A top-down model of policy and intra-family allocation of resources to children predicts a one-way flow of influence: policies influence parents who in turn influence their children. A transactional vision of the process includes feedback between these levels. Parent-citizens affect their children, but they also shape policy effects through interfacing with systems. Just as parents are not passive recipients of """"""""policy,"""""""" children do not simply receive """"""""parenting."""""""" From pitching in with chores to pitching fits, children contribute to and actively claim resources within households. The overall goal of the proposed research is to examine the child's role in shaping intra-family resource allocation, with a particular emphasis on implications for policy-relevant research and possible points of intervention. This proposal outlines three specific aims to be achieved through a series of secondary analyses using both qualitative and quantitative data.
The first aim of this project is to describe the mechanisms whereby children, particularly young adolescents, affect resource allocation within households. How do an individual child's actions or characteristics affect the share of family resources that she or he receives? How do children's actions affect the total amount of resources available to a family? Second, analyses will examine how children's contributions and claims impact well being for and within families. What is the effect of children's actions on the overall level of well being within a family? Does contributing to the household help or harm the development of young adolescents? When older siblings' contributions to the household include caring for siblings, what is the impact on these younger children? Finally, an explicit aim of this research is to refine current conceptual models in light of findings about children's contributions to intra-household resource allocation. What model of resource allocation within families best captures child agency? What are the implications of this model for how policy-relevant social science research and policy analysis are conducted?
| Berridge, Clara W; Romich, Jennifer L (2011) ""Raising Him … to Pull His Own Weight"": Boys' Household Work in Single- Mother Households. J Fam Issues 32:157-180 |
| Romich, Jennifer (2009) Trying to keep children out of trouble: Child characteristics, neighborhood quality, and within-household resource allocation. Child Youth Serv Rev 31:338-345 |
| Romich, Jennifer L; Lundberg, Shelly; Tsang, Kwok Ping (2009) Independence Giving or Autonomy Taking? Childhood Predictors of Decision-Sharing Patterns Between Young Adolescents and Parents. J Res Adolesc 19:587-600 |
