By Patricia Sullivan

The Power of One
Sheena Bernard, 23
Single mother of Alyus
Part-time grocery-store cashier
$9.50/hour with benefits
Rents subsidized apartment in Springfield

Eight-month-old Alyus Bernard pulls himself up on a glass-topped table and swipes for a dangling lamp cord. His mother, Sheena Bernard, 23, gently swoops him up in her arms and offers him a distracting toy. Off today from her work at a Springfield grocery store, Sheena will spend the afternoon keeping ever-curious Alyus out of trouble.

Keeping Alyus safely “on the right path, focused, and in school” is his mother’s goal for the next 17 or so years. Her psychological health as a single, low-income, minority parent will be at the heart of a UMass Amherst study for at least the next five years. Sheena and Alyus are part of the Work and Family Transitions Project (WFTP), a longitudinal study funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health and launched in 1996. Maureen Perry-Jenkins, PhD, associate professor of psychology in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, is the project’s principal investigator. The study zeroes in on crunch time for working-class families: the initial transition to parenthood and the second transition of returning to work soon after the baby’s birth.

“We’re focusing on the relatively short window of time when demands on families are at their peak,” says Perry-Jenkins ’81. As she studies difficulties families face coping with pivotal issues including childcare, employee benefits, and division of household chores, she documents how workplace and government policies help or hurt parents and children. “As we look at family policies, it’s hard not to get involved in the activist side,” she says. “For instance the U.S. is one of only five countries that don’t require paid leave to new parents. We’re with Lesotho and Papua New Guinea. For me this is a real social-justice issue.”

Perry-Jenkins’ focus on working-class families has personal roots. “My siblings and I were the first generation in my family to attend college,” she says. “The pressures on working-class families are tremendous, and I feel for those families who are doing everything they’re supposed to do and still not making it.”

Perry-Jenkins launched WFTP with 153 two-parent families. Researchers interviewed couples five times in their first year of parenthood and again when their oldest child turned six. Two-hundred-forty more families, including single-parent families like Sheena Bernard’s, were added last year. This new phase of the study will examine how the single-parent structure as well as racial and ethnic factors shape families’ experiences.

Sheena Bernard plans to look for full-time work in medical coding and billing this summer. Right now, her mother cares for the baby when she works. How will her transition from a part-time to full-time job affect Sheena and Alyus? Will she be able to keep the federal subsidy that makes her rent in a safe neighborhood affordable? Will she win her court fight for child support? Will she find a job with good benefits? What role will the tight relationship she and Alyus share with Sheena’s seven aunts play in their lives? Maureen Perry-Jenkins, her research assistants, and grad students will be watching and learning.