Family Structure Transitions and Child Development: Instability, Selection, and Population Heterogeneity
Abstract
A growing literature documents the importance of family instability for child wellbeing. In this article, we use longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the impacts of family instability on children’s cognitive and socioemotional development in early and middle childhood. We extend existing research in several ways: (1) by distinguishing between the number and types of family structure changes; (2) by accounting for time-varying as well as time-constant confounding; and (3) by assessing racial/ethnic and gender differences in family instability effects. Our results indicate that family instability has a causal effect on children’s development, but the effect depends on the type of change, the outcome assessed, and the population examined. Generally speaking, transitions out of a two-parent family are more negative for children’s development than transitions into a two-parent family. The effect of family instability is more pronounced for children’s socioemotional development than for their cognitive achievement. For socioemotional development, transitions out of a two-parent family are more negative for white children, whereas transitions into a two-parent family are more negative for Hispanic children. These findings suggest that future research should pay more attention to the type of family structure transition and to population heterogeneity.
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Biographies
Dohoon Lee is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at New York University. His research interests include social stratification, demography, and quantitative methodology. His current research focuses on dynamic relations between social contextual factors and child development, intra- and inter-generational mobility patterns, and the causes and consequences of nonmarital childbearing and birth intendedness.
Sara McLanahan is the William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She directs the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing and is the principal investigator of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Her research interests include family demography, poverty and inequality, and social policy.
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Article first published online: June 30, 2015
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