Heather M. Helms

**Education; Ph.D. in Human Development & Family Studies, Penn State University, May 2000--M.S. in Family & Community Development, MFT specialization, University of Maryland, 1992--B.A. in Family Studies, Summa Cum Laude, Messiah College, 1987

There are 38 included publications by Heather M. Helms :

TitleDateViewsBrief Description
21st Century Marriage in America (Editorial Comment) 2010 1351 Editorial featured in Journal of Marriage and Family Volume 72, Issue 5.
After-hours Remote Work and Family Life: The Impact of Work-Extending Technology 2020 1182 The development of information communication technology (ICT) has dramatically influenced the way people communicate, socialize, and work. In the past fifteen years, the use of smartphones has skyrocketed among working adults. In the United States, 8...
Co-Provider Marriages [book chapter] 2016 146 Co-provider marriages in which husbands and wives jointly provide shelter, food, and clothing for their families have existed for centuries. The extent to which both spouses' breadwinning efforts have been recognized, however, has varied over time. C...
Conditions underlying parents’ knowledge of children's daily lives in middle childhood: Between and within family comparisons 1999 706 This study examined the correlates of mothers' and fathers' knowledge about the daily experiences of their firstborn (M = 10.9 years) and secondborn (M = 8.3 years) children in 198 nondivorced, predominantly dual-earner families. Results revealed bet...
Do women’s provider-role attitudes moderate the links between work and family? 2000 401 The authors examined the links between mothers' work qualities and their individual well-being and marital quality, as well as adolescent daughters' and sons' gender-role attitudes, as a function of mothers' provider-role attitudes, in 134 dual-earne...
Early Childcare Supports for Low-Wage Earning Families in the United States 2020 731 In the United States, a large portion of the job market is made up of minimum- or low-wage positions. For parents earning low incomes, full-time (or more) hours and continuous employment are imperative for financial stability necessitating the need f...
Economic Pressure, Cultural Adaptation Stress, and Marital Quality Among Mexican-Origin Couples 2014 3494 Based on data from a sample of 120 first-generation Mexican immigrant couples collected at the start of the Great Recession in the United States, this study tested an actor–partner interdependence mediation model (APIMeM) in which spouses’ perception...
Examining the linkages between marital quality and anxiety: A Meta-Analytic Review 2022 131 This study examines the associations between marital quality and anxiety using meta-analytic techniques. A total of k = 151 effects published between the years 2000 and 2019 were analyzed. It was hypothesized that better overall marital quality would...
Examining Patterns of Mexican Immigrant Spouses’ Contextual Pressures and Links with Marital Satisfaction and Negativity 2021 150 Previous research examined links from economic and cultural adaptation pressures to marital satisfaction and marital behavior. Results generally suggested a negative association between these sources of pressure and marital outcomes. However, the ext...
Examining predictors of Mexican American adolescents’ coping typologies: Maternal and paternal behaviors and adolescent gender 2015 306 This study used latent profile analysis to develop coping typologies of 340, 14- to16-year-old Mexican American adolescents (M = 14.46, SD = 0.69). Three typologies were identified: (a) opposition coping (adolescents who tended to use anger and venti...
Gender-typed attributes and marital satisfaction among Mexican immigrant couples: A latent profile approach 2015 1400 Informed by socioecological and dyadic approaches to understanding marriage, the current study examined the patterning of gender-typed attributes among 120 Mexican immigrant opposite sex couples and the subsequent links with spouses’ reports of marit...
Intensive Mothering Beliefs Among Full-Time Employed Mothers of Infants 2014 2560 This study examined the degree to which 205 full-time employed mothers of infants endorsed intensive mothering beliefs (IMB), the stability of IMB, and contextual correlates of IMB. Results suggested that full-time employed mothers in this study did ...
Marital Processes Linking Gender Role Attitudes and Marital Satisfaction Among Mexican-Origin Couples: Application of an Actor-Partner Interdependence Mediation Model 2019 1357 Informed by dyadic approaches and culturally informed, ecological perspectives of marriage, we applied an actor–partner interdependence mediation model (APIMeM) in a sample of 120 Mexican-origin couples to examine (a) the associations linking Mexican...
Marital Quality and Personal Well-Being: A Meta-Analysis 2007 8882 This study examines the association between marital quality and personal well-being using meta-analytic techniques. Effects from 93 studies were analyzed. The average weighted effect size r was .37 for cross-sectional and .25 for longitudinal effects...
Marital Quality and Spouses' Marriage Work With Close Friends and Each Other 2003 2976 Through in-home interviews with 142 married couples, we explored how husbands' and wives' marriage work with close friends and one another was linked to their perceptions of marital quality. Results showed that husbands engaged in more marriage work ...
Marital Quality Ten Years After the Transition to Parenthood: Implications of the Timing of Parenthood and the Division of Housework 2001 1814 Using a sample of 180 dual-earner, nondivorced couples, this study explored how the timing of parenthood and the division of housework are related to husbands' and wives' marital quality during the childrearing years. Hypothesized to be “at risk” for...
Marital Relationships in the Twenty-First Century 2013 3310 Nearly 50 years ago, when the first edition of the Handbook of Marriage and Family was published, family scholars underscored the central importance of marriage in individuals’ lives and accordingly advocated for a better understanding of those facto...
Mexican-Origin Couples in the Early Years of Parenthood: Marital Well-Being in Ecological Context 2011 2337 In this article, we draw from Huston's (2000) 3-level model of marriage to provide an informed and integrative template for organizing current knowledge and guiding future inquiry into the study of marital well-being among a rapidly growing segment o...
Mexican-origin husbands’ work contexts and spouses’ personal well-being and marital quality 2018 481 Relative to other men, Latino immigrant men are disproportionately likely to experience challenging working conditions, including too many or too few hours, discrimination, and job (in)security. Previous research suggests that work contexts (particul...
Mexican Immigrant Family Life in a Pre-Emerging Southern Gateway Community 2015 425 This report provides a rich picture of the lives of Mexican-American couples as they navigate parenting and family life in pre-emerging immigrant communities. Specifically, we share insights gleaned from the UNIDOS study of 120 couples with young chi...
Mexican immigrant wives’ acculturative stress and spouses’ marital quality: The role of wives’ marriage work with husbands and close friends 2014 513 With a sample of 120 Mexican-origin couples, we examined the extent to which wives’ marriage work (i.e., discussions about marital concerns) with husband and marriage work with friend moderated associations between wives’ acculturative stress and spo...
Migrant Work and its Impact on Parents, Children, and Partners 2020 471 The current globalized economy encompasses a widespread movement of markets, technologies, capital, and international labor migration. Economic globalization and labor flows have increased the prevalence of migrant worker families, or families that ...
Moderators of the Link between Marital Hostility and Change in Spouses’ Depressive Symptoms 2009 2512 This study examined the moderating roles of marital warmth and recent life events in the association between observed marital hostility and changes in spouses’ depressive symptoms over 3 years. Using the actor-partner interdependence model (APIM), st...
Mothers' and Fathers' Perceptions of Change and Continuity in Their Relationships With Young Adult Sons and Daughters 2008 3770 Guided by contemporary feminist revisions of individual theories on adolescent development, interviews with 142 parent dyads were conducted to better understand the variation in mothers' and fathers' perceptions of changes and continuities in their r...
Nonstandard Work Schedules and Childcare Arrangements 2020 534 Nonstandard (NS) work schedules can be challenging for many American families especially those with children, as they must navigate relationships, housework, family time, and childcare (Presser 2004; Presser and Ward 2011). Additionally, NS schedules...
Parenting During Childhood Predicts Relationship Satisfaction in Young Adulthood: A Prospective Longitudinal Perspective 2012 8396 Using three waves of data drawn from the National Survey of Families and Households (n = 438 young adult children) we examined the process by which parental warmth and harsh parenting during childhood influences children's romantic relationship satis...
Provider Role Attitudes, Marital Satisfaction, Role Overload, and Housework: A Dyadic Approach 2010 2858 Treating the marital dyad as the unit of analysis, this study examined the within-couple patterning of 272 dual-earner spouses’ provider role attitudes and their longitudinal associations with marital satisfaction, role overload, and the division of ...
Relational Support from Friends and Wives’ Family Relationships: The Role of Husbands’ Interference 2009 1083 Informed by Marks's three corners model, this study explored the moderating role of husbands' relational interference in the link between relational support from close friends and wives' marital and family relationship quality. Using data from 52 wiv...
Remembered Parental Rejection and Postpartum Declines in Marital Satisfaction: Moderated Dyadic Links 2013 1764 Utilizing a sample of 80 married couples, the current study employed a dyadic approach to examine links between remembered parental rejection during childhood and change in marital satisfaction across the transition to parenthood. Partner remembered ...
Sibling Influences on Gender Development in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence: A Longitudinal Study 2001 8176 The development of gender role qualities (attitudes, personality, leisure activities) from middle childhood to early adolescence was studied to determine whether siblings' gender role qualities predicted those of their sisters and brothers. Participa...
Social capitalization in personal relationships 2014 1140 Families accrue advantages through their investments in their immediate members and in their relationships with kin and a variety of personal associates. Although the term investment is quite familiar to relationship and family scholars (e.g., Goodfr...
Spouses’ Gender Role Attitudes, Wives’ Employment Status, and Mexican-Origin Husbands’ Marital Satisfaction 2015 1042 Informed by Peplau’s theory of roles, this study examined the complex interplay between spouses’ gender role attitudes and wives’ employment status as a predictor of Mexican-origin husbands’ marital satisfaction. Dissonance between spouses’ gender ro...
Spouses’ gender-typed attributes and their links with marital quality: A pattern analytic approach 2006 2888 Using data from interviews with 194 midlife couples, we: (i) identified a typology of couple groups based on spouses’ gender-typed attributes; (ii) described couple groups in terms of individual, contextual, and attitudinal characteristics; and (iii)...
Using Existing Large-Scale Data to Study Early Care and Education Among Hispanics: Families’ Utilization of Early Care and Education 2016 325 As part of a project analyzing existing large-scale data sets with information about the ECE experiences of Hispanic populations, this brief describes survey data elements relevant to studying the patterns and characteristics of Hispanic families’ EC...
Using Existing Large-Scale Data to Study Early Care and Education Among Hispanics: How Hispanic Parents and Children Experience ECE Settings 2016 470 As part of a larger effort to build research capacity related to early care and education (ECE) issues for low-income Hispanic families, this brief describes data elements specific to the experiences children and families have with ECE providers and ...
Using Existing Large-Scale Data to Study Early Care and Education Among Hispanics: Search and Decision-Making 2016 473 New research is needed to learn more about how, when, and why Latino parents access certain early childhood programs and services, and not others. As highlighted in this brief series, numerous existing large-scale data sets offer potentially valuable...
Who's the Boss? Patterns of Perceived Control in Adolescents' Friendships 2004 1386 This study examined the nature and correlates of different patterns of perceived control in adolescents' relationships with their best friends. Participants included firstborn adolescents (M = 14.94 years), their younger siblings (M = 12.44 years) an...
Wives’ Domain-Specific “Marriage Work” with Friends and Spouses: Links to Marital Quality 2004 1367 This study examined the friendship experiences of 52 wives and mothers, with particular attention given to wives’ marriage work (discussions about concerns and problems in the marriage) in 10 domains with friends and spouses. A series of within-subje...