Evolving families and child wellbeing

Whilst stepfather presence has consistently been associated with detrimental effects on child development, studies rarely explore whether these effects are related to confounding changes in the investments children receive. Using ALSPAC, we explore stepfather effects on children’s height, educational achievement and behavioural difficulties at age 7 whilst controlling for measures of direct investments. We fail to find any stepfather effects on height. However, stepfather presence is associated with a reduction in children’s educational achievement and an increase in children’s behavioural difficulties. For educational achievement, this negative effect of stepfather presence is reduced to non-significant levels when mother and partner’s investment levels are accounted for. For behavioural difficulties, this negative effect is also reduced though significance is retained. Furthermore, specifically for behavioural difficulties, we find that investment from stepfathers do not have any beneficial effects. Our results suggest that, for educational achievement, stepfather effects are due to lower levels of investment levels children receive. For behavioural difficulty, stepfather effects are due to multiple factors whereby presence itself is detrimental, investment levels are reduced, and investment from stepfathers are ineffective.

Generally, lack of material resources for child care among low income or poor households has been emphasized in both research studies and policies that seek to address poor child nutritional and health status. But female time poverty resulting mainly from occupational and maternal role conflicts has also been identified by a number of studies as a factor associated with suboptimal child care. The present study examined the structural and institutional conditions that undermine the positive benefits of maternal education and occupation and the associated care behaviours among highly educated professional mothers in the city of Accra. The findings show that location of work place was a major factor associated with the ability of the mothers to combine child care activities with work. Long hours of travel to and from work due to heavy vehicular traffic prevented some from even enjoying fully the half-day work benefit for lactating mothers. Child care tasks are delegated to inexperienced house helps. It is recommended that policies that can reduce maternal and occupational role conflicts should be adopted to improve child care behaviours and outcomes among professional women in Accra and Ghana as a whole.

In the socio-demographic transitional times, the Albanian family has undergone considerable change in its structure and functioning and during the processes of socialization and interaction (Parson 1956) it is supporting child development and well-being in a different manner (Tushi 2012). The early years are being indicated as crucially important in the trajectory of human development as early life determinants of later development. This paper aims to investigate the implication of family structure and functioning on child well-being through bivariate and multivariate analyses, using nationally representative data from the Albanian Demographic and Health Survey 2008-09. The research is driven by the Capability Approach theory (Sen 1999) applied to measure child well-being in a family context. Family demographics and childrearing relationship are observed through the capabilities of early cognitive stimulation and social integrity. The family structure and attitudes of parents as regard of fertility preference, desired number of children, provision of adequate care to children, have significant effects on advancing the well-being at early ages. The stimulation of cognitive values at young children as well as the parental discipline style ensures the child’s well-being or conducts them to deprivation.

Polish society represents traditional family values with marriage remaining constantly the dominant form of a relationship. During last 30 years the number of marriages decreased which was accompanied by postponement of marriage, decreasing stability of relationships, enormous increase in the number of divorces and extra-marital births. Those signs provoke the discussion about reasons for such a change. Assuming that not only the objective determinants shape the process of union formation but the subjective attitudes as well, the goal of the study is to develop a set of distinctive perceptions of marriage characterized by the individual values associated with formal relationship. The explanatory method of latent class analysis was applied to distinguish attitudes towards marriage based on the subjective evaluation of incentives and socio-cultural norms attributed to marriage. The study was extended to test the expected changes in time as well as the influence of life’s experience i.e., experiencing formal relationship, having children, opinion on cohabitation, religiosity. As hypothesized, a map of distinct perceptions of marriage was created, including various traditional, modern and destandardized approaches. Expected age and life’s experience effects were confirmed, counter to expectations opposite effect of time was revealed

Literature on effects of marital conflict and divorce on child development has long wondered 1) whether divorce followed by parents’ marital conflict exerts distinguishable impacts on children and 2) whether marital conflict is more detrimental to involved children than divorce per se. We address these questions using the Korea Youth Panel Study-Elementary School Students that traced students from 4th grade in 2003 to 8th grade in 2007. Our results indicate 1) that children suffered from parental divorce as well as marital conflict, 2) that the adverse effect seems larger for parental divorce than marital conflict, 3) that there was domain specificity for differential effect of parental divorce by preceding marital conflict, and 4) that children who were under parents’ marital conflict were further disadvantaged if their parents decided to end their marriage.

Research shows that children living with two biological parents outperform those raised in different family structures. Less work has been done on this theme in the context of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, recent trends in SSA show that there is growing number of children who do not live with two biological parents in the region. Using data from the African Population and Health Research Center collected in the slums of Nairobi, this paper tests the hypothesis that two parent families are most favorable to schooling outcomes in Kenya. A logistic regression model is fitted. Controlling for socio-economic variables the effect of family structure on education attainment of children persists. Children in double parent households were 1.23 times more likely to be in the right grade for age compared to children in one parent households. The study calls for strengthening single parent households for better educational outcomes of the children.

Over the past four decades Botswana has witnessed considerable changes in nuptiality patterns reflected in, among others, notable increases in cohabiting unions. According to the 1991 census, 12 percent of all people aged 15 years and above reported themselves as cohabiting. This figure had increased to approximately 17 percent and to over 20 percent at the time of the 2001 and 2011 census respectively. To the extent that parents’ union status has important implications for children’s well-being and overall development, this paper uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to assess the extent to which the increase in cohabitation has impacted on the socio-economic wellbeing of children in Botswana. The overall results show that neither of the two legal systems in Botswana (customary and civil law) recognises cohabitation as a social institution and, in consequence, children of cohabitants socially disadvantaged relative to those whose parents are married. Evidence is also presented to show that children of cohabitants are likely to be raised in less economically favourable conditions than those children whose parents are married. The paper concludes with a discussion of the policy implications of the results and a proposed research agenda for future work on the subject.

Bihar, one of the most populous states of India is experiencing high fertility since decades. Along with exploring the socio-economic influence on fertility, it is important to understand the inter-familial influence on fertility behaviour. The need is even more important, when the state has prevalent norm of joint-family system in which mother-in-law has a strong control on reproductive behaviour of her daughter-in-law. Using the 2-generation data of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, this study examined the changes in reproductive behaviour across the generation and further measured the influence of older generation on the reproductive behaviour of younger generation. Result shows a positive association between age at menarche of mothers-in-law and daughter-in-law. Those mothers-in-law who have ever used any method of family planning were likely to influence the family planning use of her daughter-in-law. Contrary to that, the mothers-in-law who never used any contraceptives were found to be restricting the use of family planning to their daughters-in-law. The mothers-in-law significantly influenced to have an additional child to her daughters-in-law and the influence is stronger if previous children were girls. The result shows that economic benefits of having children are the most reported reasons to have additional child.

Immunization leads to improvement in child health in states throughout the country. Immunization (Expanded program on Immunization in 1974) is preventing millions of death every year in addition to reducing the risk of disability caused by infectious diseases. However the wider benefits of immunization are not reaching to all children of country in an equitable manner. It is reflecting the inherent inequality in access of basic health services which is provided free of cost by government. The study focuses on immunization coverage across India from three rounds of National Family Health Survey (1992-93 to 2005-06). It shows the level, trends and differentials in childhood immunization and dropouts with respect to multiple dose vaccine at national level. Three-quarters of children have received all the recommended vaccinations in Tamil Nadu, Goa, and Kerala. Immunization coverage has improved substantially since NFHS-1, when only 36 percent of children were fully vaccinated and 30 percent had not been vaccinated at all. There is very little change, however, in full immunization coverage between NFHS-2 (42 percent) and NFHS-3 (44 percent). Religion and zone of states also have some effects. Emphasis on these demand enhancing factors is necessary to make the immunisation programme.

It is often argued that in a developing country scenario couples generally cannot plan their family size well in advance with a calculation of net lifetime return of schooling. Therefore question arises, whether quantity-quality trade-off is actually occurs within the fertility decision making process or not. Rural and illiterate couples are more disadvantageous situation and it is therefore imperative to know their fertility intention or what exactly they thought of having or not having a child. The results of primary survey data show that most of the couple doesn't plan their fertility. Findings suggests that only schooling aspiration for children generally do not influence the couples to stop child bearing, so even if child schooling decision is influencing the fertility decision the proportion of couple doing so is small. Thus, quantity affects the quality, but desire to improve quality is not reducing quantity, though younger couple is showing some hope.