Birth placement and childhood disadvantage

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The relationship between measures of childhood disadvantage and birth placement was studied in a birth cohort of New Zealand children. Children who entered single parent families at birth were subject to a systematic pattern of disadvantage including poor preventive health care, greater risks of morbidity, depressed levels of childhood experience and exposure to pre-school education, impaired mother/child interaction patterns, depressed living standards and greater family instability. Adopted children fared best on all measures. Factor analysis of the various indicators of childhood disadvantage showed that all loaded on a single common factor which had good face validity as being a general measure of multiple childhood disadvantage. Regression and path analyses showed that the apparent correlation between the child's birth placement and the multiple disadvantage score arose from the presence of a variety of conditions which were more prevalent in single parent families. In particular, single parent families had lower income levels, higher residential mobility, mothers in these families reported more problems and difficulties with child-rearing, experienced a greater number of adverse life events and were less satisfied with life in general. In addition, women with no formal educational qualifications and women of Maori or Pacific Island ethnic origin were over-represented in the population of single parent families. While the individual contribution of each of these factors was relatively small, the collective effect of the adverse conditions present for single parent families was to (apparently) produce a situation in which children in these families were clearly disadvantaged when compared with children from two parent and, particularly, adopted families. The implications of these findings are discussed.