|
School of Social Policy and Practice |
Departmental Papers (SPP)
TITLE:
Parents' Work, Depressive Symptoms, Children, and Family Economic Mobility: What Can Ethnography Tell Us?
AUTHOR(S):
Roberta R. Iversen, University of Pennsylvania
Annie Laurie Armstrong, Business Government Community Connections
DOCUMENT TYPE: Journal Article
This document has been peer reviewed.
» Download the Document (PDF format - 197 K) - 01 July 2007
» Tell a colleague about it.
Reprinted with permission from Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, Volume 88, Issue 3, July 2007, pages 339-350.
Publisher URL: www.familiesinsociety.org.
Published by the Alliance for Children and Families.
ABSTRACT:
Low-income work, job training, depressive symptoms or depression, and children's school performance. These topics have occupied the attention of scholars and policy makers in recent years, particularly as they pertain to single mothers in the context of welfare reform. Broadening this landscape, findings from longitudinal, multi-city ethnographic research reveal that low-income fathers also experience depression or depressive symptoms that hinder family economic mobility. Further, repeated scores from a community-based depressive symptoms measure embedded in the ethnographic inquiry show that the timing of parents' training and employment pathways, economic conditions, and policies in firms and children's schools intersect with parents' depressive symptoms or depression to affect mobility. Program and policy supports seem to mediate these intersecting mobility challenges.
DATE POSTED: 16 August 2007