Abstract
BackgroundFamily dissolution has become more common and one third of the child population in most Western countries now experience family dissolution. Studies show that children from dissolved families have lower levels of social well-being than children from intact families, but only few studies have examined the impact on social well-being specifically in the school setting. We investigated the association between family dissolution and children’s social well-being at school, including the possible influence of the child’s age at the time of the family dissolution.MethodsWe defined a historic cohort study of 219,226 children and adolescents aged 9–16 years and combined demographic registry data of family structure with questionnaire data on social well-being based on the Danish National Well-being Questionnaire completed in 2015. The definition of social well-being was constructed on the children’s perception of sense of belonging in the school setting, in the class and the school community, as well as perceptions on safety, loneliness and bullying. We examined low social well-being according to family dissolution and used multiple logistic regression analyses to adjust for parental educational level, ethnicity and siblings and further stratified for gender and age.ResultsA total of 5% of the children had a low social well-being at school. Among the 31% who lived in dissolved families, we found more children with a low level of social well-being at school (adjusted OR 1.41, 95% CI 1.36;1.47) than those in intact families; especially among those who at the time of family dissolution were in the preschool age (1.55, 95% CI 1.47;1.64).ConclusionChildren from dissolved families had higher odds for low social well-being at school compared with children from intact families, especially those who experienced family dissolution in the preschool age. The school may be an important setting for identifying and providing help and support in children experiencing family dissolution.
Highlights
Dissolution has become more common and one third of the child population in most Western countries experience family dissolution
Building on the knowledge in previous studies [4,5,6,7], we hypothesized that children from dissolved families had a higher risk of low social well-being at school compared with children from intact families, and that the risk increased the younger the child was at the time of the family dissolution
Social well-being at school in children from intact families and dissolved families Children from dissolved families had statistically significantly higher odds for low social well-being at school compared to children from intact families; adjusted odds ratios (OR) 1.41 (Table 3)
Summary
Dissolution has become more common and one third of the child population in most Western countries experience family dissolution. The family constitutes a key social setting and, even if parental conflict may not be present, the absence of one parent may be problematic for the child’s socialization [6, 10]. From this perspective, it has been hypothesized that children have a higher level of social well-being if divorce occurs when they are older rather than younger because a considerable part of the socialization process takes place early in the child’s life. Parental dissolution seems to have relatively few consequences for children at college and university age level, presumably because of their maturity and independence from the family [6, 9, 10]
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