Context,relationship transitions and conflict: explaining outcomes for Australian youth from non-intact families

As in many other countries, non-traditional family types are increasing in prevalence in Australia. In 2008, over one quarter of Australian families reported a non-intact family structure; comprising over 0.8 million lone-parent families and 0.4 million stepfamilies. Prior studies consistently find poorer child outcomes associated with non-intact family type. Controlling for family characteristics decreases the negative effect; however, in most cases small but unexplained differences remain apparent. The current study examines differences in the outcomes of young adults from four family types—intact, stepfather, stepmother and never-repartnered lone-parent families—on four measures: educational attainment; being suspended from school; regular smoking; and trouble with police. The research uses information from 2,430 matched parent-youth pairs collected in a unique Australian study, the Youth in Focus Survey. This study improves our understanding of the complex interaction between family structure and adolescent well-being by exploiting the full childhood family-relationship history information available in the Survey. Although between-group variations are described, differences are predominantly due to contextual factors associated with disadvantage, more prevalent in families who separate and repartner, rather than family structure in itself. For lone-parent and stepfather families, the number of family transitions since the youth’s birth is also relevant. Parent-youth conflict explained little of the negative association between family structure and youth outcomes above the effect of contextual factors, but operated independently of family structure to affect youth outcomes. Possible reasons for unexplained differences between intact and stepmother families on some measures are discussed.     

Childhood family structure and schooling outcomes: evidence for Germany

We analyze the impact on schooling outcomes of growing up in a non-intact family in Germany. We find that this experience is associated with worse outcomes according to estimates from models that do not control for possible correlations between common unobserved determinants of family structure and educational performance. Evidence of adverse effects emerges also when endogeneity is accounted for. In such cases, however, the point estimates are typically smaller, and their confidence intervals are large enough to include zero, particularly for individuals who grew up in Western Germany.     

The Promise and Perils of Population Research on Same-Sex Families

As a follow-up to our 2016 study, this article presents new findings examining the relationship between same-sex family structure and child health using the 2008–2015 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). After discussing NIHS data problems, we examine the relationship between family structure and a broad range of child well-being outcomes, including school days lost, behavior, parent-rated health, emotional difficulties, and activity limitations. We find both similarities (school days lost, behavior, parent-rated health) and differences (emotional difficulties and activity limitations) across our two studies using different survey years, but our overall conclusions are robust. We further discuss the implications of our findings for future research on this topic, including how to account for biological relatedness in a study on child health in same-sex families.     

Living with parents and educational outcomes in developing countries: empirical evidence from PISA Thailand

Family is a fundamental determinant of children’s welfare outcomes, not only in terms of good or bad behaviour, but also in terms of child development, comprising emotional, social, and cognitive skills. Family structure is even more important in a developing country in which educational achievement tends to lag. Using a national sampling from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) conducted in 2009 and 2012 in Thailand as a case study for a developing country, this paper quantifies impacts the effects of family structure on cognitive skills and learning performance among Thai students. The findings reveal that family structure, especially for those living with both father and mother, can positively affect the academic achievement of Thai students compared to those who do not live with both parents. Thus, strengthening family structures should be another necessary policy to could promote positive educational outcomes in this developing country.     

One or two parents? Half or step siblings? The effect of family structure on young children's achievement

Do children who live with both biological parents fare better than children in other types of family structures? Does the presence of step or half-siblings affect child well-being? This study examines the effect of family structure on young children's achievement addressing two sources of potential bias: (1) misclassification of blended families and (2) the omission of within-family and individual time-invariant unobserved characteristics. The results show that family structure, when defined using traditional classifications, has little effect on young children's achievement test scores. When the definition of family type is expanded, living in a blended family and living in some types of single mother families, appears to have a small, unfavorable relationship with children's achievement.     

The effects of child health on marital status and family structure

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence on the effect of child health on marital stability and family structure in an economic framework. We use the 1988 National Health Interview Survey's Child Health Supplement, with a sample of about 9,000 families, to test whether having an unhealthy child decreases the mother's chance of being married and whether it increases her chance of living in an extended family. Using two different measures of child health, we find that having an unhealthy child decreases the mother's likelihood of being married. Our results imply that children in poor health are more likely to face obstacles beyond their illness because they also are more likely to suffer the consequences of poverty and the poor schooling outcomes that result from being raised in a female-headed household. The only mitigating factor is that unhealthy white children are more likely than their healthy counterparts to be living in an extended family.     

Parental Cohabitation Experiences and Adolescent Behavioral Outcomes

Children are increasingly spending time in cohabiting parent families. Most studies that examine the implications of parental cohabitation focus on parental living arrangements at a single point in time. Using data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), we assess whether and how parental cohabitation during childhood influences adolescent girls’ well-being. This work moves beyond prior studies by specifically considering the effects of the exposure to, transitions, and age at which children lived in cohabiting parent families. The results indicate living in cohabiting parent families is consequential for earlier sexual initiation, likelihood of having a teen birth, and high school graduation. Prior work suggests that the explanation for the negative effect of parental cohabitation is family instability. Yet, our empirical work shows that family instability does not explain the relationship between cohabitation and negative child outcomes. We conclude that the best way to understand the implications of parental cohabitation is to adopt a dynamic family experience model.

Child and Family Outcomes in New York and Tel AVIV: Using Social Indicators in a City Level Comparative Analysis

This article presents a comparative study in which social indicators were employed as a means to examine differences in living conditions and family and children outcomes on a local level. The study obtained household-level data on the well-being of children and families in two cities: New York (NYC) and Tel Aviv (TLV). Data were collected using computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) technology and random digit dialing (RDD). Telephone interviews were conducted with the randomly selected adults in English, Spanish and Chinese in NYC and in Hebrew in TLV. The study reported here documented differences in family and child well-being between the two cities. It further documented that family size and caregiver level of education play a similar role in both cities and their importance in regard to child and family outcomes. The significant differences found in adults’ and especially children’s outcomes were analyzed by the caregiver’s level of education and further support the need for policies that alleviate the burden of less educated caregivers and aim to improve the well-being of them and their families. The study demonstrates the relevance of social indicators at the local level, not only for measuring outcomes among specific populations, but also in regard to their possible implications for social policies, a most timely task in an era of social services devolution.     

Educational attainment of children from single-parent families: Differences by exposure,gender, and race

This article examines the effect of living in a single-parent family on educational attainment by gender and race. According to household production theory, the reduction in parental resources for human capital investment in children living in a single-parent family should lower their educational attainment. Using matched mother-daughter and mother-son samples from the National Longitudinal Surveys, we constructed precise measures of the age and length of time a child lived in a single-parent family. Empirical findings show that the negative effect of living in a single-parent family (1) increases with the number of years spent in this type of family, (2) is greatest during the preschool years, and (3) is larger for boys than girls.     

The Income-Fertility Relationship: Effect of the Net Price of a Child

This article examines the relationship between income and completed family size in empirical fertility models. The relationship, which is hypothesized to be positive, often is negative in empirical studies. This perverse result is thought to occur because of the many correlations between income and other factors that affect fertility. In this research, these other factors--such as the net price of a child, the opportunity cost of the wife's time, and supply factors--are statistically controlled, and the income effect is positive and significant. When the net price of a child is not controlled, however, the income effect becomes negative and significant.     

Disparities in Children’s Family Experiences by Mother’s Socioeconomic Status: The Case of Finland

A well-known argument claims that socioeconomic differentials in children’s family structures have become increasingly important in shaping child outcomes and the resources available to children in developed societies. One assumption is that differentials are comparatively small in Nordic welfare states. Our study examines how children’s experiences of family structures and family dynamics vary by their mother’s educational attainment in Finland. Based on register data on the childbearing and union histories of women in Finland born from 1969 onwards, we provide life-table estimates of children’s (N?=?64,162) experiences of family dissolution, family formation, and family structure from ages 0–15 years, stratified by mother’s education level at the child’s birth. We find huge socioeconomic disparities in children’s experiences of family structures and transitions. Compared to children of highly educated mothers, children of mothers with low levels of education are almost twice as likely to be born in cohabitation and four times as likely to be born to a lone mother. They are also much more likely to experience further changes in family structure—particularly parental separation. On average, children of low-educated mothers spend just half of their childhood years living with both their parents, whereas those of high-educated mothers spend four-fifths of their childhood with both parents. The sociodemographic inequalities among children in Nordic welfare states clearly deserve more scholarly attention.     

The Association Between Adolescent Life Satisfaction, Family Structure, Family Affluence and Gender Differences in Parent–Child Communication

The study sought to examine young people’s life satisfaction in the context of the family environment, using data from the 2006 HBSC: WHO-collaborative Study in Scotland (N = 5,126). Multilevel linear regression analyses were carried out for 11-, 13- and 15-year old boys and girls, with outcome measure ridit-transformed life satisfaction. The study found there to be a relationship between family structure and life satisfaction for boys and girls aged 13 and 15 years. Family affluence mediated this relationship, however the extent of this mediation depended both on age and gender. For both boys and girls at all ages, life satisfaction was more strongly associated with parent–child communication than with family structure or family affluence. After adjustment for risk/health behaviours and attitudes towards peers and school, family structure remained significant for boys aged 13 years only. Whereas difficult parent–child communication acted as a risk factor of low life satisfaction for boys and girls, easy communication acted as protective factor among girls only.     

Family Structure and Self-Rated Health in Adolescence and Young Adulthood

While the relationship between family structure and child well-being is well-established, little is known about the specific impact of family structure on health in adolescence and young adulthood. Using data on 12,737 respondents from Waves I and III of Add Health, we examine the association between family structure (two biological/adoptive, stepfather, and single mother families at Wave I) and self-rated health in adolescence (Wave I) and young adulthood (Wave III). We build on previous literature by investigating whether the relationship between family structure and self-rated health is mediated by demographic background, socioeconomic status, parent–child relationships, external social support, and health characteristics and behaviors, and whether the influence of these factors endures into adulthood. Overall, we find that self-rated health is reduced for respondents who lived in stepfather or single mother families during adolescence, although this effect is attenuated in young adulthood. Family structure effects at both waves are explained by socioeconomic status, social support and competence, and health characteristics and behaviors. We find little evidence that demographic background or mother–child relationships mediate the relationship between family structure and self-rated health. By young adulthood, effects of most adolescent predictors are attenuated, but health assessments are largely influenced by changes in health characteristics and behaviors, and in family type.

Familial Influences on Poverty Among Young Children in Black Immigrant,U.S.-born Black,and Nonblack Immigrant Families

This study examines how familial contexts affect poverty disparities between the children of immigrant and U.S.-born blacks, and among black and nonblack children of immigrants. Despite lower gross child poverty rates in immigrant than in U.S.-born black families, accounting for differences in family structure reveals that child poverty risks among blacks are highest in single-parent black immigrant families. In addition, within two-parent immigrant families, child poverty declines associated with increasing assimilation are greater than the respective declines in single-parent families. The heads of black immigrant households have more schooling than those of native-black households. However, increased schooling has a weaker negative association with child poverty among the former than among the latter. In terms of racial disparities among the children of immigrants, poverty rates are higher among black than nonblack children. This black disadvantage is, however, driven by the outcomes of first-generation children of African and Hispanic-black immigrants. The results also show that although children in refugee families face elevated poverty risks, these risks are higher among black than among nonblack children of refugees. In addition, the poverty-reducing impact associated with having an English-proficient household head is about three times lower among black children of immigrants than among non-Hispanic white children of immigrants.     

Parents’ Religious Involvement,Family Socialization and Development of Their Children in a Chinese Sample of Hong Kong

The present study investigates the effects of parents’ religious involvement on their psychological health, family functioning and development of their children from a Chinese sample of parent–child pairs in Hong Kong. Results support the beneficial effects of religious involvement on effective parenting and favorable outcomes of their children, which have been well reported in western studies. Besides, this investigation finds that (1) parental psychological health is a mediator between their religious involvement and positive family processes; (2) family processes is an important family socialization factor with spill-over effects into the function of parenting; (3) different family socialization factors have different effects on child outcomes; (4) parental positive religious coping is a function of their intrinsic religiosity; and (5) both parental religious coping and their intrinsic religiosity have a protective effect on parental psychological difficulties, with the former having robust direct effects on positive family processes and effective parenting, and (6) both intrinsic religiosity and positive religious coping in parents show significant total indirect effects on respective child outcomes through parental psychological and family socialization factors. Implications and directions for further study are also discussed.     

Family structure,economic status,and educational attainment

This study examines the effect of family structure on high school graduation by race and gender using data from the first twenty-one waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and recently available retrospective marital histories. The nature of the data allows for a more complete specification of family structure than has been heretofore possible. The analysis tests the hypothesis that the negative effect on educational attainment often associated with living in a mother-only or stepfather family stems primarily from the reduced level of economic resources available to these households. Empirical findings indicate that living with a widowed, divorced, or separated mother has little or no effect on educational attainment once we control for economic status. However, living in a stepfather family appears to have a persistent negative effect on high school graduation rates. Received: 24 July 1995 / Accepted: 9 September 1997     

Childhood Living Arrangements and Adult Children’s Relations with their Parents

We examine the relationship of childhood living arrangements to adult child-parent relations. Compared with adult children raised in intact families, adult children whose parents divorced have less frequent contact with their parents and report a lower-quality relationship with their parents. We observe these negative effects for both custodial and noncustodial parents, although the effects are larger for noncustodial parents. Remarriage of the custodial parent tends to offset the the negative impacts of divorce on relations with the custodial parent and to amplify the negative impacts on relations with noncustodial parents. Further, the longer the adult child lived apart from the parent, the weaker are relations with noncustodial parents.     

The Toronto Lesbian Family Study

Twenty-seven lesbian mothers completed standardized tools chosen to assess current functioning, followed by a video-taped interview. Verbal children were also interviewed. Questions involved perceptions of the mothers' and children's experiences of being homosexual or being raised by homosexual parents, knowledge and fantasies about the donor/father, feelings regarding the role of fathers, parents' experiences of being fathered, legal issues, and development. All mothers were strongly lesbian identified and most were completely "out." All but one mother planned to or had told their children. All mothers planned to reveal donor information at an appropriate age. Many, especially parents of boys, had concerns about lack of a male role model, but none felt this would negatively affect the child's development. Mothers were open to having their child ask questions and even seek out the donor when older. Thirty-one percent of mothers reported a positive relationship with their own father, 42% a father who was present but unavailable or punitive and 27% a completely absent father for large parts of their childhood. Couples divided parenting work based on individual strengths and interests, work schedules and demands. Only two of the couples felt that one of them played a role typical of a father. An aggregate score was compiled for each mother based on the number of negative outcomes in the standardized tools. The mean number of negative outcomes for the mothers was 3.15 (SD = 1.85). Of the six women with 5 or more negative outcomes on the scales, three were single parents and one had lost her partner when her child was two months old. On the CESD, three mothers showed depression levels that were high. The Internal External scale showed 42% of mothers to have an external locus of control. Three mothers scored negatively on the Family Assessment Device. Ninety-two percent of women showed moderate to high self-esteem on the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale, and the Parenting Stress Index found only 4 women showing enough stress to warrant follow-up. Mothers who reported very negative early experiences of coming out were more likely to report current depressive symptoms (p = .03). All but one child living in two-mother homes identified both mothers as part of their family. Our initial impression is that these are primarily strong families with a variety of parenting skills, stressors and philosophies.