R M Ryan
Biographic Data
| ID | 7618 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R M Ryan |
| GIVEN NAMES | R M |
| FAMILY NAME | Ryan |
| SIGNATURE | RYAN R M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgetown University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3924-3574 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 393 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
School air pollution and executive functioning development among low-income kindergarteners
The present study examines the associations between toxic industrial air pollution around elementary schools and children's executive functioning (EF) skill development among a racially and ethnically diverse sample of kindergarteners from low-income families in Tulsa, Oklahoma ( N = 763; 50% female; 52% Hispanic/Latinx, 18% Black, 13% White, 10% multiracial, 6% American Indian, 1% Asian American/Pacific Islander). Data on ambient industrial poll…
Daily food insecurity and parent and child well-being: Variation in associations by food insecurity type
Which form of cash is best for families? Associations between lump sum versus regular payments and food insecurity
The expanded Child Tax Credit and low-income families’ food insecurity: Associations across and within months of receipt
Associations between daily food insecurity and parent and child well-being
Food insecurity poses a serious threat to children's development, but the mechanisms through which food insecurity undermines child development are far less clear. Specifically, food insecurity may influence children through its effect on parents' psychological well-being and parent-child interactions as a result, but past research on the role of parents is correlational and undermined by omitted variable bias. Using a partially rural, low-income…
Teacher turnover and residential instability: Exploring joint and contextual associations with child behavior
The role of public and private food assistance in supporting families’ food security and meal routines
Poverty, Material Hardship, and Children’s Outcomes: A Nuanced Understanding of Material Hardship in Childhood
There are four distinct, related types of material hardship-basic expense hardship, food insecurity, housing hardship, and medical hardship. Extant research has not sufficiently accounted for the complex relationships between these different types of material hardship. Using 1997 and 2002 data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Study on a national sample of 3- to 17-year-old children ( N = 3563), this study describes the pr…
Fine motor skills during early childhood predict visuospatial deductive reasoning in adolescence
Extensive evidence and theory suggest that the development of motor skills during infancy and early childhood initiates a "developmental cascade" for cognitive abilities, such as reading and math. Motor skills are closely connected with the development of spatial cognition, an ability that supports deductive reasoning. Despite the linkage between motor skills and spatial cognition, and spatial cognition with deductive reasoning, no research has e…
Differences in Parents' Attitudes Toward Spanking Across Socioeconomic Status and Region, 1986-2016
Understanding patterns of food insecurity and family well-being amid the Covid-19 pandemic using daily surveys
This paper investigates economic and psychological hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic among a diverse sample (61% Latinx; 16% White; 9% Black; 14% mixed/other race) of socioeconomically disadvantaged parents (90% mothers; mean age = 35 years) and their elementary school-aged children (ages 4–11; 49% female) in rural Pennsylvania (N = 272). Families participating in a local food assistance program reported on food insecurity (FI) and parent and…
Parenting Practices and Socioeconomic Gaps in Childhood Outcomes
In this article, developmental psychologists Ariel Kalil and Rebecca Ryan examine the relation between parenting practices and socioeconomic gaps in child outcomes. They document substantial differences between richer and poorer families, including growing gaps in parental engagement and time use. These gaps matter: the fact that children born to lower-income, less-educated parents are less likely to spend quality time with their parents only com…
The Effect of Birth weight on Child Development Prior to School Entry
The present study examines variation in the effect of birth weight on children’s early cognitive and socioemotional outcomes by family socioeconomic status (SES). It is hypothesized that not only will lower birth weight children display worse cognitive and socioemotional outcomes prior to school entry, as prior research has found, but that effects will be stronger for lower-SES children. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birt…
Young Children’s Mathematical Learning From Intelligent Characters
Children’s math learning (N = 217; Mage = 4.87 years; 63% European American, 96% college-educated families) from an intelligent character game was examined via social meaningfulness (parasocial relationships [PSRs]) and social contingency (parasocial interactions, e.g., math talk). In three studies (data collected in the DC area: 12/2015–10/2017), children’s parasocial relationships and math talk with the intelligent character predicted quicker, …
The relationship between increases in low-income mothers’ education and children’s early outcomes: Variation by developmental stage and domain
Trends in Parental Values in a Period of U.S. Labor Market Change
Objective This article examines changes from 1986 to 2016 in the characteristics that parents in the United States most value in their children and differences in those values by parent income and education. Background As a result of interrelated labor market changes, income‐ and education‐based differences in parents' terminal values that have characterized U.S. families for generations are hypothesized to have converged by income and education …
The link between child temperament and low‐income mothers’ and fathers’ parenting
Numerous studies have shown that children's temperamental characteristics impact the quality and quantity of parent–child interactions. However, these studies have largely focused on middle‐class samples, have not compared multiple domains of parenting across mothers and fathers, and have not considered the possibility of nonlinear associations between temperament and parenting. The present study addresses these gaps by examining the potentially …
A multi-semester classroom demonstration yields evidence in support of the facial feedback effect
The facial feedback effect refers to the influence of unobtrusive manipulations of facial behavior on emotional outcomes. That manipulations inducing or inhibiting smiling can shape positive affect and evaluations is a staple of undergraduate psychology curricula and supports theories of embodied emotion. Thus, the results of a Registered Replication Report indicating minimal evidence to support the facial feedback effect were widely viewed as ca…
School readiness among children of Hispanic immigrants and their peers: The role of parental cognitive stimulation and early care and education
Coresidential Father Transitions and Biological Parents' Coparenting Quality in Early and Middle Childhood
This study examined how the entrances and exits of biological and social fathers into and out of children's households were associated with biological parents' coparenting quality. Piecewise growth curve models tested for variation in these associations between child ages 1 and 3, 3 and 5, and 5 and 9. Data came from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study ( n = 2,394). Results indicated that in all three age intervals, a biological father…
Father Absence and Adolescent Depression and Delinquency: A Comparison of Siblings Approach
Although associations between having a nonresident father and increased internalizing and externalizing behaviors in adolescence have been well documented, research has yet to establish the plausible causality of these links or identify underlying mechanisms. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 - Young Adult survey, this study addresses these questions by comparing the depressive symptoms and delinquent behavior of sibl…
Early Childhood Maltreatment and Pubertal Development: Replication in a Population‐Based Sample
Early experiences are critically important for female reproductive development. Although a number of early childhood hardships predict earlier physical development in girls, research on specific populations suggests a distinct effect of childhood sexual abuse compared to other adversities. This study leverages the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 6,273 girls) to test the generalizability of these findings, examining associati…
Nonresident fatherhood and adolescent sexual behavior: A comparison of siblings approach
Although voluminous research has linked nonresident fatherhood to riskier sexual behavior in adolescence, including earlier sexual debut, neither the causality of that link nor the mechanism accounting for it has been well-established. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979-the Young Adult Survey (CNLSY-YA), the present study addresses both questions by comparing the sexual development of siblings discordant for age at fa…
Child care subsidies and child care choices: The moderating role of household structure
Time Investments in Children across Family Structures
This article compares time invested in children across family structures as a means to understand differences in children's development. Using data from the 1997 Panel Study of Income Dynamics' Child Development Supplement, we measure time investments from multiple caregivers and distinguish time children spend with a caregiver alone versus shared with another caregiver. We examine six family structures-married biological parents, cohabiting biol…
Diverging Destinies: Maternal Education and the Developmental Gradient in Time With Children
Using data from the 2003–2007 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS), we compare mothers’ (N = 6,640) time spent in four parenting activities across maternal education and child age subgroups. We test the hypothesis that highly educated mothers not only spend more time in active child care than less-educated mothers but also alter the composition of that time to suit children’s developmental needs more than less-educated mothers. Results support this h…
Time Investments in Children across Family Structures
This article compares time invested in children across family structures as a means to understand differences in children's development. Using data from the 1997 Panel Study of Income Dynamics' Child Development Supplement, we measure time investments from multiple caregivers and distinguish time children spend with a caregiver alone versus shared with another caregiver. We examine six family structures-married biological parents, cohabiting biol…
Longitudinal Patterns of Nonresident Fathers' Involvement: The Role of Resources and Relations
Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examined patterns of nonresident father involvement 1 and 3 years after a nonmarital birth (N = 893). Cluster analyses were used to determine patterns of involvement across different father behaviors. About half of fathers displayed low involvement when children were 1 and 3 years old, one fourth of fathers maintained high involvement, and equal remaining proportions increased or …
Child care quality in different state policy contexts
Using data from the Child Care Supplement to the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we test associations between the quality of child care and state child care policies. These data, which include observations of child care and interviews with care providers and mothers for 777 children across 14 states, allow for comparisons across a broader range of policy regimes and care settings than earlier research on this topic. Using multilevel l…
The impact of child care subsidy use on child care quality
The joint influence of mother and father parenting on child cognitive outcomes at age 5
Associations between family structure changes and children’s behavior problems: The moderating effects of timing and marital birth
Most children in the U.S. today will experience one or more changes in family structure. The present study explores the implications of this trend for child development by investigating the conditions under which family structure changes matter most to child well-being. Using data from the Maternal and Child Supplement of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,492), it estimates how changes in family structure experienced during 4 diffe…
Low-Income Mothers' Private Safety Nets and Children's Socioemotional Well-Being
Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (N = 1,162) and the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (N = 1,308), we estimate associations between material and instrumental support available to low-income mothers and young children's socioemotional well-being. In multivariate OLS models, we find mothers' available support is negatively associated with children's behavior problems and positively associ…
Is One Good Parent Good Enough? Patterns of Mother and Father Parenting and Child Cognitive Outcomes at 24 and 36 Months
Objective. This study examined parenting patterns in a sample of low-income couples and the impact of those patterns on young children's cognitive outcomes. Design. Interactions between 237 mothers, fathers, and their 2-year-old children were examined among coresident mothers and fathers or father figures who participated in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project's Father and Child Interaction During Toddlerhood Study (FACITS). Scor…
Father Absence and Adolescent Depression and Delinquency: A Comparison of Siblings Approach
Although associations between having a nonresident father and increased internalizing and externalizing behaviors in adolescence have been well documented, research has yet to establish the plausible causality of these links or identify underlying mechanisms. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 - Young Adult survey, this study addresses these questions by comparing the depressive symptoms and delinquent behavior of sibl…
Low-income mothers' social support and children's injuries
Nonresident fatherhood and adolescent sexual behavior: A comparison of siblings approach
Although voluminous research has linked nonresident fatherhood to riskier sexual behavior in adolescence, including earlier sexual debut, neither the causality of that link nor the mechanism accounting for it has been well-established. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979-the Young Adult Survey (CNLSY-YA), the present study addresses both questions by comparing the sexual development of siblings discordant for age at fa…
Is One Good Parent Good Enough? Patterns of Mother and Father Parenting and Child Cognitive Outcomes at 24 and 36 Months
Differences in Parents' Attitudes Toward Spanking Across Socioeconomic Status and Region, 1986-2016
Early Childhood Maltreatment and Pubertal Development: Replication in a Population‐Based Sample
Early experiences are critically important for female reproductive development. Although a number of early childhood hardships predict earlier physical development in girls, research on specific populations suggests a distinct effect of childhood sexual abuse compared to other adversities. This study leverages the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 6,273 girls) to test the generalizability of these findings, examining associati…
Longitudinal associations among interest, persistence, supportive parenting, and achievement in early childhood
School readiness among children of Hispanic immigrants and their peers: The role of parental cognitive stimulation and early care and education
Child care subsidies and child care choices: The moderating role of household structure
Associations between daily food insecurity and parent and child well-being
Food insecurity poses a serious threat to children's development, but the mechanisms through which food insecurity undermines child development are far less clear. Specifically, food insecurity may influence children through its effect on parents' psychological well-being and parent-child interactions as a result, but past research on the role of parents is correlational and undermined by omitted variable bias. Using a partially rural, low-income…
The link between child temperament and low‐income mothers’ and fathers’ parenting
Numerous studies have shown that children's temperamental characteristics impact the quality and quantity of parent–child interactions. However, these studies have largely focused on middle‐class samples, have not compared multiple domains of parenting across mothers and fathers, and have not considered the possibility of nonlinear associations between temperament and parenting. The present study addresses these gaps by examining the potentially …
Coresidential Father Transitions and Biological Parents' Coparenting Quality in Early and Middle Childhood
This study examined how the entrances and exits of biological and social fathers into and out of children's households were associated with biological parents' coparenting quality. Piecewise growth curve models tested for variation in these associations between child ages 1 and 3, 3 and 5, and 5 and 9. Data came from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study ( n = 2,394). Results indicated that in all three age intervals, a biological father…
The Sex Right: A Legal History of the Marital Rape Exemption
How did the American legal elite come to reject the husband's privilege to rape his wife. What is the significance of that rejection. This essay traces theories justifying the marital rape exemption from the 17th century, focusing on the period following World War II. The history illustrates how the postwar legal elite's limited progressivism created inconsistent arguments that left the exemption open for attack, an attack that came from within t…
The Sex Right: A Legal History of the Marital Rape Exemption
How did the American legal elite come to reject the husband's privilege to rape his wife. What is the significance of that rejection. This essay traces theories justifying the marital rape exemption from the 17th century, focusing on the period following World War II. The history illustrates how the postwar legal elite's limited progressivism created inconsistent arguments that left the exemption open for attack, an attack that came from within t…
Is One Good Parent Good Enough? Patterns of Mother and Father Parenting and Child Cognitive Outcomes at 24 and 36 Months
Objective. This study examined parenting patterns in a sample of low-income couples and the impact of those patterns on young children's cognitive outcomes. Design. Interactions between 237 mothers, fathers, and their 2-year-old children were examined among coresident mothers and fathers or father figures who participated in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project's Father and Child Interaction During Toddlerhood Study (FACITS). Scor…
Is One Good Parent Good Enough? Patterns of Mother and Father Parenting and Child Cognitive Outcomes at 24 and 36 Months
The joint influence of mother and father parenting on child cognitive outcomes at age 5
Child care quality in different state policy contexts
Using data from the Child Care Supplement to the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we test associations between the quality of child care and state child care policies. These data, which include observations of child care and interviews with care providers and mothers for 777 children across 14 states, allow for comparisons across a broader range of policy regimes and care settings than earlier research on this topic. Using multilevel l…
Longitudinal Patterns of Nonresident Fathers' Involvement: The Role of Resources and Relations
Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examined patterns of nonresident father involvement 1 and 3 years after a nonmarital birth (N = 893). Cluster analyses were used to determine patterns of involvement across different father behaviors. About half of fathers displayed low involvement when children were 1 and 3 years old, one fourth of fathers maintained high involvement, and equal remaining proportions increased or …
Low-income mothers' social support and children's injuries
Low-Income Mothers' Private Safety Nets and Children's Socioemotional Well-Being
Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (N = 1,162) and the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (N = 1,308), we estimate associations between material and instrumental support available to low-income mothers and young children's socioemotional well-being. In multivariate OLS models, we find mothers' available support is negatively associated with children's behavior problems and positively associ…
The impact of child care subsidy use on child care quality
Diverging Destinies: Maternal Education and the Developmental Gradient in Time With Children
Using data from the 2003–2007 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS), we compare mothers’ (N = 6,640) time spent in four parenting activities across maternal education and child age subgroups. We test the hypothesis that highly educated mothers not only spend more time in active child care than less-educated mothers but also alter the composition of that time to suit children’s developmental needs more than less-educated mothers. Results support this h…
Longitudinal associations among interest, persistence, supportive parenting, and achievement in early childhood
Associations between family structure changes and children’s behavior problems: The moderating effects of timing and marital birth
Most children in the U.S. today will experience one or more changes in family structure. The present study explores the implications of this trend for child development by investigating the conditions under which family structure changes matter most to child well-being. Using data from the Maternal and Child Supplement of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,492), it estimates how changes in family structure experienced during 4 diffe…
Child care subsidies and child care choices: The moderating role of household structure
Time Investments in Children across Family Structures
This article compares time invested in children across family structures as a means to understand differences in children's development. Using data from the 1997 Panel Study of Income Dynamics' Child Development Supplement, we measure time investments from multiple caregivers and distinguish time children spend with a caregiver alone versus shared with another caregiver. We examine six family structures-married biological parents, cohabiting biol…
Early Childhood Maltreatment and Pubertal Development: Replication in a Population‐Based Sample
Early experiences are critically important for female reproductive development. Although a number of early childhood hardships predict earlier physical development in girls, research on specific populations suggests a distinct effect of childhood sexual abuse compared to other adversities. This study leverages the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 6,273 girls) to test the generalizability of these findings, examining associati…
Nonresident fatherhood and adolescent sexual behavior: A comparison of siblings approach
Although voluminous research has linked nonresident fatherhood to riskier sexual behavior in adolescence, including earlier sexual debut, neither the causality of that link nor the mechanism accounting for it has been well-established. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979-the Young Adult Survey (CNLSY-YA), the present study addresses both questions by comparing the sexual development of siblings discordant for age at fa…
Father Absence and Adolescent Depression and Delinquency: A Comparison of Siblings Approach
Although associations between having a nonresident father and increased internalizing and externalizing behaviors in adolescence have been well documented, research has yet to establish the plausible causality of these links or identify underlying mechanisms. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 - Young Adult survey, this study addresses these questions by comparing the depressive symptoms and delinquent behavior of sibl…
Coresidential Father Transitions and Biological Parents' Coparenting Quality in Early and Middle Childhood
This study examined how the entrances and exits of biological and social fathers into and out of children's households were associated with biological parents' coparenting quality. Piecewise growth curve models tested for variation in these associations between child ages 1 and 3, 3 and 5, and 5 and 9. Data came from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study ( n = 2,394). Results indicated that in all three age intervals, a biological father…
A multi-semester classroom demonstration yields evidence in support of the facial feedback effect
The facial feedback effect refers to the influence of unobtrusive manipulations of facial behavior on emotional outcomes. That manipulations inducing or inhibiting smiling can shape positive affect and evaluations is a staple of undergraduate psychology curricula and supports theories of embodied emotion. Thus, the results of a Registered Replication Report indicating minimal evidence to support the facial feedback effect were widely viewed as ca…
School readiness among children of Hispanic immigrants and their peers: The role of parental cognitive stimulation and early care and education
The link between child temperament and low‐income mothers’ and fathers’ parenting
Numerous studies have shown that children's temperamental characteristics impact the quality and quantity of parent–child interactions. However, these studies have largely focused on middle‐class samples, have not compared multiple domains of parenting across mothers and fathers, and have not considered the possibility of nonlinear associations between temperament and parenting. The present study addresses these gaps by examining the potentially …
Parenting Practices and Socioeconomic Gaps in Childhood Outcomes
In this article, developmental psychologists Ariel Kalil and Rebecca Ryan examine the relation between parenting practices and socioeconomic gaps in child outcomes. They document substantial differences between richer and poorer families, including growing gaps in parental engagement and time use. These gaps matter: the fact that children born to lower-income, less-educated parents are less likely to spend quality time with their parents only com…
The Effect of Birth weight on Child Development Prior to School Entry
The present study examines variation in the effect of birth weight on children’s early cognitive and socioemotional outcomes by family socioeconomic status (SES). It is hypothesized that not only will lower birth weight children display worse cognitive and socioemotional outcomes prior to school entry, as prior research has found, but that effects will be stronger for lower-SES children. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birt…
Young Children’s Mathematical Learning From Intelligent Characters
Children’s math learning (N = 217; Mage = 4.87 years; 63% European American, 96% college-educated families) from an intelligent character game was examined via social meaningfulness (parasocial relationships [PSRs]) and social contingency (parasocial interactions, e.g., math talk). In three studies (data collected in the DC area: 12/2015–10/2017), children’s parasocial relationships and math talk with the intelligent character predicted quicker, …
Psychology (32 works) · Developmental psychology (25 works) · Demography (13 works) · Medicine (13 works) · Early Childhood Education and Development (12 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Family Dynamics and Relationships (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works)