Low-income Homes Research Articles

Perceptions of Parenting Success by Black Mothers and Their Preadolescent Children

When Project Head Start and other compensatory education programs were established during the 1960s, it was common to characterize families as either deprived or advantaged. These terms were used mostly to distinguish between low-income and middle-income homes (Hess, 1965; Strom, 1965; Havighurst, 1966). Society has recently begun to take a more balanced view of what is required to raise children. It now seems that certain attitudes and skills, which parents of every income group need to learn, offer the best assurance for eliminating deprivation in childhood. We no longer suppose that every low-income youngster is deprived or that all boys and girls from middle-class homes are necessarily advantaged. Instead, we consider the behavior of parents to be more important than their level of income (Strom, Bernard, & Strom, 1989). Most American parents realize they have in common the possibility of improving their influence. At the same time, many of them have come to appreciate the need to preserve certain of their differences, particularly those valued aspects of lifestyle which attribute to ethnic and subcultural heritage (Sowell, 1984; McAdoo, 1988). Educational planners can support this kind of diversity by developing curricula to meet the varied needs of specific parent populations (Alvy, 1984; Dunn, 1989). Essentially the task involves helping people achieve the objectives that flow from their family traditions as well as other obligations that contemporary society assigns to all parents (Alwinn, 1988). Determining how to blend these sometimes incongruent goals is more possible when the characteristics of healthy families are taken into account (Curran, 1989). Stinnett and Defrain (1985) surveyed several thousand parents from differing ethnicities as a basis for identifying some of the factors that cohesive families have in common. They defined a strong family as one that includes mutually satisfying parent-child relationships and the capacity of members to meet each other's needs. Morgan (1987), who has described six major studies of healthy families representing various backgrounds, suggests that the emerging emphasis on successful functioning has arisen in response to a compelling need for understanding

Energy conservation in low-income homes in New York City: the effectiveness of house doctoring

The Princeton Scorekeeping Method (PRISM) has been used to analyze the results of energy conservation measures applied to a sample of low-income homes in New York City. Of particular interest is a comparison of conventional auditing with the use of the “house doctor” treatment. PRISM indicates that the house doctor approach, including follow-up retrofits, led to average fuel savings of 20.2%, while the conventional approach produced savings of only 2.5%. The house doctor approach achieved significantly greater energy savings for both rowhouses and detached homes. Significant differences are found between savings achieved in rowhouses in a low-income area of the City, which showed overall savings of 22.0%, and detached homes in middle-income sections of the City, where the savings averaged 8.3%. A restricted form of the PRISM method, with the reference temperature fixed at 15.6°C (60°F) but including the fuel consumed during the retrofit period, has been used to analyze an expanded set of homes. Similar results are found.

Intervention for High-risk Infants and Their Parents

High-risk infants and their early intervention are currently a popular subject of social policy. Several years ago Pasamanick and Knobloch (1966) defined a continuum of reproductive casualty for infants born at risk for developmental problems. The infants they included on this continuum experienced prenatal insults and perinatal complications. More recently, analyses of the Collaborative Perinatal Project data on the offspring of 55,000 women revealed that infants born into low-income homes were also at risk for later developmental problems (Broman, Nichols, & Kennedy, 1975). The continuum of care-taking casualty was thus derived (Sameroff & Chandler, 1975). Dozens of developmental researchers were inspired by these reports, and a kind of quest ensued to identify infants at-risk as early as the neonatal stage. Advances in medical technology inadvertently contributed to this movement by saving thousands of babies who in earlier years had not survived. Of some concern to those responsible for reducing neonatal mortality were the questions of infant morbidity and quality of survival. The very low-birthweight baby, infants with retrolental fibroplasia, and others such as those who survived the respiratory distress syndrome and hyperbilirubinemia were added to the lists of babies considered at-risk for developmental problems (Field, Goldberg, Stern, & Sostek, 1980; Field, Sostek, Goldberg, & Shuman, 1979; Kearsley & Sigel, 1979). Parallelling the dozens of longitudinal follow-up studies were intervention programs designed to facilitate the development of infants at-risk for reproductive and caretaking casualties. According to reviews by Masi (1979) and by Field (1980b), approximately 38 studies appeared in the literature during the late 1960s and early 1970s on supplemental stimulation of the preterm neonate alone. Volumes of studies on intervention with slightly older infants with a variety of risk conditions also appeared during this time (Scott, Field, & Robertson, 1981; Tjossem, 1976). Like a bandwagon phenomenon, clinicians and researchers rushed into neonatal and intensive care nurseries and to the infants' homes to test many forms of stimulation and early intervention on many types of babies. In the midst of this movement, Cornell and Gottfried (1976) raised the cautionary note that we might be providing too much stimulation too soon. Implicit I would like to thank all of the infants, parents, and infant nursery staff members who made this research possible. Further thanks for assistance with these studies go to Jean Dempsey, Susan Widmayer, Ed Ignatoff, Sharon Stringer, Reena Greenberg, Gene Anderson, Wendy Masi, and Jackie Zagursky. The research studies presented here were aided by a social and behavioral sciences research grant from the National Foundation-March of Dimes and by grants from the Administration of Children, Youth and Families, HEW; OHD 0090C1-764-01 and 90-C1964(2).

Reducing Energy Consumption in Low-Income Homes

The 26 local Community Action Agencies in Minnesota administer a federal program to audit and retrofit homes occupied by low-income households. This program seeks to improve the thermal performance of these homes and thereby reduce the economic hardship faced by these households because of high and rising fuel prices. A key question concerns the actual energy savings that can be attributed to the program. The work reported here involved collection and analysis of fuel consumption records from low-income households throughout Minnesota. Data were obtainedfrom 59 households that had received weatherization services and from 37 households that had not yet been weatherized. Comparisons offuel consumption across the two groups for the 1976-1977 and 1977-1978 winters showed that the average saving due to weatherization was 13% of total household energy use. Based on fuel prices that prevailed in 1979, the cost of weatherization is likely to be repaid with lower fuel bills in 3-4 years.

Some Etiologic Factors in Perthes?? Disease

The cause of Perthes' disease remains unknown but the nature of the problem and area of research have now become more clearly defined. Genetic and environmental aspects are here reviewed, with the conclusion that there is no good evidence for genetic factors in the great majority of patients. Retarded growth and delayed skeletal maturation have been shown to be already present at the time of diagnosis of the disease. These children are more likely to have been breech births, born late in the family of older-than-average parents. A high proportion of the children come from low income homes. It seems that the study of the relevant environment must be extended back in time to include the prenatal surroundings. The question arises whether the delay in skeletal maturation (for whatever reason) itself makes the femoral head more susceptible to infarction, or whether there is a common predisposing factor during intrauterine development which effects both the rate of maturation and the femoral head itself, leading to Perthes' disease at a later age. The disorder is perhaps more one of developmental sequences than a specific disease process of the femoral head. For the moment the disease must take its place among the nongenetic developmental disorders of unknown etiology, but with the understanding that the undersized, disadvantaged child is at a greater risk than normal.

Homework: a neglected research area

Homework is a controversial issue. Its advocates claim that it encourages student initiative, develops independent learning skills, and allows time for practice and application of what has been learned in school. Its critics argue that it encroaches upon children's leisure time and denies them access to community activities. They also see homework as a powerful instrument of class discrimination in the sense that children from lower income homes often do not have conditions appropriate for home study and must compete on unequal terms with their middle class peers. The overview of homework research in this paper is intended to serve as a basis for identifying several important conceptual and methodological problems, and hopefully to stimulate some interest in what has been a somewhat neglected area of educational research. No attempt is made to provide an exhaustive review of the available research, and no reference is made to studies of homework at the college or university levels. The main concern is with studies which have explored the relationships between various homework practices and the achievement of children at the primary and secondary school levels. In the first half of the paper some of these studies are described in detail to illustrate the nature of the research and its problems. The discussion in the latter part of the paper relates to methodological and conceptual issues and is summarised by a model for homework research. There have been ample statements of opinion and numerous reports of practices, but surprisingly few well-designed studies which might support any particular viewpoint on the kind or amount of homework which should be assigned. Goldstein (1960) reported that of 280 articles on homework over the 30 years prior to 1958, only 17 were original reports of experimental research. Hedges (1971) reviewed 40 'thorough' studies which had been published since 1954 and concluded that there was no firm or comprehensive research evidence on the various facets of homework. In the same year Rosenshine (1971) noted that there had been no study of actual classroom behaviour related to homework. Rosenshine's comment does

Creativity and Preschool Children

The purpose of this study was to investigate the creative performance of 48 preschool children from middle and lower income homes. The Picture Construction, The Unusual Uses, and The Product Improvement Tests of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (1966b, 1966c) were used for measuring performance. A significant sex difference (F= 5.32, p <.05) was noted in creative originality. The boys produced more original ideas than the girls. A social class difference (F= 4.00, p <.05) was found in favor of the middle class chil dren in creative fluency ability.

German cockroaches: efficacy of chlorpyrifos spray and dust and boric acid powder.

Blattella germanica (L.) populations in low-income homes Were effectively controlled with residual applications of Chlorpyrifos dust or water emulsion spray, and boric acid powder. Mean population reductions at 0.5, 1, and 6 months were: 1% chlorpyrifos dust, 90, 96, 99%; 1% chlorpyrifos dust + 0.5% chlorpyrifos spray, 99, 99, and 97%; 0.5% chlorpyrifos spray, 95, 99, and 100%; and boric acid powder, 95, 97, and 98%, respectively. Pretreatment counts of cockroaches by type of room gave means of: kitchen 467, dining room, 241, hall 47, living room 45, bedroom 37, bath 21, and miscellaneous rooms 0.

Children of seven years with marked speech defects.

SummaryAn enquiry into the prevalence and associations of disorders of speech and language in a large national sample of 7-year-old children taking part in the NCDS led to the definition of a group of 215 children (144 boys and 71 girls) with normal hearing but marked speech defects. These children were studied in depth in relation to social factors, perinatal experience, developmental history and school progress. The rest of the national sample was used as controls. The group as a whole came from lower-income homes and the children were later members of large families. They had been later in walking and talking, were more clumsy, had more visual defects and demonstrated more emotional disturbance than the controls. Their performance in reading, number work, copying-design and draw-a-man tests was below average. Provisional figures for the follow-up at 11 years showed that more than half of the children were attending special schools or receiving remedial teaching. Some suggestions for improved methods of...

THE EARLY TRAINING PROJECT: A SEVENTH-YEAR REPORT

GRAY, SUSAN W., and KLAUS, RUPERT A. The Early Training Project: A Seventh-Year Report. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1970, 41, 909-924. This is a report at the end of fourth grade of a preschool intervention project for children from low-income homes. Its purpose was to investigate whether one could offset progressive retardation in elementary school. Special experiences provided for the 44 experimental children were based upon variables associated with attitudes and aptitudes conducive to school achievement. Intensive work was done for 3 summers; in the remaining months there were weekly home visits. Over the years the experimental children remained significantly superior to control children on intelligence tests. On measures of language and achievement, trends still remained, but differences were no longer significant by the end of fourth grade. There is a slight but parallel decline across groups. Evidence is presented on younger siblings.

Evaluating Language Curricula for Preschool Children

There are some linguists who maintain that children from culturally disadvantaged homes are not, per se, language handicapped; that they have a functionally complete, although perhaps different, language system of their own. Whether or not this is true from a linguistic point of view is relatively immaterial to educators, who are faced with the high incidence of school failure among these linguistically different children. There is no doubt that in almost every measure of verbal ability, visual and auditory discrimination, and other cognitive and perceptual skills closely related to successful performance in academic tasks, children from the culture of poverty score significantly below those from middle-class homes. Because a set of variables can be shown to covary in a dependable relationship under a given set of circumstances does not necessarily mean that the modification of one will produce a predictable change in the other. The danger of drawing inferences of causality from correlational data has often been noted in the literature. In addition, Edmund Gordon (1965) has pointed out that correlational studies offer no guidelines for planning intervention procedures and may be harmful in that they provide a spurious statistical basis for a popular mythology. However, the evidence from psychological studies convincingly demonstrates that the ability to perform logical operations, reason inferentially, and extract generalizations from the abstract manipulation of experience is intrinsically tied to the mediational function of language. Research evidence indicates that language deficit characterizes children from low-income homes and that the deficit is greatest in those uses of language most closely related to cognitive behavior. These phenomena are not idiosyncratic to the United States-for instance, in Israel, where there is a merging of people from European and Near Eastern countries, similar

The Relation between Socio-Conceptual Styles and Orientation to School Requirements

This study is one of several which deal with the cognitive nature of educationa disadvantage. It operationalizes generic requirements for school achievement, and finds them to be derivatives of the analytic conceptual style. Many children from low income homes, however, demonstrate a relational conceptual style. Conceptual styles are found to be effective predictors of academic success when common demographic variables, native ability and general information repertoires are held constant. In addition, analytic and relational conceptual styles are found to be intimately associated with formally organized and shared-function primary group participation, respectively, among their users. It is suggested that conceptual styles are developed, stimulated, and reinforced in the users style of primary group participation. By using those variables, it is possible to predict the developmnent of new response patterns through changes in style of primary group membership, and to explain mixed and conflicting types of scores as well as polar response types. Conceptual styles are also used to distinguish between deprivation and culture difference, to comment on non-verbal tests of intelligence, and to identify cognitive components in the phenomena of good, poor, underand overachievement.