Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth: A Unique Research Opportunity

The data set known as Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) offers unusual opportunities for research on questions not easily pursued by developmental psychologists. This article provides a history of Children of the NLSY, describes the data set with special focus on the child outcome measures and a subset of maternal life history measures, highlights several of the research and policy relevant issues that may be addressed, and shows how the intersection of children's and mothers' lives may be studied in less static, more life-course oriented ways. Exemplars are given in the topics of maternal employment and child care, adolescent pregnancy and child rearing, divorce, poverty, and multigenerational parenting. Implications of research using children of the NLSY for the field of developmental psychology and interdisciplinary collaboration are discussed.