Evolving families and child wellbeing

A large body of literature has shown marked differences in the average level of resources and the average level of child well-being across different family structures. The average level of resources will vary across different family types. Although studies examining cognitive, educational and behavioural outcomes are more numerous, there is some evidence of differentials in physical health. Most research on family structure and child outcomes has concentrated on describing differentials, or testing whether the association between family structure and child well being is "real”. Less emphasis has been placed on understanding the underlying proximate processes that explain the link between family structure to child health. Using the British Millennium Cohort Study, we focus on explicitly mapping the possible proximate processes that link family structure to children’s physical health. These analyses employ graphical chain models, a statistical technique that lends itself well to longitudinal data, to test these relationships.

Traditional family arrangements have become less normative in contemporary society as more children are reared in cohabiting and single-parent families. Extant research has established the negative effects of non-traditional family arrangements on child well-being, but the literature is void of a comprehensive examination of the how family context on indicators of child well-being varies across race. In this study, I will use data from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey to investigate the mediating and moderating influences of race on the relationship between family context and child food insecurity. Preliminary results reveal that approximately 21% of children experience food insecurity, and food insecurity is more prevalent among single parent households and Hispanic children. However, multivariate analyses reveal a more intricate relationship between family context and race. Black children with married parents are the least likely to report food insecurity. White children in single parent and cohabiting families are the most likely to report food insecurity. Among Hispanic children, those living in cohabiting families are the least likely to experience food insecurity, while Hispanic children living in married and single parent families have a similar probability of experiencing food insecurity.

Undernutrition is a major health burden among children and adult in India. The risk on childhood undernutrition is perpetuated through the operation of an array of risk factors including nutritional, socioeconomic and environmental characteristics. A few studies have attempted to establish causal linkages between childhood undernutrition and maternal child marriages. However, there is no clear understanding regarding the plausible association between parental child marriage and childhood undernutrition in India.
This study examine the influence of parental child marriages (marriage below legal ages) on childhood nutritional status in India.
Methods: The study population was a nationally representative cross-section sample of singleton children (n=16756) who were aged 0 to 59 months from the 2005-2006 Indian National Family Health Survey. Modified logistic regression models that account for multistage survey design and sampling weights were applied to estimate the association between parental child marriages and childhood undernutrition. The outcome measures were child underweight and stunting; parental child marriages (<18 yrs among mothers & <21 yrs among fathers) was the primary exposure variable.
In the mutually adjusted regression models, we do not find any significant association between pare

As growing numbers of children are born to cohabiting couples, increasing attention is paid to the higher instability of these families when compared to married ones. Even if theoretical thinking about the diffusion process of cohabitation is contemporaneous to studies on couple instability, researchers have seldom tested associations between them. We argue that the instability gap between cohabiting and married families is not constant over time and place; rather, it evolves in relation to the social status cohabitation has achieved in a given society. We explore a normativity hypothesis stating that as births within cohabitation become more common and thus more socially normative, cohabiting family instability decreases. We use multilevel logistic models with a series of cross-sectional Canadian data to compare the evolution of the odds of parental disruption for children in various geolinguistic groups, taken as proxies for normative environments. We find strong support for the normativity hypothesis in the Canadian context.

Family diversity and inequality: The Canadian case

The Second Demographic Transition, including flexibility in types of unions and in entry and exit from unions, has increased the diversity across families. There has been a significant cultural and political dynamic to celebrate this diversity as an increase in individual options, beyond the heterosexual couples with children in a traditional division of labour.

Diversity can be expressed in various ways: economic families or unattached individuals, married or common law, two parents or lone parent, opposite sex or same sex, breadwinner or two earners, traditional division of work and care or collaborative model, couples with and without children, intact or step-families (simple or complex).

On the basis of Canadian data from 1981 to 2011, this paper investigates the extent to which the greater diversity can be seen as representing risks and inequality across families and individuals. There has also been an increased difficulty for policy to support individuals and families that are so diverse in their family life course and in their needs.

Using the data from the Time Use Survey conducted on Iranian urban households during 2008-2009, this paper examines the effect of family type (single-parent or two-parent) on the amount of time spent, by children, on activities related to human capital. Target population includes unmarried children, aged 15-19 years, living in Iranian urban households. Relevant literature shows that children in single-parent families (either by divorce or the death of a parent) experience more difficulties and barriers towards human capital achievement. Findings show that children in single-parent families have higher levels of dropout and their level of human capital attainment is significantly lower than that of their counterparts in two-parent families. By controlling independent variables especially parental care and supervising activities at home, the negative effect of the family type disappears. Therefore, such family will exert its effect on children's achievement mainly through decreasing parent-child relationship, reducing opportunities for parents to engage in home affairs, and losing parents' supervision over their children's activities. Such negative effect can have important consequences and implications for educational attainment of children in Iran as the country is experiencing a high level of divorce now.

The process of union formation and, consequently, the context of childrearing have deeply changed in Italy in the last decades. The increase in non-marital cohabitation has been accompanied by an impressive spread of out-of wedlock births. The possible consequences of these changes on gender role-set within couples are quite unknown in this country. In particular, there is no clear evidence whether (and how) Italian married and unmarried parents differ in childrearing practices.
In this paper, we aim to verify whether a more egalitarian gender role-set is found among childless cohabiting couples in Italy and if persists for those who have a pre-school child, using a sample from the 2008/09 Time Use Survey. We expect that cohabiters are more egalitarian in sharing unpaid work and childcare, but we want to verify whether this is explained by the cohabitation in itself or rather by differences in individual and couple characteristics (such as labor market participation and education level). A special attention will be dedicated to fathers' role according to the kind of couple.

Childhood moving has been associated with negative outcomes, almost regardless of the specific outcome studied. Most studies struggle to differentiate whether the move is harmful in itself or whether the adverse outcomes are results of underlying causes.
We use detailed data on complete cohorts of children born in Norway 1965-1980 (N=967 151), their parents and siblings, and information on all their residential relocation between the around 400 municipalities in Norway. We use both logistic regression and sibling fixed-effects models. First, we assess how different outcomes are affected by the number of times a child has moved. Next, we examine whether the child’s age at moving is important.
The results suggest that risks for not completing high school, low adult income, early parenthood and early mortality increase with each additional residential relocation during childhood. For instance, odd ratios for not completing high school were 1.64 (CI 1.61-1.68) for children who moved more than 3 times compared with non-movers. The logistic regression results were largely confirmed by the sibling fixed-effects models. Considering age at moving, we found that moves prior to elementary school did not have significant adverse long-term effects, whereas moves during middle school (13-15 years) appeared to be particularly detrimental.

Research has demonstrated the positive impact of fathers' involvement on children’s well-being, however, little is known about the influences on fathering for minority ethnic fathers.

This qualitative study focussed on four British South Asian religio-ethnic 'groups': Bangladeshi Muslims; Pakistani Muslims; Gujarati Hindus; and Punjabi Sikhs from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds in two distinct cities. with over 170 respondents recruited through community networks and snowballing.

The majority of these fathers contributed to cognitive, physical, emotional social and spiritual dimensions of health on a regular basis. They adopted a variety of strategies including contributing directly and indirectly via role modelling and delegating. However, there were a range of influences on fathering which constrained or facilitated fathers' contribution to their children's health. These included factors relating to the father, mother, co-parenting, the influence of children, grand parents and extended family, the wider religio-ethnic community and the wider society.

There were similarities between ethnic groups and differences within them, in particular related to mother's employment status and the quality of the mother-father relationship. Nonetheless, ethnicity often marked a difference in the form of fathering.

Father effects on child development in developed countries are still unclear, with inconsistent results often reported. Furthermore, whether these father effects vary depending on context is rarely explored. Previous studies have found that fathers tend to invest more if they are of higher socio-economic position, if the investment is in sons, and if mothers are also investing highly. If these investment patterns are derived from differences in the returns to their investment, we would expect that paternal investment may have greater benefits under these individual circumstances. Using the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, we investigate the effect of direct paternal investment on children’s height, educational attainment and behavioural difficulty whilst controlling for direct maternal investment levels. Furthermore, we test whether the effect of direct paternal investment differs depending on the father’s education, sex of child and level of maternal investment. We find that direct paternal investment has a beneficial effect on all three outcomes, though the benefit only exists for girls in height, and the benefit is larger for boys than girls in academic achievement. In contrast, direct maternal investment is only beneficial against children’s behavioural difficulty, and no context dependence was found.