, oh, he's 30, live in his mom's basement, and it makes them feel like they're a failure when in fact, it could be the smartest thing that they do economically. I was at Prince George's Community College and was talking to a couple of students and a guy, young man, and was just asking them questions cause, you know, I'm a mom, I ask questions.

So I was just like, Oh, how's it going? And he was, you know, telling me he's at home trying to save money. And I was like, Good for you. And he just stopped. He was like, Wait, wait, what's going on here? And he just he said, because most people criticize me. I said, No, you're being really smart because you're trying to make sure that you are economically safe. And even in my situation, my middle child, my son is on the autism spectrum and he graduated from college with a math degree. Did well, but his first job wasn't a good fit. You know, they didn't understand his autism. They weren't, you know, patient enough with him. And he lost his job not soon after he got it.

He had been in an apartment trying to struggle to make it. That would have been more devastating ... to him than it already was. But because he was living at home, he had me and his dad. I'm going to cry at his oldest sister talking to him because he was devastated. And so we were saying, it's okay, we got you. No worries. And so we pivoted. So now he's going back to school to do some accounting to get a little bit more skills. So a situation that could have been really pretty dramatically devastating turned out to be hard, but it didn't knock him out. And that's because he was living here. He didn't have to pay rent. He didn't have to worry about, you know, how to make the food budget.

And so I'm just really glad that he was here and he could have this cocoon of love and safety at a very vulnerable time in his young adult life. And so I need people to stop saying things, you know, like, you know, you still live with your mom or, you know, when they're dating, it's like you live with your mom or your dad or your parents, you know, until you find out the situation. Now, having said that, you know, young adults coming home, there ought to be some productive stuff going on if they're just, you know, lounging around, that's a whole nother situation. Well, you don't want that.

CHAKRABARTI: I just want to jump in here because I love that story, because it's such a concrete example of the unique kind of support, not just economically, but, of course, emotionally, socially, spiritually, that comes from these kinds of households. But, Professor Harvey, you know, it's not one thing or the other, right? This is a complex situation because I'm also seeing that, like in your research in families that you studied and have talked to, that this idea ... there is a cultural norm of having a home of your own was especially internalized amongst mothers. Do I have that right?

HARVEY: Yeah. So I interviewed mothers with young children and those who were living sort of as a guest in someone else's home. A lot of them expressed this sort of internalized cultural norm that families should have a home of their own. And so this made it really challenging for them to live happily in a shared household. So obviously, there were a lot of psychological costs from not being able to or not having a home of their own for themselves and their family.

And then in addition to that, families who live in someone else's home occupy a sort of a subordinate position in the household, as some of your guests have sort of suggested, and other scholars ... have found, when you rely on someone like a parent for housing, you're living under their rules, often for yourself and then often for your kids. And a lot of mothers told me that they felt like that was sort of inconsistent with what they expected for themselves, both as an adult and then also as a parent.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, so, Michelle, what do you think about that?

SINGLETARY: I think that's such a great point and why it's so important that when you do have these situations that you talk through things. And my husband and I have been very intentional, not just with our adult children, because we also let other relatives come live with us when they need the help and when they move in. We have a family meeting. We sit down and we say things like, This is not our home.

This is your home too. ... You come and go like you're an adult. And I think that is so important particularly and it's hard for me, you know, I'm the mom. And so I have to kind of check myself all the time, you know, when I'm like, Where are you going? Like, sometimes I go, Don't ask that. Because this is a young adult, right? ... So there has to be a baseline of respect that this is their space, too.

CHAKRABARTI: I want to just share a bunch more stories that we got from On Point listeners about all aspects of living in a multigenerational household. So here's Dexter Criss in ... New York, who says his mother moved in with him around 2010. Dexter's father had died and his mother was living alone in Arkansas. And Dexter realized that he and his wife needed not only to help their mother, but that his mother could help taking care of their kids.

CRISS: There were some adjustments, of course, at first. My mom cooking the way she likes to cook, my wife cooks the way she likes to cook. And our siblings always going at it. But in 2019, our son Dalton died in a tragic car accident. And having my mom here during that accident probably saved my life because she was someone that I could lean on.

CHAKRABARTI: Dexter, thanks for sharing that story with us. Here's Robin Humphries in Americus, Georgia, who told us that her father moved in with her and her husband and their four-year-old daughter about a year ago after her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

HUMPHRIES: We rearranged our household and brought our daughter into our bedroom so we could give my dad her bedroom. Having our daughter in our bedroom for the last year has been a little crunched up. There's pros as well: Being able to spend time with my dad, having him able to spend time with his granddaughter - my daughter is four. It's also given me an opportunity to do some personal healing work around my own family history and experiences with my dad growing up.

CHAKRABARTI: And here's one more. This is Renee Fratantonio, and she actually has a bit of a lighthearted about her situation because she jokingly refers to her home as a compound. Because different family members live in separate apartments but all on one property. She says they all started eating breakfast and dinner together as a way to spend some quality time after her father died. But mealtimes aren't always easy.

FRATANTONIO: I can't tell you how challenging it is to try and cook for six adults. Everyone's got their own idea about what makes a good dinner. Their ideas about food are fully formed. It's not like with a kid where you can try to wheedle them and get them to try something news or hide it under a lot of cheese. My grandfather's 87. He has lots of strong opinions about side dishes and any food that isn't meat and potatoes.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Harvey, while we have no exclusive income level in which multigenerational housing is growing, it does seem to me that part of the reason, or the lower you get in the socioeconomic scale in this country, the more likely it is that financial security is the main reason for this now, basically. So does that mean that families have had to sort of come together again under the under one roof because our external social safety net has been fraying, you know, roughly since the 1980s?

HARVEY: Yes, certainly. In recent years, we've actually seen more economically advantaged groups have experienced the largest increase in three generation households. So, this is older parents, married parents, higher levels of education. But at the same time, these households are much more common among disadvantaged groups. So, whenever I spoke with families about how they ended up living in shared households, I found that a lot of families moved into these households, into someone else's home, in response to a crisis.

So a housing crisis, a relationship break up that left them without a home. But I also found that it wasn't just sort of the lowest income families who were living in these households and moving into these households, that high housing costs were really affecting families across a broad swath of the income distribution.

So some families, for example, described not being able to save up for their dream of homeownership while they were paying so much of their income on housing. And so they decided to move into a shared household in order to save up money for their ultimate goal of homeownership or to get further education, things like that. And so what I found is that the high housing costs are really affecting a broad portion of families.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, they must have been reading Michelle's book, right, Michelle?

SINGLETARY: That's exactly right, because that is our situation. I have a master's degree. My husband has a master's degree. Our kids are highly educated, but we made the economic decision to have them come live with us for that exact reason, to just get them a leg up on the cost of housing.

CHAKRABARTI: You know, I want to actually also point out something else that Pew found. And, Professor Harvey, I wonder if this rings true to you based on your research, because they say that a third of U.S. adults in multigenerational households say caregiving is a major reason for their living arrangement. 12% cite childcare. The need for childcare makes a lot of sense. But what surprised me is Pew found that 25% cited adult caregiving as the need for multigenerational homes.

HARVEY: Yeah. So in my research on three generation households with families with children, I find that childcare is definitely an important benefit of these multigenerational households. So these households are most common in the years when you would expect parents to need the most childcare assistance. So when the child is first born, when the child is very young, living in multigenerational households is very common among unmarried mothers who don't have a co-resident partner to help with childcare.

Living in a multigenerational household is very common. And as your guest suggested earlier, after a relationship dissolution, parents are especially likely to live in or to move into shared households. So all of this suggests that childcare is an important driver. ... And then in my sample, in addition to childcare, I saw some households that were multigenerational with an older adult or an adult with health challenges.

And so in these families, it seemed like living in a multigenerational household was really important, providing aging and illness related care, you know, doing the home maintenance that the older adult could no longer do, that would allow them to age in place with the support of this multigenerational arrangement.

CHAKRABARTI: Michelle, I'm curious what you think about this, because we've been talking about childcare a lot because that's kind of in a sense, naturally where the mind goes. But I think we should focus more, as Professor Harvey just did, on adult caregiving, because again, just quoting some numbers from Pew here, they found that among adults living with a parent age 65 or older, almost a quarter of them, 25%, said they personally provide care for that older adult in their household. Now, this can work in a lot of situations, but it's actually quite a stressor on the home and on that sandwich generation as well, isn't it?

SINGLETARY: Yeah, it is. And I actually found myself in that situation. My father-in-law could no longer live on his own. He was diagnosed with end stage lung cancer, and he wanted to fiercely stay in his home. But he just couldn't, he couldn't take care of himself. And the decision was made for him to come live with us. And I'm going to be honest with you, it ... was dark at first. He was angry that he had to give up his independence.

And we could do nothing to satisfy him. And there was this cloud over our house. ... And it was just so dark and it took some therapy and talking to him and a patchwork of care. So we had someone come in in the morning to help him get dressed and breakfast. And then there was a break in which I took care of him because I was working from home. And then an evening aid, and that was so that we could stretch the money that he had for his care in his older years.

And the evenings were tough because they had this thing called sundown, where seniors, especially those who are ill, there's just something that happens to them when it comes nighttime and they get agitated. And so it was just a lot going on. But I have to tell you, you know, in the end, he died in our home, and we were glad that we were there to care for him. And to have our children see us care for him, because then that showed them that one day they may have to take care of us. And so we pulled them into his care to make sure that they understood that this could be a possibility for them later in life.

And while it started off dark, I'm just grateful that he allowed us to take care of him in his last years. And for those older Americans who are in that situation, and they are clinging on to this independence in a way that is not helpful to them or to their adult children. I need you to let that go. It's okay to share that house because even though he died here, he lived here as well. And that was something that I will just never forget. And just being able to spend the last moments of his life with him. I cherish that time.

CHAKRABARTI: You know, Michelle, it always lifts my heart to be to hear through your family's experiences because it gives me something to aim for.

I'm also thinking, though, about how there are situations in which, you know, a parent moves back in with their adult children because they can't afford the kind of care they need outside the home. And so, Professor Harvey, let me turn to you on that one, because that causes a major economic shift, I think, internally into the home. Because someone sometimes has to give up a job or change their working situation in order to care for that parent. And I'm trying to understand whether this is, again, an outgrowth of, you know, the American health care system, the high cost of elder care. And this is families just trying to make do with whatever they can scrape together.

HARVEY: You know, I think we're still learning about how shared households impact older adults. So most of my work is on three generation households with parents and young children. And so in the U.S., the median age of transition into grand parenthood is fairly young, like 50. And so most of the adults that I study are not actually old enough to need a lot of the care support that that we're discussing here. But one thing that this does remind me of, that really rings true even among families with young children, is that this distinction between being a householder and a host and a guest in someone else's home.

So even though we've talked about all of these benefits of shared households and how they're often for both the host and the guest, things like care support, things like economic help, these benefits are true for both hosts and guests, but oftentimes we think about shared households as being formed to support the guest's needs. Right? The person who's moving into someone else's home. And this is true also among the parents that I spoke with. And so with that context, the householder sort of maintains this position of being both a help provider and of having authority within the home. And so being a host and a guest in a household can be a really different experience for families.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, let me share one more story, if I could, from our listeners. This is Melissa Winchell, who told us that she and her husband bought their father's parents' house a year ago. So her husband's father's parents' house. So I'm trying to build a family tree in my head here.

And they renovated it to include an in-law apartment and now they all live together. So the together is Melissa, her husband, their 13-year-old daughter and her in-laws. And she says that this particular house, because they were able to buy it, has stayed in the family and been a family fixture for 50 years.

WINCHELL: They built the house over 50 years ago. My husband grew up in that home. It's just been the hub of our family's life. When we gather, we gather there for holidays, and we gather actually for monthly celebrations of birthdays and anniversaries. They themselves have hosted multi generations of family there over the years, including their parents - even their grandparents at one time lived there. So it's just an interesting legacy I think in our family of caring for generations of people there and I'm really proud that we're carrying that legacy on.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, we're rounding towards the end of this conversation. They always go by so quickly. So I want to give both of you a last minute here. Professor Harvey, do you think since obviously there has been this marked and continuous change since roughly 1980, so we're talking more than 40 years now, do you think government policies are adequately accounting for the rise of multigenerational households in this country?

HARVEY: Yeah, I don't think that we really build an awareness of how common these households are and the challenges that they face into our policy. And so you can see that in a lot of different ways.

... In these multigenerational household, multiple tax filers might be eligible to claim a child on their taxes, but the IRS only allows one to do so, and having multiple filers claiming the same child can trigger an IRS investigation, which can then, of course, dissuade families from wanting to claim that tax credit in the future.

Another study by Jennifer Randles was looking at federally funded relationship classes for low-income unmarried parents, and she saw relationship skills instructors encouraging couples who lived in shared households to do things like share their feelings privately at the end of the night, sort of ignoring the overcrowded nature of their shared household and how difficult it was to get privacy within this shared household.

So in all of these examples, and case after case, you see how sort of an awareness of these households that it's not just a nuclear family household, but there may be other residents in the home and the challenges they face, you can see how that could be important for developing policies for families with children.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, Michelle, you're going to get our last 60 seconds, because while all of these policy level concerns are true, you know, the Pew study, from what Professor Harvey has found, in your own experience, people are finding it to be more of a benefit than a cost. And I know you're on a mission to get more multigenerational homes.

SINGLETARY: I'm on a mission to do it. And if you do it, be intentional about it, have conversations, have a budget, make sure that people feel comfortable, that they're not a guest, that it is their home as well. And particularly as it relates to older adults, you know, have that conversation. And then if you are a caregiver, you've got to care for yourself as well, which means you need to make sure you're saving and doing what you can so that you aren't in a situation where someone has to put out money for you. So I think this is a great trend.

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Why more Americans are choosing to live in multigenerational housing

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One in five Americans now live with their parents, grandparents, or adult children -- all under one roof. It's a remarkable change from a few generations ago.

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WBUR: Black Maternal Health Crisis in Boston

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WBUR: Black Maternal Health Crisis in Boston

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Marie, a longtime Boston resident, entered her second pregnancy fearful and anxious. Her first pregnancy and birth happened during the height of the pandemic. The experience was traumatic and ended with life-threatening bleeding that required an ambulance ride, emergency surgery and separation from her newborn. In the months that followed, she navigated unstable housing and had trouble getting her medications, compounding her recently diagnosed postpartum depression. Her eyes welled with tears as she told her story to her new care team. Her birth care providers had made her feel abandoned and discriminated against, she explained. And because of pandemic restrictions, she couldn't get enough family support either.

Stories like Marie's are all too common for Black birthing individuals in Massachusetts. Our state's prestigious medical institutions draw patients from all over the globe, but many residents who live within a few miles of these same hospitals and research labs experience a very different health care ecosystem.

Despite cutting-edge treatments and near-universal health care, Massachusetts still tolerates a status quo that delivers profoundly disparate access to care and leads to vastly different clinical outcomes based on race and neighborhood. One of the most obvious manifestations of these health inequities is outcomes for pregnant Black women and birthing individuals.

According to preliminary data compiled by the Boston Public Health (BPH) Commission, for every year between 2017 and 2021, Black Boston residents experienced the highest rates of low-birth-weight births, preterm births and infant mortality compared to all other racial and ethnic groups. Since 2017, health outcomes related to infant mortality, preterm births and low birth weight, have worsened for Black residents, despite citywide improvements in birth outcomes.

Despite cutting-edge treatments and near-universal health care, Massachusetts still tolerates a status quo that delivers profoundly disparate access to care and leads to vastly different clinical outcomes based on race and neighborhood.

In 2021, according to the BPHC, the average rate of infant mortality among Black residents was three times the rate for white residents and more than twice the citywide average. Black residents also had the highest rate of low-birth-weight births in 2021 (13.4% compared to the citywide average of 8.4%) and experienced the highest rate of preterm births (13.8% versus the citywide average of 9.2%).

It's important to note that Black maternal mortality and morbidity transcends socioeconomic status: Wealthy, resourced Black birthing people experience the same fatal outcomes as their low-income counterparts. One national study found that even the richest Black birthing individuals and their babies face two times the fatality rate as the richest white birthing individuals and their babies.

The Black maternal population struggles more than its white counterparts beyond birth, too. In 2020, 35.6% of birthing parents in Massachusetts experienced symptoms of postpartum depression (PPD). Black non-Hispanic birthing parents (16.3%) were more likely to experience PPD symptoms "often or always," while only 7.2% of White non-Hispanic birthing parents reported the same.

Black maternal health is a public health emergency. In a state rich with medical talent, resources and enlightened leadership, it's crucial to ask why we tolerate these disparities when we have the means to eradicate them. The answer is embedded in the systemic racism that shapes where we live and our access to green spaces, affordable and nutritious food, and high-quality educational opportunities. The continuum of discrimination in economic opportunity and education that manifests in health treatment and outcomes begins in deep-rooted generational inequity long before Black birthing individuals even become pregnant.

That said, we are beginning to see some progress. Health Equity Compact, a coalition of more than 71 leaders and experts from various racial and ethnic backgrounds representing Massachusetts' leading health care, public health, business, academic, philanthropic and labor organizations. The Compact plans to promote health equity through statewide policy and institutional reform and introduced An Act to advance health equity on Beacon Hill earlier this year.

Many of the state's leading health care institutions are also helping to model and expand treatments that deliberately address health care inequity in both prenatal and postpartum care for Black birthing individuals. Mass General Brigham's Birth Partners Program, for example, pairs Black and Indigenous birthing individuals with doulas. (A recent Massachusetts study showed use of doulas to be associated with a 39% reduction in cesarean births, reduced use of pain medication, and increased breastfeeding rates). And the Boston Public Health Commission's Healthy Baby Healthy Child program and the Boston Healthy Start Initiative, both of which provide early intervention and treatment for symptoms of postpartum mental health disorders in Black birthing individuals.

But there is much more work to be done. The time has come for Massachusetts to eradicate health inequities through actionable institutional and policy changes. We must apply the same innovation, commitment, and shared responsibility that has made our state a national leader to ensuring an equitable future for all of our residents.
Allison Bryant, M.D., M.P.H., is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and senior medical director for health equity at Mass General Brigham. Liz Miranda is a state senator and the legislative sponsor of An Act to advance health equity. Follow Cognoscenti on Facebook and Instagram . Bisola Ojikutu, M.D., M.P.H., is the commissioner of public health and executive director at the Boston Public Health Commission.

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Boston hospitals can make miracles. Yet our Black maternal health crisis persists

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Massachusetts tolerates a status quo that delivers profoundly disparate access to care, leading to vastly different clinical outcomes based on race and neighborhood.

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60 Minutes: Fight to Slash Maternal Mortality Rate in the South

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60 Minutes: Fight to Slash Maternal Mortality Rate in the South

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Inside the fight to slash the maternal mortality rate in the South | 60 Minutes

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Psychology Today: The Benefits of Paid Maternity Leave for Maternal and Child Health

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Psychology Today: The Benefits of Paid Maternity Leave for Maternal and Child Health

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About 23 percent of employed women in the U.S. return to work within 10 days of giving birth. An evidence-based review published in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry earlier this week, which was authored by my team and I, shows that paid maternity leave is linked with significant physical and mental health benefits for mothers as well as their children. ( You can read this publication here.)

According to this review, just 16 percent of working Americans have paid maternity leave through their employer. Our research draws on evidence from 26 experimental or quasi-experimental studies, and demonstrates a link between paid maternity leave and a lower likelihood of postpartum depression, lower psychological distress, and better mood among mothers. From the standpoint of the child's health, paid maternity leave is linked with a higher quality of mother-child interactions and beneficial impact on infant attachment. Not only that; there is also evidence of greater academic achievement for children whose mothers received paid maternity leave.

In addition, the evidence in this review reveals several other vital benefits of paid maternity leave, such as a lowering of infant mortality, a decrease in hospitalizations of mothers and infants, and an increase in the initiation and duration of breastfeeding. The likelihood that a mother will follow the WHO's recommendation of six months of exclusive breastfeeding is greater with appropriate duration and availability of paid maternity leave. Breastfeeding itself confers several physical and mental health benefits for the infant, including but not limited to strengthening immunity and enhancing mother-infant bonding.

Among other benefits, the review also found that the duration of maternity leave was a significant factor, with greater duration being associated with an increased likelihood of breastfeeding, in addition to evidence that lesser duration of paid maternity leave is linked with greater risk of maternal depression. Based on the evidence so far, there is a need for at least 12 weeks of paid maternity leave for all employed women.

There are societal benefits of paid maternity leave, too, in the form of enhanced labor force attachment, wage stability, and a lesser need for public welfare. No adverse economic effects of paid maternity leave have been found in the studies.

This research points out the substantial evidence delineating significant physical and mental health benefits to mothers, children and families. Given the millions of mothers, children, and families affected by the availability or lack thereof of paid maternity leave, this topic is of significant public health importance.

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The Benefits of Paid Maternity Leave for Maternal and Child Health

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New research reviews the benefits of maternity leave.

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PBS: Choosing between Caring for Loved Ones and Work

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PBS: Choosing between Caring for Loved Ones and Work

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Patty Liu loves to solve problems. Throughout her professional life, she has focused on how to make modern life more environmentally sustainable - the ultimate puzzle. And like millions of other caretakers in the United States, she has also faced just how personally unsustainable it can be to juggle the simultaneous demands of family and work.

Liu, 38, had landed her dream job at the beginning of 2020, working with clients to keep solid waste out of landfills for an environmental consulting firm in Seattle. When the coronavirus pandemic shut down her children's preschool and daycare, she and her husband, Alex, suddenly found themselves parenting two kids nonstop while working remotely. Liu said for two weeks she managed to tread water with office demands, completing about two-thirds of her project tasks. On March 23, a "really scary" email arrived from Liu's office about an emergency meeting, and by the end of the day, she was unemployed.

She was not the only person let go that day, Liu said, and no one said that she was let go because she was a working mom - according to Liu, they gave no reason for her specific dismissal. But looking back, she said she suspected it may have influenced their decision. A colleague without children who had joined the firm several weeks after Liu had kept their job, she said.

WATCH: Raising the Future: The Child Care Crisis

Bias against caregivers working outside the home has existed for decades, and it is in particular "one of the most powerful drivers of discrimination against women in the work force," said Liz Morris, the deputy director of the Center for Worklife Law at University of California-Hastings. Data shows that employers may write off female caregivers as being less committed to their jobs. As a result, Morris said, they are "less likely to be hired, less likely to be promoted, and they're paid less.". As a result, Morris said, female caregivers are "less likely to be hired, less likely to be promoted, and they're paid less."

"This problem is probably bigger than you realize," Liu said. "Before I had kids, I knew these things were issues, but I didn't know how bad they were because it didn't affect me."

Generations of workers have simply absorbed the chaos of balancing labor and child care, especially with babies and toddlers, said Jeannina Perez, national director for early learning at MomsRising, a grassroots group that advocates for women, mothers and families. Many women, like Perez's mother, could not find child care, so they abandoned their ambition and left the work force to care for their children. That impacted Perez's mother's long-term earnings and retirement. Now, Perez said her mother watches her own daughter due to the lack of affordable and accessible child care so that Perez can pursue her own career. "Really, it's people filling in for the failures of our system," Perez said.

Even as little as two years ago, "nobody cared" that this was happening, said C. Nicole Mason, chief executive for the Institute for Women's Policy Research. But when much of the nation's child care facilities suddenly evaporated at the start of the pandemic, the systemic inequities in the country's child care system and what we expect from workers who are also parents became impossible to ignore, and the arguments for universal child care and giving working families more support found new momentum.

President Joe Biden's administration has proposed spending hundreds of billions of dollars to support caregiving needs in the U.S. - covering everything from high-quality child care to home health aides for people with chronic illness. In July, child tax credits advance payments gave millions of families a boost, especially those whose economic vulnerability grew even deeper during the pandemic. Policy watchers have hoped that maybe, eventually, the extra strains of the pandemic could be leading to something better.

But since the spring, the cold reality of political division and the stubborn inequities that disadvantage women have taken some of the shine off that hopeful thinking. Congress is at an impasse over how much it will spend on things like paid family leave, and how long it can continue support systems like the child tax credit. And in September alone, federal data suggest 350,000 women age 20 or older left the workforce. Since February 2020, an estimated 2 million U.S. women are no longer earning income - double the rate of men. Still, advocates say, basic protections could make all the difference.

"We're in a different moment," Mason said. "But what do we do with this moment and really get that change?"

Quantifying the disparities

Gender bias has punished women in the workplace for generations. Research on hourly workers shows mothers earn wages that are 5 percent lower (per child) compared to those who are not parents, often referred to as the "motherhood wage penalty", while fathers tend to see their earnings grow, widening gender pay disparities.

"For those under the age of 35, the pay gap between mothers and nonmothers is larger than the pay gap between men and women," according to authors of a 2007 study published in the American Journal of Sociology.

Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation's low-wage workforce was two-thirds women, with more than half of Black women and nearly two-thirds of Hispanic or Latina women filling these roles, according to Camille Busette, who directs the Brooking Institution's Race, Prosperity and Inclusion Initiative. And far more women than men still encounter "a 'broken rung' at the first step up to manager," the consulting firm McKinsey found in a 2021 report on women in the workplace. Since 2016, that has made it systematically more difficult for women to be promoted into leadership roles (and accordingly, in many cases, earn more money).

In the brutal math of household economics, all sorts of caregiving responsibilities are "handled by the spouse who earns less," said economist Aparna Mathur, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School - and most of the time, that's women. (While more research is needed about LGBTQ partnerships, some studies suggest that labor division is more equal, but there are nuances when it comes to specific tasks.)

Even before the pandemic, women in the U.S. spent 37 percent more time doing household work or providing care compared to men, a January 2020 report from Oxfam and the Institute for Women's Policy Research suggested. "The systems we have created" mean that the bulk of unpaid caregiving falls on women and mothers, and that "is affecting work and life outcomes for these women and these families," Mathur said.

The pandemic exposed how underappreciated - and broken - the nation's child care system is, shattering the idea that child care is "everybody's private challenge to navigate," said Melissa Boteach, vice president for income security and child care for the National Women's Law Center. "Suddenly, everyone was in a child care crisis." But the problem is not new. Lack of paid leave and affordable child care are "what's actually holding women back," Mathur said.

A 2015 study from the National Alliance for Caregiving said 39 percent of caregivers who left their jobs did so to spend more time caring for a loved one. During the pandemic, women in low-wage jobs were three and a half times more likely to quit work for reasons tied to the virus, such as caring for a loved one, Busette told journalists in April. Often when these women took time off, they lost wages, if not their jobs. For so many of these employees, logging into work remotely simply was not an option, Mason said.

Assumptions that women are less committed to their jobs have been especially cruel to essential workers, 60 percent of whom are women, Busette said. One of them is Donna Price, 49, a traveling nurse and single mother in Cleveland, Ohio. She works 72 hours per week while raising her 17-year-old son, as well as caring for her 75-year-old mother, who needs support after suffering a stroke.

Each subsequent COVID-19 surge swamped emergency rooms with patients, placing greater demand - and pressure - on nurses like Price to hold the health care system together. But at home, Price's son, who has been diagnosed with autism, also needed help. The pandemic had shaken up his routine (wake up, eat breakfast, go to school, come home), and he began to contemplate suicide, Price said. She took eight weeks of unpaid time off of work to care for him, and her two adult children, a social worker and a police officer, helped her pay bills.

In February of this year, women's labor force participation across the country sank to nearly 55 percent, a level not seen since the 1980s (before the Family Medical Leave Act was enacted in 1993, guaranteeing workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave under certain circumstances) and down from a high of 60 percent two decades ago.

Across the workforce, the pandemic is disproportionately impacting women more than men. Women are more burned out now than they were a year ago, according to McKinsey's Women in the Workplace report, and at rates far higher than what men are reporting. A PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll conducted last month found that while about a third of U.S. adults said they were more stressed now than they were before the pandemic, women were more likely than men to say their stress levels had increased.

In September 2020, Patty Liu's husband took her aside and asked if she was okay. The kids needed her constantly, and even finding time to go to the bathroom was a challenge.

"All of our supports were gone," she said.

They decided to send their sons back to child care to preserve her mental health so she finally could focus on job hunting. But she was traumatized by what had happened to her. When she interviewed with prospective employers, she felt she had to conceal parts of her identity to be considered for an offer.

"I did not want to let them know I had kids," she said. Even once she landed a job, Liu said she didn't talk about having children until one day when her younger son got sick and had to stay home from daycare. When she told her coworkers, they supported her, Liu said.

Piecemeal protections

Decades of federal law dictate that employers are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex or against pregnant people. Under the Equal Pay Act of 1963, employers must pay employees the same wages, including bonuses, insurance and other benefits, if they practice the same skills, responsibility and working conditions - regardless of gender. Almost five decades later, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act launched a new standard of worker protection against discrimination based on not only wages but also "job classifications, career ladder or other noncompetitive promotion denials, tenure denials, and failure to respond to requests for raises," according to the federal Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission. It was one of the first bills former President Barack Obama signed after taking office in 2009.

And yet in 2020, women still earned 84 cents for every dollar a man did, according to a May report from the Pew Research Center, and the gender wage gap has remained fairly stable for roughly 15 years. And there is no uniformity in how people access support like paid leave. So workers, particularly in low-wage jobs, are exposed to life and all its risks without good options, Mathur said. Research has shown disadvantaged workers, including those earning low wages, tend to benefit the most when employers expand paid leave, she said. During the pandemic, about three-quarters of U.S. workers in the private sector had access to paid sick leave, according to a report published this month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while 23 percent were granted paid family leave. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act offered a temporary fix for some employees last year, offering 10 weeks of additional family leave at two-thirds pay if they needed to care for kids because COVID had shuttered school or daycare. In recent years, a handful of states, including California, New Jersey and Rhode Island, have passed paid leave protections for workers, but much of the country is covered by a patchwork of policies riddled with loopholes.

In June 2020, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., introduced the " Protecting Family Caregivers from Discrimination Act," a nationwide bill to protect caregivers against workplace discrimination, such as losing a promotion or failure to hire. The bill would have created more uniform protections for workers, regardless of what is offered by their employers or states. But despite mounting talk of the need to support workers, the bill hasn't moved in Congress. In a written statement to the PBS NewsHour, Booker said it is "imperative" that the nation support workers so "they can continue to care for their loved ones while also balancing work."

"Being a caregiver is an honorable calling and a moral responsibility, and punishing employees for caring for their loved ones is unfair," Booker said.

During the first several months of the Biden administration, advocates for greater workplace equity were armed with data, public support and momentum for change and proposals mapping out how to get there, Mason said.

The White House's $3.5 trillion infrastructure plan was designed to boost new spending in government programs in ways that were often compared to the New Deal. For many, the promise of financial support offered a glimmer of hope that life did not have to amount to an endless series of impossible choices between family and work - that the nation may finally recognize the value of caregiving.

But after months of political haggling, Mason said, "one of the things that's on the chopping block are all the investments in care."

The White House and Democrats in Congress are now trying to scale back the scope of what was once a $3.5 trillion proposal to get buy-in on Capitol Hill, which will likely mean picking and choosing between some of the child care and paid family leave programs or reducing their scope to bring down the price tag by a trillion dollars or more.

Mathur said the administration bundled too much together in its plan to earn ample political support. Child care and elder care "are all different pieces of the same puzzle," she said. But it is important to "understand where the gaps are, and who are the people falling through those gaps," Mathur said.

To get legislation passed, lawmakers need to develop and target permanent solutions more efficiently beyond short-lived COVID-19 relief measures, she said, as these old problems have proven they will not fix themselves.

"We don't need temporary policies to address it," Mathur said. "We need federal policies that are available across the country."

Paid parental leave needs to be guaranteed for all workers (the U.S. is the only developed nation without such protections), and federal regulations should "meet a basic level of need," according to Mathur, and from there, states can experiment. But trying to do too much also runs the risk of not targeting the right groups of people, Mathur said.

"The only issue with trying to do too much is that it's not sufficiently targeted," Mathur said. "You might be sending money to people who don't need it."

And if nothing is done? These issues will remain and caregivers, especially women and women of color, will be forced to carry the consequences.

Considering the choices she has been forced to make for her own household, Price is not hopeful that change will come. At this point in her life, there is no room for error - she can either work her hours, take unpaid leave or walk away from her job. But none of those options fit her family and its needs. More flexibility, including paid leave, would help her household get by, she said. Before the pandemic, Price said employees could drop off their children into daycare or school and go through their work day like anybody else on the job. But the virus snatched away those easy choices and routines, and many workplaces have not moved fast enough to implement policies, like paid leave, that acknowledge these dramatic changes. As much as people who care for loved ones have been forced to reshape their lives during the pandemic, Price said the rules should also respond to this new reality.

Employers should "not just have empathy for the employees who are going through difficult changes, but making it to where they don't have to choose between caring for their loved ones and going to work," she said.

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Why millions of Americans feel they must choose between caring for loved ones and work

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Generations of workers have simply absorbed the chaos of balancing labor and child care, and the pandemic exposed how underappreciated -- and broken -- the nation's child care system is. What policymakers do next could change the way U.S. families function.

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APA: High Quality Child Care and STEM Outcomes

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APA: High Quality Child Care and STEM Outcomes

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High-quality child care contributes to later success in science, math

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Children who receive high-quality child care as babies, toddlers and preschoolers do better in science, technology, engineering and math through high school, and that link is stronger among children from low-income backgrounds.

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Washington Post: Benefits of Grandparent-Grandchild Playtime

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Washington Post: Benefits of Grandparent-Grandchild Playtime

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(Carlos Miranda For The Washington Post)

My 4-year-old granddaughter, Lucia, and I are once again getting athletic together.

One minute we're kicking around a soccer ball, the next we're shooting miniature basketballs. Later, with me holding her hand, she'll teeter-totter atop a foot-high stone wall along our driveway. Tomorrow, we'll probably have a pillow fight and chase each other around the backyard. Meantime, I'm ready for a beer.
Live well every day with tips and guidance on food, fitness and mental health, delivered to your inbox every Thursday.
Make no mistake: Helping to raise your grandchildren is a workout, and routine tasks such as lifting, carrying and following younger children around all day or night can be pretty strenuous. But research suggests that grandparents who play regularly with grandkids stay active and healthy longer and - bonus points - live longer.

Getting physical also promotes advantages well beyond the merely physical. Through one-on-one physical play together, grandparents and grandchildren can get to better know, understand and appreciate each other. It's inherently social, mentally stimulating, lends your life an extra sense of purpose and meaning, and can establish a wholesome lifetime relationship.

"Playing with children adds value not only for children but also for adult caregivers," according to " The Power of Play," a 2018 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Adults can "reexperience or reawaken the joy of their own childhood and rejuvenate themselves. ... Play enables children and adults to be passionately and totally immersed in an activity of their choice and to experience intense joy."

These findings are fortuitous. Grandparents today can expect to live longer than previous generations, and they may have more time available to play than parents.

"Grandparents make wonderful playmates," says Michael Yogman, assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and lead author of "The Power of Play," who himself has two grandchildren, ages 2 and 4. "We have so many opportunities to play a huge role. I say, 'Go for it!'"

Building an active family culture

Physical play between grandparents and grandchildren remains little researched, but a University of Glasgow study showed how grandparents "contribute to a family culture of physical activity."

The project enlisted five three-generation families, each with at least one child, one parent and one grandparent, that identified as physically active. Researchers observed the individuals taking physical activity classes together. The grandparents came to recognize physical play as a key element in the role of looking after grandchildren. Such play built connections between generations and motivated grandparents all the more to stay active.

"Grandparents often play a key role in shaping attitudes toward physical activity in family cultures," says Michael Rogers, a professor of human performance studies and director of the Center for Physical Activity and Aging at Wichita State University. "They can be role models in transmitting an active lifestyle. They legitimize it for future generations as a worthwhile practice for staying healthy."

In Belgium, researchers at Vrije Universiteit Brussel have undertaken the Healthy Grandparenting Project. Among residents of Belgium age 50 and older, an estimated 62 percent of men and 70 percent of women are grandparents, one of the highest rates in Europe. More than half of those grandparents (53 percent) look after grandchildren, averaging 13 hours of child care in a typical week.

The two-year study - possibly the first of its kind and set to conclude next year - will compare three populations: caregiving grandparents, non-caregiving grandparents and non-grandparents. It will test 276 participants, half men and half women, with all grandchildren involved no older than age 5.

Researchers plan to measure levels of physical activity (light, moderate and vigorous) as well as sedentary behavior, body composition and quality of life. The purpose is to learn whether - and how - physical activity in grandparents increases and then design a national campaign to help adults of advanced age maintain and improve health.

Social, cognitive benefits

Ghent University, also in Belgium, recently developed an intergenerational initiative, now almost halfway complete, called the Grandpact Project. The goal is to promote physical activity between grandparents and grandchildren.

Researchers reported in a published study that the program is expected not only to improve physical activity and cognitive function in grandparents but also motivation, psychosocial well-being and - best of all - the quality of the grandchild-grandparent relationship.

"Bringing grandparents and grandchildren together to be active is expected to foster meaningful social interactions and promote mutual learning and understanding," says Greet Cardon, a professor at the school who leads the project. "It may also lead to children growing up with a more positive attitude toward older adults."

On the flip side, one study suggests that grandparents, particularly grandmothers, gain health benefits merely from showing up to take care of grandchildren, even without being physically active.

A survey funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom queried 8,972 grandmothers and 6,567 grandfathers age 50 and over, who had at least one grandchild and lived in Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands and Sweden. The researchers found that grandmothers who provided child care - whether frequently or infrequently - had "significantly higher physical health scores" than those who provided none.

Looking after grandchildren, they concluded, may inspire grandparents to maintain or even increase healthy behaviors, including physical activity.

Other research reinforces these results. One study found that half of grandparents who directly interacted with grandchildren were more likely to be alive five years later than those who remained uninvolved. Another concluded that grandparents who watched their grandchildren registered higher scores on cognitive tests than those who never reported for duty.

Keeping safe, avoiding injury

Grandparents should follow certain practical guidelines to avoid injury and stay safe.

In playing with grandchildren, you should do as you do with any exercise, experts say. Start slow. Go easy. Take breaks. Factor in your general fitness level and any physical conditions that could be aggravated.

Because seniors are more prone to falls, try to steer clear of moves that might heighten the risk of falling. Above all, stop before you overdo it, get tuckered out and hurt yourself.

"Moderation is key," Rogers says. "You should avoid doing too much activity to prevent yourself from getting stressed, feeling overwhelmed and suffering an injury."

Play comes in several categories, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Adults can guide the play, creating a sense of structure, or children can direct themselves, staying unstructured. Infants might like games of patty cake, while toddlers could go in for the rough-and-tumble play often seen in baby animals such as puppies and chimpanzees.

The No. 1 priority is to find an activity you both enjoy.

You could even invite your grandchild to try physical games you liked in your own childhood, such as hopscotch and "Red Light, Green Light." Other basic options are walking, running and cycling. Kids are more likely to be active outdoors than indoors, too, yielding the happy byproduct of teaching about nature while cutting into excessive screen time.

"Playing together is best for keeping kids active because kids by themselves will be less active," says Cody Neshteruk, a medical instructor who focuses on improving child and family health at the Duke University School of Medicine. "It's the difference between your saying, 'Go play,' and both of you going out to play."

As it has turned out, our Lucia is game for frolicking in all forms. She exults in playing catch or tag or hide-and-seek or even trying her hand at tennis, so much so that she often begs me to play with her - and then, once we start, to keep going approximately forever.

Being her private phys ed teacher, and setting an example she might find worth emulating, makes me happy beyond words.

As luck would have it, she's also helping me keep shipshape, despite my age (71), my borderline high cholesterol and blood pressure, and a minor heart procedure two years ago.

Better yet, we're both soon going to get a new playmate. Next monthwe're expecting to welcome a grandson - her baby brother - who will surely double our fun.

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Want to live longer? Play with your grandkids. It's good for them, too.

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One-on-one playtime provides health benefits at all ages and helps young and old get to better know and appreciate one another.

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Pre-K: Decades Worth Of Studies, One Strong Message

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What happens when a group of the nation’s leading pre-K experts get together to lay out a blueprint for what parents, and educators, can learn from decades of research?

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Psychology Today: Benefits of Paternity Leave

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Psychology Today: Benefits of Paternity Leave

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In an article published in the March issue of Social Forces, researchers Petts and Knoester examine the effects of fathers taking time off after the birth of a child (i.e. paternity leave) on the quality of the parental relationship and co- parenting in the following five years.

The researchers used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW), a longitudinal study that follows nearly 5,000 children and their parents. The data came from interviews conducted soon after a child's birth and one, three, and five years later. The final sample size comprised 1,494 individuals.

Time off was assessed by asking fathers (when the child was one year old), "Did you take any time off from work for the birth of the focal child?" If yes, then, "In total, how many weeks of leave, paid or unpaid, did you take for the birth of the focal child?"

Three dimensions of the parental relationship were also assessed (these were determined based on mothers' responses):

Relationship quality-the rating of the relationship.

Relationship support-listening, compromise, helpfulness, encouragement, etc.

Co-parenting quality-ability and commitment to care for the child.

The factor father involvement was evaluated based on the frequency of fathers' engagement with their child (e.g., reading together, playing games).

The relation between time-off and parenting/relationship quality

Nearly 80 percent of fathers assessed had taken time off work after the birth of a child, though, on average, for one week only. Statistical analysis revealed that time off had positive effects on both relationships and co-parenting; these positive effects persisted over time.
Mothers reported higher relationship quality, co-parenting quality, and father involvement when fathers took time off work. Longer time off work after the child's birth had a positive association with both relationship and parental outcomes.
To put it in terms of standard deviation (SD), taking time off was associated with a 1/8 SD improved co-parenting quality and a 1/6 SD improved relationship quality. And, compared to fathers who did not take leave, taking over two weeks off was associated with 1/5 SD better relationship quality and a 1/4 SD better co-parenting quality.

Why does fathers' time off has a positive effect on the relationship and parenting outcomes?

It is not clear why taking time off is beneficial. One possibility is that it allows fathers to become more involved.

The results of this study show that both the fact of fathers taking time off work and the length of the time off are correlated with father involvement. And when fathers are more involved and engaged with their children, mothers are increasingly likely to evaluate their relationship with the fathers more favorably.

In other words, the association of time off work and relationship/co-parenting quality appears to be mediated, in part, by fathers' involvement.
By taking time off, fathers show their intention to help with childcare and take on additional duties beyond being financial providers; some may even use this time to acquire parenting skills and build confidence in their parenting ability.
Longer time off may allow both parents (but especially fathers) to understand their own and their spouse's strengths and weaknesses in different aspects of parenting, resulting in more effective cooperation in parenting duties.

In summary, the authors note, "taking time off work following the birth of a child may enable fathers to become more engaged parents, contributing to reduced role conflicts, a more equitable division of household labor, and stronger relationships with mothers."

Of course, in reality, many fathers do take time off; however, it is often very short (i.e. one week). Why? Partly because many do not qualify for the US's Family and Medical Leave Act, and most employers do not provide paternity leave (especially paid).

Based on the results of this study, then, "Expansions of [paid] parental leave policies may provide the structural support that parents need to enact their desires to share equally in both domestic and paid labor, ultimately benefiting parents, families, and children." This is especially true for "economically disadvantaged families, who often face economic and social constraints that make it difficult to fulfill the dual responsibilities of breadwinning and caregiving."

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The Relationship and Parenting Benefits of Paternity Leave

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A new study highlights the benefits of parental leave.

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Pew Research: One-in-four U.S. parents say they’ve struggled to afford food or housing in the past year

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Pew Research: One-in-four U.S. parents say they’ve struggled to afford food or housing in the past year

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Amid soaring inflation rates and signs that the economy is approaching a recession, one-in-four U.S. parents say there have been times in the past year when they could not afford food their family needed or to pay their rent or mortgage. A similar share (24%) say they have struggled to pay for health care their family needed, and 20% of those who needed child care say they haven't always had enough money to pay for it, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to study the economic challenges of U.S. parents. To do this, we surveyed 3,757 U.S. parents with at least one child younger than 18, including 2,941 parents who are employed part time or full time. Most parents who took part are members of the Center's American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This survey also included an oversample of Black, Hispanic and Asian parents from Ipsos' KnowledgePanel, another probability-based online survey web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses.

Address-based sampling ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP's methodology.

Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses, and its methodology.

Another source of financial stress for many working parents: unexpected child-related emergencies that require time off from work. About one-in-five parents who work at least part time (19%) say they would be extremely or very worried about losing pay if they needed to take a day or two off work because of child care issues, and 9% say they'd be equally worried about losing their job.

Lower-income parents are much more likely to say there have been times in the past year when they did not have enough money for basic needs. About half of lower-income parents (52%) say they have not had enough money for food or their rent or mortgage. By comparison, 17% of middle-income parents say the same about each of these items, while 5% of upper-income parents say they have struggled to pay for food and 4% for rent or a mortgage.

Some 37% of lower-income parents say they have struggled to pay for medical or health care for their families at some point in the past year, compared with 21% of middle-income and just 6% of upper-income parents. Among those who needed child care, 38% of lower-income parents say there have been times in the past year when they didn't have enough money to pay for it. Much smaller shares of middle-income (16%) and upper-income parents (4%) say the same.

Black and Hispanic parents, who tend to have lower incomes than their White and Asian counterparts, are especially likely to say there have been times in the last year when they could not afford food or housing. About four-in-ten Black parents (39%) say they have struggled to pay their rent or mortgage in the past year, higher than the share of Hispanic (32%), White (19%) and Asian parents (18%) who say the same.

Black (34%) and Hispanic parents (31%) are also more likely than White (21%) and Asian parents (16%) to say they have not had enough money for food their family needed in the past year.

Three-in-ten mothers - compared with 19% of fathers - say there have been times in the past year when they did not have enough money to buy food. Mothers are also more likely than fathers (28% vs. 20%) to say there have been times when they did not have enough money to pay their rent or mortgage. And while 24% of mothers who needed child care say there were times in the past year when they weren't able to afford it, a smaller share of fathers (16%) say the same.

Among mothers, experiences differ by living arrangements and marital status. Half of cohabiting mothers - that is, those who are living with an unmarried partner - and 45% of those who are unpartnered say there have been times in the past year when they didn't have enough money for food. A much smaller share of married mothers (21%) say the same.

Similarly, 52% of cohabiting mothers and 44% of unpartnered mothers say there have been times when they didn't have enough money for their rent or mortgage, compared with 19% of those who are married. These patterns are similar when it comes to mothers' experiences with paying for medical and child care. (There weren't enough cohabiting or unpartnered fathers in the sample to analyze separately.)

Some working parents worry about losing pay - or their job - in the event of child care emergencies

Overall, 19% of parents who work at least part time say they would be extremely or very worried about losing pay if they needed to take a day or two off work to care for a sick child or because of child care issues, according to the same survey. Roughly one-in-ten (9%) would be extremely or very worried about losing their job if they needed to take a day or two off from work for these reasons.

There are significant demographic differences within the share of working parents who are extremely or very worried about these possibilities.

Some 45% of employed parents with lower incomes say they would be extremely or very worried about losing pay if they needed to take a day or two off from work to deal with a sick child or because of child care issues. Relatively small shares of working parents with middle (14%) or upper (5%) incomes say the same. In fact, most middle- and upper-income working parents say they wouldn't worry about this too much or at all (70% and 88%, respectively, compared with 32% of those with lower incomes).

Working parents with lower incomes (22%) are also more likely than those with middle (6%) and upper (1%) incomes to say they would be extremely or very worried about losing their job if they needed to miss a day or two of work for child care issues. Conversely, overwhelming majorities of middle-income (81%) and upper-income parents (90%) say they would be not too or not at all worried about losing their job, compared with 55% of lower-income parents.

Black (22%) and Hispanic working parents (25%) are more likely than White (16%) and Asian parents (13%) to say they would be extremely or very worried about losing pay if they needed to take a day or two off work because of child care issues. Hispanic parents are much more likely than other parents to say they are extremely or very worried about losing their job: 19% say this, compared with 8% of Black and Asian parents and 5% of White parents.

Mothers who are employed are more likely than fathers (24% vs. 14%) to say that they would be extremely or very worried about losing pay if they needed to take a day or two off from work for child care issues. Mothers are also more likely than fathers (11% vs. 7%) to say they would be extremely or very worried about losing their job. Larger shares of fathers than mothers say they wouldn't be too worried or wouldn't be worried at all about losing pay or losing their job in these circumstances.
Note: Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses, and its methodology.

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One-in-four U.S. parents say they've struggled to afford food or housing in the past year

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Additionally, about half of lower-income parents (52%) say they have not had enough money for food or their rent or mortgage.