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This article considers four methodological issues in the study of family resilience. The first focus is on measurement, in which the psychometric properties of reliability, validity, and measurement equivalence are described. The second methodological consideration is on efforts to establish causality in the absence of experimental manipulation. Here, the authors present longitudinal panel models as a prototypical approach, describing the possibilities and challenges of this and other techniques toward inferences of causality, especially in the context of family resiliency. Third, the authors consider modeling resilience as continuous versus categorical, specifically contrasting variable‐centered versus person‐centered conceptualizations and analytic approaches. Fourth, the authors consider the complexities of studying family resilience due to the multilevel nature of the phenomena. The article concludes with recommendations for a diversity of methodological foci as the study of family resilience advances.

Paternal support is often linked to lower levels of maternal psychological distress; however, research has seldom considered the increasing numbers of Mexican‐origin families with a romantic partner social (RPS) father (i.e., mothers' partners who are not formally identified as stepfathers). This study applied a bioecological systems framework to test linkages between support from RPS fathers and maternal depressive symptoms and parenting stress and to consider whether nonresident biological father support and instrumental social support moderate these associations. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, the authors analyzed a subsample of Mexican‐origin mothers (N = 76) with 3‐year‐old children. Findings indicated that maternal perceptions of support from RPS fathers were inversely related to depressive symptomatology only when mothers also perceived high levels of support from biological fathers, and the relationship with the RPS father began recently. Neither RPS nor biological father support was associated with maternal parenting stress.

Grandmothers often provide support for Mexican-origin mothers and young children. The factors influencing grandmother involvement, and the implications of this involvement for maternal well-being, particularly in the context of transborder family relationships, remain largely unexplored. This study considers the extent to which maternal, child, and intergenerational factors are linked with levels of grandmother involvement, and in turn grandmother involvement is associated with maternal psychological distress among an American community sample of 78 Mexican-origin families, for which over one third of grandmothers live in Mexico. Findings suggest that mother reported grandmother involvement is higher when children are temperamentally difficult, mothers perceive overall high-quality mother–grandmother relationships, and grandmothers live in the United States. Furthermore, extensive grandmother involvement when grandmothers live in Mexico is related to higher levels of psychological distress. These results highlight the importance of an intergenerational and transborder perspective on family relationships and well-being among Mexican-origin families.

AbstractObjectiveThe goal of this study was to examine dual trajectories of supportive coparenting and father involvement across the transition to parenthood into early childhood.BackgroundDuring the transition to parenthood, families adapt to new dynamic family subsystems. Drawing on family systems theory, we investigated the influence of supportive coparenting (mother–father subsystem) and father involvement (father–child subsystem) on child development.MethodLongitudinal data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study collected at the child's birth and ages 1, 3, and 5 years included a sample of predominantly unmarried disadvantaged couples (N = 856) living in diverse couple relationship configurations. Group‐based modeling was used to identify interfamilial variations in dual trajectories and how these trajectory groups were associated with parental predictors and child behavior outcomes.ResultsThree classes were identified: High‐Slow Decreasing Supportive Coparenting and Father Involvement (Class 1, 78%), High‐Rapid Decreasing Supportive Coparenting and Father Involvement (Class 2, 12%), and Low‐Increasing Supportive Coparenting and Low‐Stable Father Involvement (Class 3, 10%). Class 3 showed greater couple supportiveness than the other classes. Couples in committed partner relationships were more likely to be in Class 1 or Class 2 than Class 3. Children of Class 1 displayed fewer behavioral problems than the other classes.ConclusionsFindings emphasize the value of jointly considering coparenting and father involvement in targeted interventions to strengthen child development and family functioning among economically disadvantaged families.

This exploratory study investigates existing views on the practice of tri-parenting and perceived reasons for potential stigma towards families in tri-parenting relationships. Two themes emerged from 448 posts on five online copies of an article about tri-parenting: domains of comparison and attitudes toward family. Findings from a generic qualitative approach reveal that the majority of anonymous comments posted in response to these articles about tri-parenting were negative, thus potentially associated with stigma. Four categories of potential attitudes underlying statements toward these families also emerged from the data: tradition/slippery slope, complicated, deviance, and welfare. Further analysis suggests that in the case of tri-parenting, family unusualness is related to family stigma and that stigmatizing comparisons are made based on concerns in social and legal domains. Results are discussed in terms of future research and implications for minimizing family stigma.

AbstractLow‐income mothers in rural areas lack access to resources and may rely strongly on support from their children's grandparents. However, most current research on grandparent support focuses on coresidential or custodial grandparents. Very few recent studies focus on the types of support provided by nonresident grandparents, who may be a particularly critical source of support for mothers in rural areas. This qualitative study analyzed interview transcripts from 68 low‐income rural mothers to characterize the support they received from their children's grandparents. Two main themes emerged: multidimensionality and multivalence of support. In many families, resources were limited across generations. Results highlight the importance and complexity of multidimensional and multidirectional intergenerational relationships. Nonresident grandparent support appeared to play a key role in the financial and emotional functioning of these families, which may be overlooked in current research and practice with low‐resource rural families.

This article investigates the impact of immigrant generation on students' performance in college calculus courses and examines the extent to which the observed patterns corroborate or contradict various assimilation theories. It goes beyond past studies of the relationship between immigrant generation and mathematics achievement that focused primarily on middle and high school students and typically excluded foreign students. Our principal finding is that foreign students and the 1.25 generation earned the highest grades, on average, even after controlling for race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Our findings provide partial support for the immigrant advantage theory.

Population-based surveys are of limited utility to estimate rare or low-incidence groups, particularly for those defined by religion or ethnicity not included in the U.S. Census. Methods of cross-survey analysis and small area estimation, however, can be used to provide reliable estimates of such low-incidence groups. To illustrate these methods, data from 50 national surveys are combined to examine the Jewish population in the United States. Hierarchical models are used to examine clustering of respondents within surveys and geographic regions. Bayesian analyses with Monte Carlo simulations are used to obtain pooled, state-level estimates poststratified by sex, race, education, and age to obtain certainty intervals about the estimates. This cross-survey approach provides a useful and practical analytic framework that can be generalized both to more extensive study of religion in the United States and to other social science problems in which single data sources are insufficient for reliable statistical inference.