The goal of our research program is to understand how children and adolescents (below age 18) contribute to their families, and how those experiences shape their development. Specifically, we examine (1) how often youth are helping their families with household tasks, providing emotional support, or caregiving for children or adults with chronic illness (2) longitudinal associations between children’s family contributions and mental health (e.g., stress) and education (e.g., grades and graduation rates), while also exploring positive impacts (e.g., gained sense of purpose, close reciprocal relationships). We also collect information about youths’ specific needs to informs the design of interventions that we then evaluate in partnership with local schools. The goal is for all school systems in the US to eventually be able to track disparities and support students who have high levels of family responsibilities at home, if they need it.
To do this work, we partner with departments of education and school districts across the country with the goal of collecting data that is likely to translate into culturally relevant, effective policies to support children and families. Most schools do not yet collect information about children’s caregiving responsibilities or have programs to support them. I partner with departments of education, districts, and schools to collect data about youths’ family responsibilities wherever we can for the first time.
So far, we have partnered with schools in Florida, Rhode Island, Colorado, and Massachusetts to identify and begin to support caregiving students. Here are our ongoing projects and partnership stories so far:
Florida was the first state to begin to identify caregiving students in middle and high schools in 2019, in work led also by Elizabeth Olson and Connie Siskowski. We found that 18% of children were caregivers, and they faced risk for emotional, social, and academic challenges. We published two peer-reviewed papers in top journals from this data in the Social Policy Reports and the Journal of Family Psychology.
Since 2021, we have partnered with the Rhode Island Department of Education, and published evidence that 29% of children are caregiving for siblings, parents, and grandparents in AERA Open. In 2022, Rhode Island became the first state to implement policies to support caregiving youth. This work is funded by a National Institutes of Health K12 grant.
Colorado began counting caregiving youth in the Colorado Healthy Kids Survey in 2024. The data was recently published here.
We are partnering now with Public Schools in Massachusetts to count caregiving children and identify disparities, with the aim of supporting them by evidenced-based policies. That project is supported by a grant from the Society for Research in Child Development.