Reports, Research & Policy

By David L. Kirp, The New York Times, April 25, 2021 The boy I’ll call Jackson is the kind of youngster who drives a preschool teacher around the bend. The 4-year-old bites and hits other children, and curses out his teacher, Mariana Lopez. During circle time, when the class is supposed to cluster around and listen to one another, he is a hellion, and nap time turns into a pitched battle. Preschool teachers rely on parents to relate what’s happening on the home front, but Jackson’s mom...

The Rev. Darrell Armstrong, pastor of the historic Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, New Jersey, is an accomplished man. He graduated from Stanford University in public policy and went on to get his master’s degree in divinity studies at Princeton. As a former director in the New Jersey Department of Human Services, he was responsible for New Jersey’s statewide strategy for preventing child abuse and neglect. Armstrong has also worked as an entrepreneur, workshop facilitator, and radio host.

Spread the news to families in your community: even if they've never filed taxes, even if they have little or no income, they may be eligible for the 2021 Refundable Child Tax Credit. They have until May 17, 2021 to file with the IRS to receive this credit: $3600 for each child ages 0-6; $3000 for children 6-17.

By Loren McCullough and Dr. Robert Sege, 4/20/21, positiveexperience.org/blog This blog continues our reflections on the results of a survey that the HOPE team, in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics , Prevent Child Abuse America , and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) , commissioned with YouGov.com in November of 2020, asking a national sample of parents and caregivers about their experiences with their children since March of 2020. The project is...

Good morning PACE members, I hope you are safe and well today. I want to extend an invitation to you to our Baby Shower Briefing on May 5, 2021 at 11 a.m. so together we can Extend the Infant Supplement as a prenatal support for our youth! We will have a number of youth advocate speakers and members of the coalition speak to the issues. Will you join us for our Baby Shower Briefing for Expectant Youth in Care? Description: How does the pandemic impact expectant and parenting foster youth?

When we imagine a caregiver, we often picture a woman: a mother caring for young children, spouse, and the daily household chores, a daughter nursing a father with disabilities, or a female child care provider. Historically, women have been expected to serve as primary providers of “caretaking” work, whether it’s parenting or caring for an aging family member or paid work in positions typically associated with women such as child-care providers, nurses, or health aide. Alternativley, men are...

By Alex Zimmerman, Chalkbeat New York, April 9, 2021 The education department is launching a training program next month for parents, paying them $500 to become “wellness ambassadors” addressing mental health needs in their school communities. The initiative will pay the stipend to parent leaders from roughly 950 schools in neighborhoods hardest hit by the coronavirus, according to Adrienne Austin, an acting deputy chancellor who oversees parent outreach. She revealed a “sneak peek” of the...

By Dana Goldstein, The New York Times, April 8, 2021 Over the past year, Deprece Bonilla, a mother of five in Oakland, Calif., has gotten creative about helping her children thrive in a world largely mediated by screens. She signed them up for online phonics tutoring and virtual martial arts lessons. If they are distracted inside the family’s duplex, she grabs snacks and goes with the children into the car, saying they cannot come out until their homework is done. She has sometimes spent...

By Rachel Kidman, Rachel Margolis, Emily Smith-Greenway, et al., JAMA Pediatrics, April 5, 2021 T he scale of COVID-19 mortality in the United States, including among prime-age adults, merits efforts to continuously track how many children are affected by parental death. Children who lose a parent are at elevated risk of traumatic grief, depression, poor educational outcomes, and unintentional death or suicide, and these consequences can persist into adulthood. 1 Sudden parental death, such...

By Chantel L. Daines, Dustin Hansen, M. Lelinneth B. Novilla, et al., BMC Public Health, April 5, 2021 Abstract Background The objective of the study was to determine the association between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and positive childhood experiences (PCEs) with family health in adulthood. Prior research indicates that ACEs and PCEs affect individual physical and mental health in adulthood. However, little is known about how ACEs and PCEs affect family health. Families develop...

By The Imprint Staff Reporters, The Imprint, March 29, 2021 In a study of twins aimed at teasing out answers to an aspect of the classic nature-versus-nurture debate, researchers have found that the child who was more harshly disciplined than the sibling twin was more likely to develop more behavior problems. This was determined by researchers at three prominent universities who studied sibling pairs treated differently by their parents. Among the 1,030 sets of twins studied were 426 pairs...

By Karen D'Souza, EdSource, April 6, 2021 Children are born ready to learn. In the first year of life, the brain doubles, with about 90% of brain growth happening before kindergarten. However, only 1 in 3 eligible children under 5 years old take part in California’s publicly funded early learning and care programs. To make matters worse this year, 3 out of 4 California parents with children under 5 are worried their education and development will suffer because of the pandemic, according to...