Trends in Children's Family Instability, 1995-2010

Research Note: New Evidence on the Motherhood Wage Penalty

U.S. women's age at first birth has increased substantially. Yet, little research has considered how this changing behavior may have affected the motherhood pay penalty, or the wage decrease with a child's arrival, experienced by the current generation. Using Rounds 1-19 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), in this research note we examine shifts in hourly pay with childbirth for a cohort of women who became mothers mostly in the 2000s and 2010s. Results from fixed-effects models indicate that the motherhood pay penalty for NLSY97 women who had their first child before their late 20s is generally similar to that of previous cohorts. Those who became mothers near or after age 30, however, encounter a parenthood premium, as men do. The growing proportion of women delaying motherhood, coupled with the rising heterogeneity in motherhood wage outcomes by childbearing timing, contributes to a comparatively small motherhood penalty for this recent cohort. The pay advantage of "late mothers" cannot be explained by factors such as their labor market locations, number of children, stage of childrearing, marital status, or ethnoracial composition. Instead, the hourly gain stems from such mothers' tendency to reduce working hours more than other mothers without experiencing a commensurate decrease in total pay. Unlike the fatherhood premium, the premium for late mothers does not lead to a real boost in income.

Longitudinal associations between early risk and adolescent delinquency: Mediators, moderators, and main effects

Although multiple domains of risk are theorized to predict adolescent delinquency, father-specific risk in the context of other risks is under-researched. Using the low-income Future of Families and Child Wellbeing cohort (48% Black, 27% Hispanic, 21% White, 51% boy, N = 4,255), the current study addressed three research questions. (1) are father-, mother-, child-, and family-level cumulative risk during early childhood associated with adolescent delinquent behavior?, (2) does child self-control in middle childhood mediate the associations between fathers' and mothers' cumulative risk and adolescent delinquent behavior, and do quality of parent's relationships with children and parental monitoring in middle childhood mediate the association between child cumulative risk and delinquent behavior?, (3) do parenting, quality of parent-child relationships in middle childhood, and child sex at birth moderate the associations among fathers', mothers', children's, and family risk and adolescent delinquent behavior? Results indicated father, child, and mother risk at ages 3-5 were significantly and positively associated with youth-reported delinquent behavior. Higher levels of family risk were associated with less delinquency when 9-year-olds felt closer to fathers than when they felt less close. Children's self-control at age 9 mediated the associations between father and child risk and delinquent behavior.

Childhood Family Instability and Young-Adult Union Experiences: Black-White Differences in Outcomes and Effects

Today's young adults have diverse union experiences; some enter enduring marital or cohabiting unions at young ages, but many delay or dissolve their unions or remain single. Childhood family instability-defined as parents' transitions into or out of romantic coresidential unions-offers one explanation for why some people are more likely than others to enter and exit unions. We evaluate whether this family instability hypothesis-a union-specific version of the general hypothesis that instability affects people across multiple life domains-can explain Black and White young adults' union formation and dissolution. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics' Transition into Adulthood Supplement (birth cohorts 1989-1999), we find that the marginal effects of childhood family instability on cohabitation and marriage are weaker for Black than for White youth. Further, Black-White differences in childhood family instability's prevalence are small. Consequently, novel decompositions that account for racial differences in instability's prevalence and marginal effects reveal that childhood family instability contributes little to Black-White inequality in young adults' union outcomes. Our results challenge the generalizability of the family instability hypothesis across racialized groups in the union domain. Explanations for Black-White differences in young-adult marriage and cohabitation reside beyond childhood family dynamics.

Racial/Ethnic Variation in the Relationship Between Educational Assortative Mating and Wives' Income Trajectories

Prior work has examined the relationship between educational assortative mating and wives' labor market participation but has not assessed how this relationship varies by race/ethnicity. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we estimate group-based developmental trajectories to investigate whether the association between educational assortative mating and wives' income trajectories varies by race/ethnicity. The presence, prevalence, and shapes of prototypical long-term income trajectories vary markedly across racial/ethnic groups. Whites are more likely than Blacks and Hispanics to follow income trajectories consistent with a traditional gender division of labor. The association between educational assortative mating is also stronger for Whites than for Blacks and Hispanics. White wives in educationally hypogamous unions make the greatest contribution to the couple's total income, followed by those in homogamous and hypergamous unions. Black and Hispanic wives in hypogamous unions are less likely than their peers in other unions to be secondary earners. These findings underscore the need for studies of the consequences of educational assortative mating to pay closer attention to heterogeneity across and within racial/ethnic groups.

Gendered racial disparities in health of parents with children with developmental disabilities

Background

There is little information on (1) how adverse experiences in early life are associated with the risk of having a child with health problems and (2) whether the health of racial and gender minority groups would be particularly compromised if they have developmentally disabled (DD) children.

Objective

By integrating life-course perspectives and the intersectionality framework, we examine (1) the extent to which parents’ early-life adversities (ELAs) are associated with having children with DD or other health issues and (2) whether the association between having DD children and parental (physical and mental) health varies across race–gender groups after accounting for ELAs.

Methods

Using data from Black and White parents from the Midlife in the US Study (n = 7,425; 18% Black), we employed (1) multinomial logistic regression models to investigate the degree to which ELAs are associated with parenting types (having a child with DD, a child with recent illness, or a child without these health issues) and (2) multiple regression models with a three-way interaction term to investigate whether the gender–parenting type association differs by race.

Results

With more adversities, the probability of having children with health issues increases for all race–gender groups, but most dramatically for Black women. Having DD children is associated with more chronic illnesses and functional limitations for women than men, with the largest burden for Black women, yet neither gender nor racial differences in depressive symptoms. Our results highlight that while raising children with DD takes a toll on the health of all parents, the strain might be larger for Black mothers.

Conclusion

The adverse effects of parenting a child with DD is more pronounced for Black women than for other race–gender groups indicating opportunities to promote community-based programs for these parents.

The Divorce Process and Child Adaptation Trajectory Typology (DPCATT) Model: The Shaping Role of Predivorce and Postdivorce Interparental Conflict

Divorce has been conceptualized as a process. Research has extensively demonstrated that it is pre/postdivorce family environment factors that primarily account for the variability in children's adaptation over parental divorce process rather than the legal divorce per se. Amongst various factors, interparental conflict has been consistently identified as a prominent one. Surprisingly, a single source is still lacking that comprehensively synthesizes the extant findings. This review fills this gap by integrating the numerous findings across studies into a more coherent Divorce Process and Child Adaptation Trajectory Typology (DPCATT) Model to illustrate that pre/postdivorce interparental conflict plays crucial roles in shaping child adaptation trajectories across parental divorce process. This review also summarizes the mechanisms (e.g., child cognitive and emotional processes, coparenting, parent-child relations) via which pre/postdivorce interparental conflict determines these trajectories and the factors (e.g., child gender and age, child coping, grandparental support) that interact with pre/postdivorce interparental conflict to further complicate these trajectories. In addition, echoing the call of moving beyond the monolithic conceptualization of pre/postdivorce interparental conflict, we also review studies on the differential implications of different aspects (e.g., frequency versus intensity) and types (e.g., overt versus covert) of interparental conflict for child adjustment. Last, limitations of prior studies and avenues for future research are discussed. The proposed framework may serve as a common knowledge base for researchers to compare/interpret results, detect cutting edges of the fields, and design new studies. The specificity, complexity, nuance, and diversity inherent within our proposed model await to be more fully revealed.

Continuity and Change in U.S. Children's Family Composition, 1968-2017

We document changes in U.S. children's family household composition from 1968 to 2017 with regard to the number and types of kin that children lived with and the frequency of family members' household entrances and departures. Data are from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N = 30,412). Children experienced three decades of increasing instability and diversification in household membership, arriving at a state of "stable complexity" in the most recent decade. Stable complexity is distinguished by a decline in the number of coresident parents; a higher number of stepparents, grandparents, and other relatives in children's households; and less turnover in household membership compared with prior decades, including fewer sibling departures. College-educated households with children were consistently the most stable and least diverse. On several dimensions, household composition has become increasingly similar for non-Hispanic Black and White children. Children in Hispanic households are distinct in having larger family sizes and more expected household entrances and departures by coresident kin.

Gendered Diverging Destinies: Changing Family Structures and the Reproduction of Educational Inequalities Among Sons and Daughters in the United States

The prevalence of nontraditional family structures has increased over time, particularly among socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Because children's socioeconomic attainments are positively associated with growing up in a two-parent household, changing family structures are considered to have strengthened the reproduction of social inequalities across generations. However, several studies have shown that childhood family structure relates differently to educational outcomes for sons than for daughters. Therefore, we ask whether there are gender differences in the extent to which changing family structures have contributed to the college attainment gap between children from lower and higher socioeconomic backgrounds. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and 1997 cohorts to estimate extended Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition models that take into account cross-cohort changes in the prevalence of family structures and heterogeneity in the effects of childhood family structure on college attainment. We find that the argument that changes in family structures contributed to diverging destinies in college attainment holds for daughters but not for sons. This result is due to the different changes over time in the effects of childhood family structure by gender and socioeconomic background.

Family Structure Transitions: Prevalence and Physical Health Effects in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam

This study aimed to identify the prevalence and physical health consequences of family structure transitions among children in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. In many high-income countries, family structure transitions are common, and research suggests that they can lead to worse physical health for children. However, we know little about either the prevalence or consequences of family structure transitions for children in low-and middle-income countries, who make up the vast majority of the world's children. First, we estimated the number of family structure transitions by age 12 using four rounds of Young Lives data from four low-and middle-income countries (N = 8062, Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam) and validated our prevalence estimates with another dataset from these same countries. The proportion of children experiencing a family structure transition by age 12 was: 14.8% in Ethiopia, 5.6% in India, 22.0% in Peru, and 7.7% in Vietnam. We put these estimates in context by comparing them to 17 high- and upper-middle-income countries. Second, using linear mixed models, we found that family structure transitions were not directly associated with worse physical health for children in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. Children in Peru experienced higher rates of family structure transitions relative to children in the other Young Lives countries, and similar rates to many of the 17 comparison countries, yet physical health was unaffected. It is possible that in low-and middle-income countries, the environment may overwhelm family stability as a determinant of physical health.

The Social Significance of Interracial Cohabitation: Inferences Based on Fertility Behavior

Interracial couples cohabit at higher rates than same-race couples, which is attributed to lower barriers to interracial cohabitation relative to intermarriage. This begs the question of whether the significance of cohabitation differs between interracial and same-race couples. Using data from the 2006-2017 National Survey of Family Growth, we assessed the meaning of interracial cohabitation by comparing the pregnancy risk, pregnancy intentions, and union transitions following a pregnancy among women in interracial and same-race cohabitations. The pregnancy and union transition behaviors of women in White-Black cohabitations resembled those of Black women in same-race cohabitations, suggesting that White-Black cohabitation serves as a substitute to marriage and reflecting barriers to the formation of White-Black intermarriages. The behaviors of women in White-Hispanic cohabitations fell between those of their same-race counterparts or resembled those of White women in same-race cohabitations. These findings suggest that White-Hispanic cohabitations take on a meaning between trial marriage and substitute to marriage and support views that Hispanics with White partners are a more assimilated group than Hispanics in same-race unions. Results for pregnancy intentions deviated from these patterns. Women in White-Black cohabitations were less likely than Black women in same-race cohabitations to have an unintended pregnancy, suggesting that White-Black cohabitations are considered marriage-like unions involving children. Women in White-Hispanic cohabitations were more likely than White and Hispanic women in same-race cohabitations to have an unintended pregnancy, reflecting possible concerns about social discrimination. These findings indicate heterogeneity in the significance of interracial cohabitation and continuing obstacles to interracial unions.

The Relationship Context of Early Transitions to Parenthood: The Influence of Arrest

In the U.S., many young adults who have had contact with the criminal justice system are parents. Using the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (n = 1321), we drew on family demography and criminology literatures to examine the association between arrest, an understudied indicator of contact with the criminal justice system, and transitions to early parenthood. We also distinguished transitions to parenthood that occurred within four different relationship contexts: (1) single; (2) dating; (3) cohabiting; and (4) married. Using event history analyses, we found that young men and women who experienced an arrest transitioned to parenthood earlier than their counterparts who were not arrested. Further, men with an arrest, compared to men who had not been arrested, were more likely to report that they were dating the biological mother of their first child around the time of birth. In contrast, women with an arrest had an increased likelihood of having their first birth while cohabiting with the biological father. Our results highlighted the importance of a prior arrest for early transitions to parenthood and are relevant for understanding the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage and the diverging destinies of children and parents. Furthermore, the gender differences in the results illustrated the importance of including women in criminal justice analyses and men in fertility analyses.

Patterns of Interactions Between Youth and Resident Stepmothers: A Latent Class Analysis

Stepparent-child relationships are a core pillar of stepfamily functioning and well-being. Stepparents can take on a variety of roles in the lives of their stepchildren, ranging from de facto parents to distant acquaintances. There remain important opportunities to explore specific interactional patterns between youth and stepparents, particularly resident stepmothers. Drawing from a family systems perspective, the purpose of the current study is to explore patterns of youth-stepmother interaction across recreational, personal, academic, and disciplinary domains of family life. Latent class analysis is conducted using a representative sample of 295 youth (mean age: 15.82 years, SD = 1.63; 41% female; 65% non-Hispanic White) residing in father-stepmother households who have living nonresident mothers at Wave I of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. The optimal latent class solution yielded four interactional patterns, labeled versatile and involved (21%), inactive (12%), casually connected (17%), and academically oriented (50%). The latent classes are also contrasted with respect to stepfamily relationship quality, youth well-being, and socio-demographic characteristics. Foremost, the results illustrate significant variability in the patterns of interactions between youth and their resident stepmothers, which could be attributed to youths' varying autonomy-seeking efforts and other complex family dynamics. Consistent with a family systems perspective, associations between youth-stepmother interactional patterns and family and youth outcomes highlight the importance of the relationship between youth and their resident stepmothers. Importantly, not all interactional patterns differed significantly across outcomes, suggesting that no one pattern is universally optimal in father-stepmother families with adolescent children.

College students in the western world are becoming less emotionally intelligent: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of trait emotional intelligence

OBJECTIVE

Over the last two decades, Western society has undergone a marked cultural transformation characterized by rising individualism. Concurrently, the digital landscape has transformed through the rise of social media and smartphones. These factors have previously been implicated in changing individuals' attitudes, behavior, and interpersonal interactions. We investigated whether these societal changes have coincided with changes in trait emotional intelligence (EI) over the last 17 years in Western university students.

METHOD

We examined this question using a cross-temporal meta-analysis (k = 70; N = 16,917).

RESULTS

There was no change in overall trait EI; however, the trait EI domains "well-being," "self-control," and "emotionality" demonstrated significant decreases with time, after controlling for gender composition and between-country differences.

CONCLUSION

We discuss these findings in relation to how they contribute to our understanding of trait EI, and how they add to the literature on how Western society is changing with time.

Family Complexity and Children's Behavior Problems over Two U.S. Cohorts

OBJECTIVE

We consider the prevalence of family complexity and its association with children's externalizing behavior problems over children's life course and over historical time.

BACKGROUND

A growing literature has demonstrated the prevalence and multidimensional nature of family complexity and its association with child behavior. The nature/strength of this association may have changed in recent cohorts as family complexity has become more common.

METHOD

Data are from the 1997 and 2014 cohorts of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement. Samples represent U.S. children ages 0-12 years born since 1985 (N=5,030). Ordinary least squares regression estimated change in the association between family complexity and behavior between cohorts. Difference-in-difference models estimated baseline and longitudinal differences in children's behavior as linked to family complexity.

RESULTS

The prevalence of family complexity has stabilized over the last two decades, and the antecedents to parental repartnering and complex sibship organization remain similar. The expectation that increasing family complexity contributes to elevated behavior problem scores was not supported. Instead, children who eventually acquired a step- or half-sibling or who experienced parents' union dissolution had elevated behavior problems prior to those changes.

CONCLUSION

The prevalence of and precursors to complex family organization were stable across recent child cohorts. The observed association between family complexity and child behavior problems may be attributable to selection mechanisms linked to both parents' family formation trajectories and to children's behavior, rather than to family change itself.

Family Structure and Secondary Exposure to Violence in the Context of Varying Neighborhood Risks and Resources

Secondary exposure to violence in the community is a prevalent developmental risk with implications for youths' short- and long-term socioemotional functioning. This study used longitudinal, multilevel data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods to consider how family structure, including parental instability, is associated with youths' secondary exposure to violence across diverse neighborhood contexts. Results showed that both living in a stable single-parent household and experiencing parental instability were associated with greater secondary exposure to violence compared with living in a stable two-parent household. The associations between having a single parent or experiencing parental instability and secondary exposure to violence were especially strong in neighborhoods with high levels of crime and strong neighborhood ties.

Young Adulthood Relationships in an Era of Uncertainty: A Case for Cohabitation

The young adulthood years are demographically dense. Dr. Ronald Rindfuss made this claim when he was Population Association of America (PAA) president in 1991 (Rindfuss 1991), and this conclusion holds today. I offer both an update of his work by including Millennials and a new view on young adulthood by focusing on an increasingly common experience: cohabitation. I believe we need to move away from our marriage-centric lens of young adulthood and embrace the complexity that cohabitation offers. The cohabitation boom is continuing with no evidence of a slowdown. Young adults are experiencing complex relationship biographies, and social science research is struggling to keep pace. Increasingly, there is a decoupling of cohabitation and marriage, suggesting new ways of framing our understanding of relationships in young adulthood. As a field, we can do better to ensure that our theories, methods, and data collections better reflect the new relationship reality faced by young adults.

Divorce, Repartnering, and Stepfamilies: A Decade in Review

This article reviews key developments in the past decade of research on divorce, repartnering, and stepfamilies. Divorce rates are declining overall, but they remain high and have risen among people older than age 50. Remarriage rates have declined, but the overall proportion of marriages that are remarriages is rising. Transitions in parents' relationships continue to be associated with reduced child well-being, but shifting patterns of divorce and repartnering during the past decade have also reshaped the family lives of older adults. We review research on the predictors and consequences of these trends and consider what they reveal about the changing significance of marriage as an institution. Overall, recent research on divorce, repartnering, and stepfamilies points to the persistence of marriage as a stratified and stratifying institution and indicates that the demographic complexity of family life is here to stay.

Spanning Borders, Cultures, and Generations: A Decade of Research on Immigrant Families

The authors review research conducted during the past decade on immigrant families, focusing primarily on the United States and the sending countries with close connections to the United States. They note several major advances. First, researchers have focused extensively on immigrant families that are physically separated but socially and economically linked across origin and destination communities and explored what these family arrangements mean for family structure and functions. Second, family scholars have explored how contexts of reception shape families and family relationships. Of special note is research that documented the experiences and risks associated with undocumented legal status for parents and children. Third, family researchers have explored how the acculturation and enculturation process operates as families settle in the destination setting and raise the next generation. Looking forward, they identify several possible directions for future research to better understand how immigrant families have responded to a changing world in which nations and economies are increasingly interconnected and diverse, populations are aging, and family roles are in flux and where these changes are often met with fear and resistance in immigrant-receiving destinations.

Stepfamily Processes and Youth Adjustment: The Role of Perceived Neighborhood Collective Efficacy

Using a representative sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and a recently developed stepfamily-process typology, this study explores three plausible functions of perceived neighborhood collective efficacy with respect to stepfamily life and youth adjustment: an ability to (1) prevent maladaptive patterns of stepfamily processes, (2) promote stepchildren's adjustment beyond the influence of stepfamily processes, and (3) protect stepchildren's adjustment when faced with maladaptive patterns of stepfamily processes. The results indicate that higher levels of perceived neighborhood collective efficacy are associated with more adaptive stepfamily processes and higher levels of youth self-esteem over time, net the influence of stepfamily processes.

Estimating Children's Household Instability Between Birth and Age 18 Using Longitudinal Household Roster Data

Previous descriptions of the composition and stability of children's households have focused on the presence of parents and the stability of mothers' marital and cohabiting relationships. We use data available in the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation to expand the description of children's household composition and stability. We find that one in five children lives with nonnuclear household members. These other household members are a source of substantial household instability. In addition, during the period of observation (2008-2013), children experienced considerable residential instability. Thus, children's experience of household instability is much more common and frequent than previously documented. Moreover, levels of both residential and compositional instability are higher for children with less-educated mothers and for racial/ethnic minorities.

Family structure change among Latinos: Variation by ecologic risk

We examined differences in family structure change in an urban sample of mothers (N= 1,314) from their child's birth to age 5 and whether ecological risk moderated this association. We found that compared to U.S.-born Latino mothers, foreign-born Latino mothers were 62% less likely to break up and 75% less likely to repartner than remain stably resident. Across nativity status, Latina mothers with fewer children, more economic stress, less income, and less frequently reported father involvement were more likely to break up and repartner than remain stably resident. We found no moderation effects of ecological risk.

Strengthening Social Programs to Promote Economic Stability during Childhood

Economic instability has increased in recent decades and is higher for families with low incomes and Black families. Such instability is thought to be driven primarily by precarious work and unstable family structure. In addition, the social safety net has become less of a stabilizing force for low‐income families, in part because benefits are often tied to employment and earnings. Too much change in economic circumstances may disrupt investments in children, parenting practices, and family routines—particularly if the economic changes are unpredictable, undesired, or not part of upward mobility. Given the considerable evidence that economic circumstances affect child health and development, economic stability can and should be an important goal of multiple policy domains. In this report, we describe economic instability, review the pertinent theories for considering how economic instability might matter to children, and describe ideas for policies that could reduce or moderate instability. We include policies that reduce instability in earnings, use public assistance to stabilize income or reduce material hardship, or enhance parents' capacity to deal with or avoid instability.

Adolescent Relationship Quality: Is There an Intergenerational Link?

OBJECTIVE

This study examines intergenerational continuities in relationship instability, general relationship quality, and intimate partner violence (IPV) between mothers and adolescents.

BACKGROUND

A growing body of literature has observed similarities in relationship quality between parents and their adult offspring. Less attention has focused on whether intergenerational continuities are present in adolescent relationships.

METHOD

Using age 3, 5, 9, and 15 data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing birth cohort study (N=3,162), the authors examined associations between maternal reports of relationship instability, general quality, and IPV in early and middle childhood and similar adolescent reports at age 15. Variations based on timing and persistence of exposures were considered.

RESULTS

In general, exposures to low-quality maternal relationships were associated with higher risk of forming adolescent partnerships and lower relationship quality. Intergenerational links in quality were predominantly construct-specific, consistent with observational learning processes. Adolescents exposed to maternal relationships of poor general quality in middle childhood were less likely to report high-quality relationships themselves, and those exposed to any maternal physical IPV victimization during childhood were more likely to perpetrate IPV in their own relationships. Exposure to maternal relationship instability in both early and middle childhood was associated with more adolescent romantic partners.

CONCLUSION

The study illuminates additional pathways through which healthy and unhealthy relationships are reproduced across generations.

Family Instability in the Lives of American Children

Scholars have long looked to family composition to understand child well-being. Family instability, or the experience of repeated changes in parents' union status during childhood, represents a recent advance in this field that takes into account the dynamic nature of contemporary family organization and considers its implications for children's adjustment and development. We review some of the structural and cultural factors that have contributed to rising levels of family instability and highlight the emergence of national data to measure it. We then review the perspective that guides much of the scholarship on family instability and critically assess the contributions of this work to the understanding of child well-being. We close by suggesting new directions for research, with a call for work that broadens the conceptualization and measurement of contemporary children's family systems and home environments as well as the mechanisms that explain why-or whether-instability matters.

Child response processes as mediators of the association between caregiver intimate relationship instability and children's externalizing symptoms

Guided primarily by life history theory, this study was designed to identify how and why early exposure to caregiver intimate relationship instability uniquely predicts children's externalizing symptoms in the context of other dimensions of unpredictability characterized by residential and parental job transitions. Participants included 243 preschool children (Mage = 4.60 years) and their mothers who participated in 3 annual measurement occasions (i.e., preschool, kindergarten, first grade). Supporting the first link in the hypothesized mediational chain, the results of structural equation modeling analyses indicated that caregiver intimate relationship instability uniquely predicted a pattern of response processes over a 1-year period characterized by negative family representations, dominant interpersonal strategies for regulating resources, and diminished task persistence. Latent difference score analyses of each of these response processes over the 1-year period, in turn, uniquely predicted a multiinformant (i.e., mother, teacher, experimenter) assessment of children's externalizing symptoms over a 2-year period. Mediational findings were robust after accounting for the negligible roles of residential and occupational changes as simultaneous predictors. Results are interpreted in the context of how they inform and support life history theory as well as other conceptual (e.g., attachment and emotional security theory) models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Change in the Stability of First Premarital Cohabitation Among Women in the United States, 1983-2013

The rapid growth in cohabitation over the past quarter-century necessitates studies of changes in the stability and outcomes of cohabitation. We utilized data from the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) and the most recent NSFG data from 2011-2013 to examine the outcomes of two comparable cohorts of first premarital cohabiting women (1983-1988 and 2006-2013). Our results showed that cohabitations formed between 2006 and 2013 lasted longer-18 months, on average-than those formed in the mid-1980s, which lasted for an average of 12 months. We found that the lengthening of cohabitation over time cuts across sociodemographic characteristics-race/ethnicity, education, and motherhood status-and resulted mostly from the declining rate of transitioning to marriage. We found some support for the diverging destinies perspective in that disparities in the outcomes of cohabitation by education and by cohabiting birth have widened over time. Our analyses showed that changes in the outcomes of first premarital cohabiting unions over the past three decades were not due to compositional shifts in cohabitors. These results demonstrate the evolving dynamics of cohabitation over a 30-year window.

Patterns of stepfamily relationship quality and adolescents' short-term and long-term adjustment

Stepfamilies experience unique dynamics, with implications for family functioning and youth well-being. Emerging research is incorporating a holistic perspective whereby stepfamily dynamics are viewed more comprehensively, and constellations of stepfamily relationship quality are identified. In the current study, we examined short-term and long-term associations between latent patterns of stepfamily relationships (including the quality of mother-child, stepfather-child, nonresident father-child, and stepcouple dyads) and youth adjustment (i.e., depression, delinquency, self-esteem) across three stages of youth development: adolescence, emerging adulthood, and young adulthood. Using a representative sample of adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Harris et al., 2009), results from longitudinal structural equation models and latent-growth curve models indicated that youth adjustment over time is optimized among youth in a residence-centered (i.e., high-quality relationships among mother-child, stepfather-child, and stepcouple dyads) or inclusive (i.e., high-quality relationships across all dyads, including the nonresident father) pattern, as compared with youth in an unhappy-couple (i.e., low-quality stepcouple relationship) or parent-child disconnection (i.e., low-quality relationships between youth and each parental figure) pattern. The results point to many similarities between male and female youth in terms of adjustment responses to patterns of stepfamily relationships, although some differences became apparent. In the context of stepfamily relationships marked by low-quality relationships, male youth might exhibit greater initial levels of externalizing problems than female youth, whereas female youth might exhibit greater initial levels of internalizing problems than male youth. Implications for future research and intervention and prevention efforts are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Social Class Divergence in Family Transitions: The Importance of Cohabitation

OBJECTIVE

This study examined trends in familial transitions by maternal education and whether transitions rose because of changes in prevalence (the share of children exposed to a relationship state, either marriage or cohabitation) or churning (the number of entrances and exits conditional on being exposed to a relationship state).

BACKGROUND

Children's experiences of transitions, an important predictor of well-being, have leveled off in recent decades. Plateauing in transitions may reflect heterogeneity by socioeconomic status.

METHOD

Data came from the National Survey of Family Growth on firstborn children observed from ages 0 to 5 among mothers aged 15 to 34 at the time of the child's birth (N = 7,265). Kitagawa methods decomposed changes in transitions into those attributable to changes in prevalence and churning. Analyses were conducted separately by maternal education.

RESULTS

Children born to lower and moderately educated women experienced an increase in transitions because cohabitation increased in prevalence rather than a change in the number of exits and entrances from cohabiting unions. Among this disadvantaged group, children exposed to cohabitation experienced much more churning than children exposed to marriage. Children born to mothers with a 4-year degree did not experience an increase in transitions and predominantly experienced stable parental marriages.

CONCLUSION

Transitions only plateaued for children born to highly educated mothers, whereas transitions rose for less-advantaged children. Transitions appear to be another aspect of early family life experiences that contributes to diverging destinies.

Assessing the Role of Family Structure in Racial/Ethnic Residential Isolation

Fifty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, racial/ethnic residential segregation and discrimination persist in the housing market. In 2018, the National Fair Housing Alliance reported that the third and fifth largest discrimination complaints are made on the bases of familial status and sex, respectively. However, housing research has largely ignored how family structure may shape patterns of racial/ethnic residential segregation. By assessing residential isolation, our analyses add to the small body of literature exploring racial/ethnic segregation by family structure using data from the 1990–2010 decennial censuses and the 2006–2010 American Community Survey (ACS) drawn from the Neighborhood Change Database (NCDB) and the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS). Our results reveal that white, married-couple families experience the greatest levels of residential isolation, net of controls for relevant socioeconomic and demographic factors. In addition, our within racial/ethnic group analyses indicate that black, female-headed families experience significantly more isolation than their married-couple counterparts, while the reverse is true for Hispanic and white families. Our results provide support for the tenets of the place stratification model and suggest researchers should consider family structure when assessing racial/ethnic residential segregation as race/ethnicity and family structure interact to shape housing outcomes in metropolitan America.

Childhood Family Instability and Young Adult Health

American children live in a variety of family structures throughout their childhoods. Such instability in family arrangements is common and has important demonstrated implications for short-term child outcomes. However, it is not known whether family instability experienced in childhood has enduring health consequences across the life course. Using demographic, social, and biological data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we investigate the family stress model, testing the relationship between parental family instability in childhood and four biological markers of health in young adulthood. This is the first study to examine whether the accumulation of family change in childhood leaves a lasting physiological residue. While family instability is associated with poorer short-term behavioral and socioeconomic outcomes as documented in previous research, we find no evidence of deleterious young adult health consequences. These findings are robust across different measures of physiological health risk and types of family transitions.

Parenting Practices in Diverse Family Structures: Examination of Adolescents' Development and Adjustment

This article explored the implications of diverse family structures on adolescents' adjustment, with an emphasis on whether and, if so, how diverse family structures influence and predict developmental outcomes. Family relationships within the family unit are a stronger predictor of adolescents' development than the particular family structure. Transitions in families that result in notable reductions in effective parenting practices and economic well-being will negatively affect youth, regardless of family structure. Family processes that promote optimal growth and development among youth in traditional two-parent, heterosexual households work similarly for those growing up in nontraditional family structures. A conceptual model to advance this field of research is offered, and implications for research and policy are discussed.

Mothers' Partnerships, Men in the Home, and Adolescents' Secondary Exposure to Violence

Family instability means that many U.S. youth spend time without biological fathers and with other men. This study extends the literature on the developmental implications of living with fathers and father figures by investigating the association between the presence of mothers' male romantic partners in the home and secondary exposure to violence with a focus on variability according to the identities of the men and the communities of the family. Fixed effects models of multilevel data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (n = 2,201) revealed that living with mothers' partners did not have a general protective or risky association with youths' secondary exposure to violence. This exposure, however, was lower when such men were youths' biological fathers (vs. social fathers) and when they were married to (vs. cohabiting with) youths' mothers. The link between men's marital status and exposure to violence appeared stronger in higher-crime neighborhoods.

Family Instability and Exposure to Violence in the Early Life Course

Family instability has been linked with a host of outcomes across the early life course. This study extends this literature by connecting instability with violence in the community by examining the associations among family structure, family structure change, and secondary exposure to violence during adolescence across diverse segments of the population. Using longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods study, we found that living with a single parent and experiencing family structure changes were associated with secondary exposure to violence. Multiple group models suggest that partner change translated into more exposure for boys than girls. Findings also suggest that family instability may lead to more secondary exposure to violence for African American youth.

Racial and ethnic differences in the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences: Findings from a low-income sample of U.S. women

Despite great interest in adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), there has been limited research on racial and ethnic differences in their prevalence. Prior research in the United States suggests that the prevalence of ACEs varies along socioeconomic lines, but it is uncertain whether there are racial/ethnic differences in ACE rates among low-income populations. This study examined the distribution of ACEs in a sample of 1523 low-income women in Wisconsin that received home visiting services. Participants ranging in age from 16 to 50 years were coded into five racial/ethnic groups, including Hispanics and four non-Hispanic groups: blacks, whites, American Indians, and other race. Following measurement conventions, ten dichotomous indicators of child maltreatment and household dysfunction were used to create a composite ACE score. Five other potential childhood adversities were also assessed: food insecurity, homelessness, prolonged parental absence, peer victimization, and violent crime victimization. Results from bivariate and multivariate analyses revealed that, while rates of adversity were high overall, there were significant racial/ethnic differences. Total ACE scores of American Indians were comparable to the ACE scores of non-Hispanic whites, which were significantly higher than the ACE scores of non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics. Whites were more likely than blacks to report any abuse or neglect, and they were more likely than blacks and Hispanics to report any household dysfunction. The results underscore the need to account for socioeconomic differences when making racial/ethnic comparisons. Potential explanations for the observed differences are examined.

Childhood Family Structure and Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States

The declining prevalence of two-parent families helped increase income inequality over recent decades. Does family structure also condition how economic (dis)advantages pass from parents to children? If so, shifts in the organization of family life may contribute to enduring inequality between groups defined by childhood family structure. Using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, I combine parametric and nonparametric methods to reveal how family structure moderates intergenerational income mobility in the United States. I find that individuals raised outside stable two-parent homes are much more mobile than individuals from stable two-parent families. Mobility increases with the number of family transitions but does not vary with children's time spent coresiding with both parents or stepparents conditional on a transition. However, this mobility indicates insecurity, not opportunity. Difficulties maintaining middle-class incomes create downward mobility among people raised outside stable two-parent homes. Regardless of parental income, these people are relatively likely to become low-income adults, reflecting a new form of perverse equality. People raised outside stable two-parent families are also less likely to become high-income adults than people from stable two-parent homes. Mobility differences account for about one-quarter of family-structure inequalities in income at the bottom of the income distribution and more than one-third of these inequalities at the top.

Family Instability and Children's Health

Research on family instability is fertile ground for translation into policy and practice. This article describes how basic science in this area can more effectively support work in later stages of the translational research process. To begin, the scope of family instability is outlined with trends, causes, and effects. Next, a conceptual model of the effects of family instability on children's health identifies focal aspects that could be leveraged for translational research: developmental domain, developmental time, mechanisms, and points of variation. The guidelines presented are meant to be general and applicable to a variety of topics and fields in which family scholars aim to improve basic research that can contribute to and move forward a translational family science.