Parents' Work, Depressive Symptoms, Children, and Family Economic Mobility: What Can Ethnography Tell Us?

Low-income work, job training, depressive symptoms or depression, and children's school performance. These topics have occupied the attention of scholars and policy makers in recent years, particularly as they pertain to single mothers in the context of welfare reform. Broadening this landscape, findings from longitudinal, multi-city ethnographic research reveal that low-income fathers also experience depression or depressive symptoms that hinder family economic mobility. Further, repeated scores from a community-based depressive symptoms measure embedded in the ethnographic inquiry show that the timing of parents' training and employment pathways, economic conditions, and policies in firms and children's schools intersect with parents' depressive symptoms or depression to affect mobility. Program and policy supports seem to mediate these intersecting mobility challenges.