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Family Structure and Children's Psychosocial Outcomes
Zheng Wu*,
Feng Hou,
and
Christoph M. Schimmele
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: zhengwu{at}uvic.ca.
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Abstract |
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This article examines the influence of family structure on children’s short-term psychosocial behavioral outcomes, including emotional disorder, conduct disorder, and prosocial behavior. The analysis uses five waves of data (1994-2003) from Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth to model how living in a cohabitational household (two biological parents) and how experiencing cohabitation dissolution influence children’s behaviors, comparing these effects to outcomes observed in children from married biological-parent households. The findings indicate that growing up in a married biological-parent household does not offer a clear advantage. Most differences in behavioral problems across family structure associate with household demographics, low-income status, family dysfunction, and parental nurturance. As such, this study contributes two important findings. First, the results do not support the hypothesis that nonmarital cohabitation represents an undesirable child-rearing environment. Second, cohabitation dissolution has a nonsignificant effect on children’s behaviors, which is surprising considering that divorce has a well-established harmful effect.
First published on August 8, 2008, doi:10.1177/0192513X08322818
Journal of Family Issues 2008;29:1600.
A more recent version of this article appeared on December 1, 2008
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