Based on these descriptive family structure and family stability models, the outcome means suggest that in general, marriage between biological parents at any stage of the childs life provides a significant advantage to the wellbeing of five-year-old children. Because these data include measures of childrens cognitive achievement and externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors, we are able to investigate the possibility that family instability effects are outcome-specific. Elder Glen H., Jr . endobj We also control for city fixed effects in each model to capture the variation in city/state policies that influence both family formation and child wellbeing. The strongest effects are seen for multiple moves out of coresidential unions (.093 to .102 SDs). We also distinguished between at-birth and contemporaneous family structure effects in order to examine whether the family structure a child is born into continues to affect wellbeing and development ex post. This study will therefore explore the effect of family stability on early child wellbeing. endobj To date, scholars have focused primarily on selection due to unobserved variables that do not change over time, applying child and family fixed-effects models (Aughinbaugh, Pierret, and Rothstein 2005; Dunifon and Kowaleski-Jones 2002; Foster and Kalil 2007; Hao and Xie 2002). Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development and Education, Columbia Universitys Teachers College and College of Physicians and Surgeons, 525 West 120th Street, New York, New York 10027. We thus caution that the results reported here may not represent family instability effects for the U.S. population as a whole. Speare A, Goldscheider F. Effects of marital status change on residential mobility. In: Hetherington EM, editor. Also, given our focus on children who are living with their mother, the coverage of family transitions is incomplete (e.g., children who are living with only their grandparents or in foster care are not included). On one hand, if the researcher excludes time-varying covariates (e.g., maternal employment or family income), the model will overestimate the causal effect of family instability on child wellbeing. traditional, single parent, blended family, foster family, etc.). Also, there is no exit of a social father between birth and age 3 because family structure at birth is measured only with respect to a mothers relationship with a biological father. Elder Glen H., Jr The Life Course as Developmental Theory. Child well-being in cohabiting families. This measure is one of the most common approaches to gauging family instability. Then it weights each child by the inverse of her conditional probability. If the assumption does not hold, the parameter estimates of family instability will be biased. Nonetheless, accounting for selection bias in this way tempers the marriage premium considerably. AppendPDF Pro 6.3 Linux 64 bit Aug 30 2019 Library 15.0.4 Hispanic children are more likely to be obese and asthmatic relative to their white counterparts. Based on the theory presented, our study will test the following hypotheses: It is important to caution that the decision to marry, cohabit or remain single is related to unobserved parental attributes that also affect child wellbeing (Fomby and Cherlin, 2007; Waldfogel, Craigie, and Brooks-Gunn, 2010). The estimates displayed in panel B, however, suggest that the effect of multiple transitions is large and significant when the type of transition is taken into account. What does it mean to be financially stable? Partnership Instability and Child Wellbeing. A stable family provides a nurturing relationship between parent and child, which is essential for a child to continue movement along positive pathways in development. Consequently, we exploit U.S. data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) to distinguish the effects of family structure (at-birth and current) from the effects of family instability on the wellbeing of five-year-old children. The MSM thus generates a pseudo-population in which family transitions are sequentially independent of prior observed covariates. We begin by estimating a random-effects model (REM) that takes the following form: A vector of child developmental outcomes at time t for child i (Y) is a function of a measure of family instability (FI), time (Year and Year2), child is age in months at time t (Month and Month2), a vector of time-constant covariates (TC), a vector of time-varying covariates (TV), and random components (us).8 The model includes linear and quadratic terms for time to allow the time function to be nonlinear. The Effect of Family Structure on Outcomes of Five-Year-Old Children, Heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors in parentheses. 7We use maternal depression measured at Year 1 as a baseline covariate because this measure is not available at birth. The FFCWS design called for an oversample of births to unmarried parents, yielding a sample in which a quarter of the births were to married parents and three-quarters were to unmarried parents. We exclude mothers who were lost to follow-up (n = 1,791), who lived less than half time with their focal child (n = 102), and who did not report their complete family structure history (n = 53).3 For missing observations on covariates due to item-nonresponse, we use a multiple imputation (MI) procedure (Allison 2002). Thus, it is important to examine the links between family instability and early to middle childhood development. MI uses observed data to replace missing values with multiple imputed data and then obtains estimates averaged over these complete data with appropriate standard errors that take the uncertainty about sampling and imputation model into account. endobj xXoH~XH?QU5!^/=8=Z|E2 y3c2Wx\\{&)?+? ge2B_T`7p N8/-ShE5'r}LF_{VQcy,IWc1_S1]W#l'*G(|BH)'=ypgb?& T_x\:tcvX=UMh$Iw @)( ZITmu2L; D[>{p+o./;D\{C8lc&N-4 ?L&=.Q i}0JNwW. Fragile families and child wellbeing. Jane Waldfogel, Compton Foundation Centennial Professor of Social Work and Public Affairs, Columbia University School of Social Work, 1255 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027, ude.aibmuloc@502wj. This limitation undoubtedly leads us to underestimate the prevalence of family structure instability during this period. These specifications produced similar results but made it difficult to compare with other panel models estimated in this study. Family stability is also important for the mental and emotional health of all family members. Elwert Felix, Winship Christopher. endobj First, due to data limitations, most studies examine black-white differences; with few exceptions, little research explores the effects of family instability on Hispanics (Fomby et al. Although the FEM estimates are statistically insignificant, they are similar in size and direction to the REM and MSM estimates, at least for a move out of a coresidential union. Artis JE. Belle D. Poverty and womens mental health. Dunifon Rachel, Kowaleski-Jones Lori. In addition, our approach is designed to estimate the effects of repeated treatments on repeated outcomes. Racial and ethnic minorities who are also of lower SES are at an increased risk of victimization (Pearlman, Zierler, Gjelsvik, & Verhoek-Oftedahl, 2004). Third, we address population heterogeneity by examining how family instability effects differ by race/ethnicity and by childrens gender. Hernn Miguel , Brumback Babette, Robins James M. Estimating the Causal Effect of Zidovudine on CD4 Count with a Marginal Structural Model for Repeated Measures. The timing of family instability and social development. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. For the cognitive outcomes, mothers college education, being white, and parents WAIS scores are all linked to higher test scores for five-year old children. With respect to childrens gender, prior research predicts gendered responses to family instability, contending that changes in father figures are more disruptive for boys than for girls (Allison and Furstenberg 1989; Cooper et al. 9The FEM can be inefficient if within-child variation is limited. Parental Divorce and the Well-Being of Children: A Meta-Analysis. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the Family instability is linked to problem behaviors and some academic outcomes, even at early ages. MI relies on weaker assumptions than do listwise deletion and other standard procedures for handling missing data (Little and Rubin 2002). Children in the comparison group (those who did not experience the treatment at time t) are given a weight of 1/(1 p), thereby assigning higher weights to children with higher probabilities and lower weights to those with lower probabilities. We then converted the study sample to person-year data for panel data analysis. THE ROLE OF FAMILY INSTABILITY. Research on the effects of family instability on child wellbeing must confront the issue of selection bias, which occurs when the factors leading to family structure change are also associated with the child outcome of interest. All models include survey year, its square term, childs age, and its square term. A second limitation of our study is that sample size prevents us from examining the effects of instability in dating partnerships (Beck et al. Fragile families: sample and design. <> 2 0 obj 35 0 obj 3 0 obj With respect to gender differences, prior studies suggest that family instability has more deleterious consequences for boys than for girls (Cavanagh, Crissey, and Raley 2008; Cooper et al. More research using larger panel data is needed to substantiate the findings of this study. To deal with the second problembias due to the presence of measured covariates that vary over timewe estimate a marginal structural model (MSM) using inverse probability of treatment (IPT) weighting (Robins 1999; Robins, Hernn, and Brumback 2000).10 To estimate the MSM, the IPT weighting first calculates the probability, p, that a child will have experienced family instability by a given time, conditional on prior history of family instability and observed time-constant and time-varying covariates. First, we measure the number of transitions in family structure (0, 1, and 2+) that a focal childs mother experienced between birth and age 3, between ages 3 and 5, and between ages 5 and 9. Hours of Operation. endobj Maternal characteristics include age, race/ethnicity (black, Hispanic, white, and other), immigration status (1 if immigrant; 0 if otherwise), educational attainment (less than high school, high school or GED, some college, and college degree or more), age at first birth, cognitive ability (a subtest score of Wechslers [1981] Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised), impulsivity (an abbreviated form of Dickmans [1990] dysfunctional impulsivity scale), and whether she lived with both parents at age 15 (1 if yes; 0 if no). To investigate heterogeneous responses to family instability by race/ethnicity and by child gender, we replicate the previous specifications separately for each subgroup.14 Because the purpose of our subgroup analysis is to examine whether family instability effects differ across racial/ethnic and gender groups, we focus on more robust estimates from child fixed-effects and marginal structural models. Steele F, Sigle-Rushton W, Kravdal . The PPVT-R is a test of receptive vocabulary, and serves as an indicator of academic readiness for pre-school aged children (Dunn and Dunn, 1997). government site. The table presents weighted and unweighted means and standard deviations. There is also suggestive evidence that moving out of a two-parent family increases white childrens externalizing behavior. Family instability is positively linked to problem be-haviors and some academic outcomes, even at early ages. Just living together: Implications of cohabitation for children, families, and social policy. In panel B, although only the REM coefficients are statistically significant, the estimates for a move out of a coresidential union are comparable across models. Children of stably married parents appear to have at least some advantage in their cognitive, behavioural, and health development relative to children raised in other stable and unstable family structures. On the whole, we find that distinguishing between moves out of a two-parent family and moves into a two-parent family is important, casting doubt on the claim that all types of instability are equally harmful for children. George Linda. endobj Increasing the minimum wage Stable, fairly compensated work provides a solid foundation for the creation and maintenance of strong and healthy family relationships. Cooper Carey E, Osborne Cynthia A, Beck Audrey N, McLanahan Sara. Parental cohabitation and childrens economic wellbeing. Ph.D., Ed.D, a nationally recognized family and child development expert . 38 0 obj Similarly, while the transition out of a two-parent family into a single-mother family is expected to be detrimental for children by reducing parental resources, children may benefit from such a move if the parental relationship involved high levels of conflict and if the mother has access to social support from her extended family. So, from the start, stability and security provide an anchor for human growth and development. This question was not asked at the Year 3 survey, so we may undercount family transitions before age 3. The results (available on request) show that while the findings are substantively similar across different MI strategies, the estimates based on the two alternative MI strategies are somewhat smaller in magnitude and have larger standard errors than the estimates based on our original strategy. Third, we have not examined potential mediators that help determine the differences between family types. Osborne Cynthia A, Manning Wendy D, Smock Pamela J. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development and Education, Columbia Universitys Teachers College and College of Physicians and Surgeons, 525 West 120th Street, New York, New York 10027, ude.aibmuloc@nnug-skoorb. As Equation 2 shows, the FEM identifies parameter estimates by exploiting within-child variation in family structure transitions and child developmental outcomes.9. With the inclusion of an extensive set of controls in the at-birth family structure model, the marriage premium remains statistically significant, thereby corroborating our first hypothesis. 2000; Stack 1974). This omission is unfortunate because Hispanics represent the largest and fastest growing minority population in the United States. Understanding this process is imperative to informing the debate on the importance of marriage given that children born to unwed parents might not experience improved wellbeing if their biological parents marry. The .gov means its official. Similarly, when we analyze the association between contemporaneous family structure and child outcomes at year five, the means suggest that marriage between biological parents is associated with improved child wellbeing. At the same time, such a move may be harmful to children insofar as the entrance of a parent or parent figure disrupts family routines and may lead to conflict in parent-child relationships. The Complexity and Endogeneity of Family Structure in Explaining Childrens Misbehavior. Robins James M, Hernn Miguel , Brumback Babette. Because the Hispanic families in these data are heterogeneous in terms of country of origin and immigration status, these findings should be interpreted with caution and subjected to further investigation. Means and standard deviations are presented. Black mothers are more likely and Hispanic mothers are less likely to participate. Copenhagen, 28 June 2023 The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionately negative impact on children and adolescents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, those who faced prolonged school closures, and those lacking essential support structures such as family and teachers, according to new data published today by WHO/Europe and the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study.The . The literature on family structure instability and child wellbeing has long acknowledged population heterogeneity. c \H~8ToPHT$ uPsm]h;O9$t?nwU p}Lh+{K.y9$0uz(jS`8W\8R[T)$l. It utilized stratified random sampling to construct a birth cohort sample of 4,897 children born in twenty large cities in the United States from 1998 to 2000. In: Elder GH Jr, editor. Those over 65 (27,000) were 4.1 percent of a population that grows monthly by roughly 2,000 babies. Our measure of a coresidential union does not distinguish between biological and social fathers; nor does it distinguish between married and cohabiting parents. 2020-12-21T11:33:33-08:00 They also indicate that family instability has important consequences for childrens cognitive and socioemotional development, even after various forms of selection bias are taken into account. The Department of Children & Family Services works to meet the needs of Louisiana's most vulnerable citizens. These results suggest that contemporaneous family structure significantly affects child wellbeing but the effect of at-birth family structure persists for child behavioural problems and obesity. 5We do not use scores on the cognitive achievement test conducted in Spanish because of their incompatibility with those in English. This study exploits data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a birth cohort study of a diverse sample of children from twenty U.S. cities (N = 3,676), to examine how cognitive, behavioural, and health outcomes of five-year old children differ according to their family structure and family stability. Hogan DP, Kitagawa EM. Our analysis is based on 2,952 mother-child pairs. Family structure states and transitions: associations with childrens well-being during middle childhood. Child characteristics include gender (1 if male; 0 if female), first-born status (1 if yes; 0 if no), and low birthweight status (1 if below 2,500 grams; 0 if otherwise). Prince 12.5 (www.princexml.com) Moreover, studies that have focused on the childs current family structure also found that children living with single parents or unmarried parents do not fare as well as children living with married biological parents (e.g. http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/funders.asp, http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2006.html, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db18.htm, Multiple transitions from coresidential union, Multiple transitions from single motherhood. 1 0 obj Note, however, that most studies that report a negative effect are based on adolescent girls (McLanahan et al. Second, we provide greater analytic leverage than prior research by accounting for time-varying confounding by observed covariates, an overlooked source of selection bias, as well as time-constant confounding by unobserved covariates. Third, information on the number of coresidential partners between survey years is not available from birth to age 3, which means we must rely on mothers relationship status at two points in time to assess family structure transitions during early childhood. The family stability model presented in Table 4 provides insight into the underlying mechanisms at work. For cognitive achievement, the impact of transitions out of two-parent families is stronger and more negative for black children and girls, although the differences across groups are not statistically significant. Children in this group also had more siblings than those in stable single-mother families, suggesting that higher levels of behavior problems may be driven in part by new births. Sarkisian and Gerstel (2004) suggest that whereas financial and emotional support from kin are more available to white families, practical support is more available to racial/ethnic minority groups. For externalizing and internalizing behaviors, a higher score represents a worse outcome. According to theory, mediators such as mental health, father involvement, and parental resources are expected to mediate the effects of family structure (stability) on child outcomes (McLanahan and Sandefur, 1994). We begin by estimating a random-effects model (REM) that examines the association between family instability and child outcomes. Contemporaneous family structure is defined as the current family structure in which the focal child resides at age five. We address the issue of sample attrition by incorporating censoring weights in our marginal structural models. All supplemental analyses discussed here are available from the first author on request. Family instability by year five is extremely common. We address this issue by constructing weights for time-varying exposure to censoring (Robins et al. Dohoon Lee is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at New York University. Lower levels of SES are associated with the following: Higher infant mortality. We define three models: one that measures family structure at birth only, a second that measures current family structure at year five conditional on family structure at birth, and a third that measures changes in family structure from birth to age five. The data used in our empirical analyses come from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS). ECI services support families as they learn how to help their children grow and learn. Trends in Cohabitation and Implications for Childrens Family Contexts in the United States.
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