This issue of the US-based journal Future of Children, entitled ‘Helping Parents, Helping Children: Two-Generation Mechanisms,’ reviews intervention programs for children and families of low socioeconomic status and on the mechanisms of child development that those intervention programs are trying to influence. The journal has chosen to focus on this topic in light of the sobering facts about socioeconomic differences in home environments, and the modest track record of intervention programs that seek to reduce the negative impact of those socioeconomic differences on educational attainment and economic opportunity. It is the belief of this journal that understanding mechanisms of child development can help us design intervention programs that boost children’s intellectual and socioemotional development, which could, in turn, help close the gaps between students from poor and more affluent families.
The specific focus of the articles in this special issue is on intervention programs that target both children and their parents/caregivers, or “two-generation” programs. In addition to existing two-generation programs, the editors also identified six widely acknowledged mechanisms or pathways through which parents and the home environment they create are thought to influence children’s development. These pathways are: stress, education, health, income, employment, and assets. The editors then asked a carefully selected group of scholars to summarize the theories of development relevant to each mechanism; explain how each mechanism is expected to influence parents and their children’s development; and review the research on whether intervention programs have been shown to strengthen each parenting mechanism and whether each mechanism does, in fact, influence children’s intellectual or socioemotional development.
The seven articles in this issue include:
- Two-Generation Programs in the Twenty-First Century
- Stress and Child Development
- Intergenerational Payoffs of Education
- Two-Generation Programs and Health
- Boosting Family Income to Promote Child Development
- Parents' Employment and Children's Wellbeing
- Family Assets and Child Outcomes: Evidence and Directions
Among the key conclusions drawn in this journal issue, the authors have found that:
- Newer Two-Generation programs, which are built on the learning from evaluating the first wave of Two-Generation programs in the 80s and 90s, are showing promising early results;
- Sources of stress are abundant in households living in poverty, and poverty itself becomes a source of stress. The authors review the impact of stress on children’s development and the parent-child relationship as a source of stress or a mechanism for ameliorating stress. Early social interactions guide children biologically and behaviorally to prepare them for a life of adversity or security – and good Two-Generation interventions keep this in mind.
- The pay-off of educating parents in the hopes of improving their children’s educational attainment may not be as high as it would seem, considering the U.S. education system spends a lot more money educating rich children than it does poor children.
- The relationship between parents’ health and children’s health is very strong – the better a parent’s health, the better the child’s – and yet few programs are targeted at improving parental health as a means of improving children’s health. The authors examine why this is and what can be done to incorporate more Two-Generation health programming.
- Parental employment can have both positive and negatives effects on children. Those families who experience more of the negative effects of parental employment are those that work low-income and low-quality jobs. In order for low-income parents’ work to enhance their children’s wellbeing, there is a need for expanded workplace flexibility, helping parents place their children in high-quality child care, and helping parents train for, find, and keep a well-paying job with benefits. All of these policies could be components of two-generation programs.