The impact of family structure and family change on child outcomes: a personal reading of the research literature.

• Author: Mackay, Ross

Abstract

The paper provides a brief overview of the research literature on the impacts of family structure and family change on child outcomes, with a particular focus on parental separation. It takes as a starting point the existence of pervasive associations between family change and child outcomes and addresses a range of issues that are examined in the research literature. Do family changes primarily have short-term impacts on children, or do they also have more enduring impacts? How does remarriage affect child outcomes? What impact do frequent changes of family structure have on child outcomes? What are the mechanisms that link family structure and family change to child outcomes? How much of the impact is attributable to income changes consequent on parental separation? How much is attributable to the absence of a parent figure? How much is attributable to poorer mental health of lone parents following a parental separation? How much is attributable to the conflict between parents which often accompanies a parental separation? And how much of the association between family change and child outcomes is due to non-causal mechanisms, such as selection effects? The paper will sketch out answers to these questions, as far as these can be determined from the published results of research.

INTRODUCTION

Over the past two decades or so, a significant literature has developed on the impact of family structure and family change on child wellbeing. This literature documents an accumulating body of evidence that children raised in different family contexts display differential patterns of outcomes across a wide range of developmental domains. In particular, children raised in lone-parent families have been found, on average, to do less well across a range of measures of wellbeing than their peers in two-parent families, while parental separation has been found to be associated with an array of adverse outcomes for children. Behind these patterns of associations between family contexts and child outcomes, however, lies a complex web of overlapping and interacting influences, which means that interpreting these results is far from straightforward. It is the aim of this paper to throw some light on the reasons why child outcomes are contingent on family contexts.

The paper provides a brief overview of the research literature in this field. For reasons of space, the paper focuses rather narrowly on the impact of parental separation on child outcomes, although it also briefly examines the impact of remarriage and multiple family transitions on child wellbeing. Within this constrained purview, however, the paper examines a range of issues that are canvassed in the research literature. It takes as a starting point the existence of pervasive associations between family change and child outcomes and considers a range of questions that follow from this: Do family changes such as parental separation primarily have short-term impacts on children, or do they also have more enduring impacts? How does remarriage affect child outcomes? What impacts do frequent changes of family structure have on child outcomes? What are the mechanisms that link family structure and family change to child outcomes? Are there causal connections between family change and child outcomes or are there other reasons for these associations? The paper also examines an exemplar intervention that has been shown to ameliorate the adverse impacts of family change on children's wellbeing.

The literature on these questions is large, complex and growing so fast that it is no longer possible even to keep abreast of new papers produced each year, let alone master everything that has been published in the past two decades. This poses a challenge for a brief survey of the literature such as this. It needs to be said that this paper is not based on a systematic review of the literature in this field. Although I have tried to read widely and without bias, the portion of the literature I have been able to read is necessarily selective--and the portion I can reference in this paper is much more constrained--while the very act of selection has, no doubt, been shaped by my own views and interests. The paper should thus be regarded as no more than a personal reading of the literature.

PARENTAL SEPARATION AND CHILD OUTCOMES

Parental separation has been reported in the literature as being associated with a wide range of adverse effects on children's wellbeing, both as a short-term consequence of the transition and in the form of more enduring effects that persist into adulthood. Effects reported include adverse impacts on cognitive capacity (Fergusson, Lynskey and Horwood 1994), schooling (Evans et al. 2001), physical health (Dawson 1991), mental and emotional health (Chase-Lansdale et al. 1995), social conduct and behaviour (Morrison and Coiro 1999), peer relations (Demo and Acock 1988), criminal offending (Hanson 1999), cigarette smoking (Ermisch and Francesconi 2001), substance use (Fergusson, Horwood and Lynskey 1994), early departure from home (Mitchell et al. 1989), early-onset sexual behaviour (Ellis et al. 2003) and teenage pregnancy (Woodward et al. 2001).

A further range of impacts in early adulthood and beyond include higher rates of early childbearing (McLanahan and Bumpass 1994), early marriage (Keith and Finlay 1988), marital dissolution (Amato and DeBoer 2001), lone parenthood (McLanahan and Booth 1989), low occupational status (Biblarz and Gottainer 2000), economic hardship (McLanahan and Booth 1989), poor-quality relationships with parents (Aquilino 1994), unhappiness (Biblarz and Gottainer 2000), discontentment with life (Furstenberg and Teitler 1994), mistrust in others (Ross and Mirowsky 1999), and reduced longevity (Tucker et al. 1997).

On the face of it, this seems like a long and forlorn listing, which suggests that parental separation bears down heavily on children and blights their lives to a significant degree across all domains of functioning. Yet the picture is not as bleak as this litany of problems might suggest. In most cases the size of the reported effects is small; a minority of children are negatively affected, generally only in the presence of other exacerbating factors; and in many cases the existence of a causal connection is contested and other competing explanations for these associations have been put forward. In other words, it is important to be cautious in interpreting the meaning of these patterns of association.

Many scholars who have identified associations between family structure and family change and child outcomes have drawn attention to the relatively small size of the effects. Joshi et al. (1999) describe the effect sizes they measured as "modest", while Burns et al. (1997) refer to effects that were "very weak". Allison and Furstenberg (1989) report that the proportion of variation in outcome measures that could be attributed to marital dissolution was generally small, never amounting to more than 3%.

The modest nature of the associations between separation and children's outcomes means that knowing that a child comes from a separated family, and knowing nothing else about the child, has little predictive power in terms of the child's wellbeing. There is a wide diversity of outcomes among both groups of children from divorced and intact families, and the adjustment of children following divorce depends on a wide range of other factors.

Demo and Acock (1996) note that "the differences in adolescent well-being within family types are greater than the differences across family types, suggesting that family processes are more important than family composition". Indeed, O'Connor et al. (2001) showed that differences in adjustment between children within the same family are as great as, and even slightly greater than, differences between children in different families. Demo and Acock (1996) note further that measures of family relations explained the largest proportion of variance in adolescent wellbeing.

The majority of children whose parents have divorced function within normal or average limits in the years after divorce (Kelly 1993). As a group, they can not be characterised as "disturbed". Furthermore, there is a considerable range of functioning within both groups of children from divorced and intact families. Among children whose parents have divorced are many who are functioning quite well, while among children from intact families are many with major adjustment problems. In short, there is no one-to-one relationship between divorce and psychological adjustment problems in children.

In fact, not only do some children do well despite the divorce of their parents, but some children actually benefit from the divorce. Demo and Acock 1988 note that adolescents living in single-parent families can "acquire certain strengths, notably a sense of responsibility, as a consequence of altered family routines". It is likely, however, that such benefits will accrue only where the altered routines are structured and predictable. Changes that involve the emergence of more chaotic patterns of family life are unlikely to be beneficial for children, even if some strive to furnish a sense of order where their parents fail to do so. Butler et al. (2002) note that the children in their study demonstrated "an active role helping their parents cope with divorce, even in circumstances where parents did not seem able to contain their more negative emotions and impulses".

Children also benefit where a parental separation provides release from an aversive family situation; for example, where the parental relationship is highly conflicted and the children are drawn into the conflict (Booth and Amato 2001, Jekielek 1998) or where the child's relationship with a parent figure is of poor quality (Videon 2002). Videon (2002) notes that:

The prophylactic effects of parental separation are amplified as adolescents' satisfaction with the...