Study shows gender differences in sleep interruptions
Working mothers are two-and-a-half times as likely as working fathers to interrupt their sleep to take care of others.
That is the finding of a U-M study providing the first known nationally representative data documenting substantial gender differences in getting up at night, mainly with babies and small children.
And women are not only more likely to get up at night to care for others, their sleep interruptions last longer — an average of 44 minutes for women, compared to about 30 minutes for men.
“Interrupted sleep is a burden borne disproportionately by women,” says sociologist Sarah Burgard, a researcher at the Institute for Social Research. “And this burden may not only affect the health and well-being of women, but also contribute to continuing gender inequality in earnings and career advancement.”
The study, forthcoming in the peer-reviewed journal Social Forces, was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute on Aging, and the Sloan Foundation.
The gender gap in sleep interruptions was greatest during the prime childbearing and child-rearing years of the 20s and 30s, Burgard found.
“What is really surprising,” Burgard says, “is that gender differences in night-time caregiving remain even after adjusting for the employment status, income and education levels of each parent. Among parents of infants who are the sole breadwinner in a couple, for example, 28 percent of women who are the sole breadwinner report getting up at night to take care of their children, compared to just 4 percent of men who are the only earner in the couple.”
— Diane Swanbrow, News Service
Contact among age groups key to understanding whooping cough spread, control
Strategies for preventing the spread of whooping cough — on the rise in the United States and several other countries in recent years — should take into account how often people in different age groups interact, U-M research suggests.
Thanks to widespread childhood vaccination, whooping cough (pertussis) once seemed to be under control. But the illness, which in infants causes violent, gasping coughing spells, has made a comeback in some developed countries since the 1980s, becoming a major public health concern. In addition, there’s been a shift in who’s getting sick, with fewer cases seen in preschool children and more in teenagers, but the reasons for the changing patterns have been unclear.
By combining two independent sets of data from previous studies, epidemiologists Pejman Rohani, Xue Zhong and Aaron King found that age-specific contact patterns alone can explain the observed shifts in prevalence and age-specific incidence.
The results cast doubt on the prevalent notion that infected adults, in whom the illness often goes undiagnosed, act as a reservoir for the disease and are a major source of transmission to younger folk. In many countries, concerns about this possibility have prompted adult booster vaccination programs. But the U-M study shows that, overall, “the role of adults in transmission is minimal,” and that blanket booster-vaccination of adults is unlikely to be an efficient strategy for controlling the disease, says King, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology with a joint appointment in mathematics.
The study makes two robust conclusions, King says. “The first point is that we see strong evidence for the efficacy of vaccination directed at children when compliance is high. The second is that better knowledge of actual contact patterns among age groups is crucial for the design of more effective and economical vaccination strategies.”
The findings appear in the Nov. 12 issue of the journal Science.
— Nancy Ross-Flanigan, News Service
Social costs of school success are highest for blacks, U-M study shows
African American and Native American teens who do well in school suffer from a higher “nerd penalty” than white, Asian and Hispanic youth, a new analysis shows.
“The negative social consequences of getting good grades were particularly pronounced for black and Native American students in high-achieving schools with small proportions of students similar to themselves,” says developmental psychologist Thomas Fuller-Rowell, the lead author of the study.
Results of the research were published in the November/December issue of the peer-reviewed journal Child Development.
Fuller-Rowell and co-author Stacey Doan of Boston University found considerable differences among ethnic groups in the social consequences of academic achievement. For whites, the link between grade-point average and social acceptance was strongly positive over time — the better their GPA, the more likely that students were to feel accepted, and the less likely to report feeling lonely, feeling that others had been unfriendly or that others disliked them.
For black students and for Native Americans, the relationship between GPA and social acceptance was reversed: the higher their GPA, the lonelier they were likely to report feeling, and the more they were likely to report that others had been unfriendly or disliked them.
While Hispanics overall displayed a pattern similar to whites and Asians, the researchers found significant differences between students of Mexican descent and those of Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Central and South American heritage.
The Mexican students showed patterns similar to blacks, particularly when they were a small proportion of the population in high-achieving schools.
“This analysis … does strongly suggest that racial dynamics within schools are having an important influence on students’ lives and should not be ignored. In fact, these dynamics are likely to be an important mechanism behind racial/ethnic gaps in achievement,” Fuller-Rowell says.
— Diane Swanbrow, News Service
Local leaders open to regional partnerships — maybe
Government leaders in struggling communities across the state tend to be open to combining services with other towns, a new U-M study finds.
However, government officials who favor expanding regional planning are less supportive of working through existing regional institutions — they want to create new entities to pursue cooperation, says Elisabeth Gerber, a professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
“Regional planning offers local governments an opportunity to combine resources and make land use and development decisions that take into account the impacts on the region as a whole,” says Gerber, who co-authored the study with Carolyn Loh, a graduate of U-M’s urban planning doctoral program and now an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Wayne State University. “With shrinking city budgets, local leaders are eager to find more efficient and effective ways of providing vital government services.”
The researchers used data from the Michigan Public Policy Survey, which involved responses from government officials in spring 2009. MPPS is conducted by the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy at the Ford School.
Officials were asked about their jurisdiction’s involvement in regional planning efforts and if their role is too much, just right or not enough. Cities and villages report more support for regional planning compared to townships.
The researchers noted that officials in communities experiencing fiscal stress tend to be more supportive of participation in regional land use planning.
“As many local governments find themselves under strain due to eroding tax-base, opportunities may arise for co-operation that would not have been possible in better economic times,” Gerber says.
The findings appear in the recent issue of Urban Studies.
— Jared Wadley, News Service
Low education, income levels linked to depression among urban black fathers
A new U-M study finds that black fathers are 50 percent more likely to be depressed than men in the general population. One quarter of black fathers were depressed at some time over the five-year course of the study.
Additionally, black fathers with lower levels of education and income have elevated rates of depression. Depression is twice as prevalent among those without a high school education.
These findings are surprising because depression is more often linked to women and mothers, rather than men and fathers.
“The results are also troubling, given current economic conditions,” says Marilyn Sinkewicz, assistant professor at the School of Social Work.
Black men disproportionately are exposed to adverse social and economic factors that are linked to depression. The study highlights the need for policies that target education, job training, child support and criminal justice issues among black fathers, as well as policies that also consider the mental health of these men.
Sinkewicz studies the health and mental health of men and boys, and the spillover effects on their families. She co-authored the study, which appears in the current issue of Research on Social Work Practice, with Rufina Lee of New York State Psychiatric Institute.
On the whole, conditions among black fathers worsened over the course of the study. The proportion that remained free of depression and the proportion that recovered from depression decreased at each follow up interview.
Fathers with depression and those with multiple health and mental health problems also were more likely to have looser bonds with the mothers of their children, even though these fathers start out with high hopes for family life.
— Jared Wadley, News Service
