Children In Intact Families Research Articles

Can economic incentives for joint custody harm children of divorced parents? Evidence from state variation in child support laws

US state laws vary widely in the treatment of child support under joint custody. While some states require no child support in joint custody cases, other states require fathers with joint custody to pay the same amount as if they had no custody. The economic incentives generated by those custody laws can affect family decisions and the wellbeing of children of divorced parents, both under joint and sole custody. Merging child data from the SIPP with state child support guidelines, we find that economic incentives for joint custody have negative effects on the human capital development and health of children of divorced parents. Custody data together with parental characteristics and time use data suggest that economic incentives for joint custody may limit children's time spent with relatively high-quality mothers, as fathers pursue joint custody in response to the policy. We do not find an effect of economic incentives for joint custody on the probability of divorce and on the wellbeing of children in intact families. Our results are robust to specification changes, and the negative effects of economic incentives for joint custody on the wellbeing of children tend to be larger for girls and for children aged 12 and under.

Importance of living arrangements and coparenting quality for young children’s mental health after parental divorce: a cross-sectional parental survey

BackgroundParental separation has been associated with adverse child mental health outcomes in the literature. For school-aged children, joint physical custody (JPC), that is, spending equal time in both parents’ homes...

From stigma to acceptance: Intellectual and developmental disabilities in Central China.

Children with intellectual and developmental disabilities have historically been at high risk for social exclusion and other vulnerabilities. The Western world has shifted away from institutionally-based services and toward community-based services that allow for greater social inclusion as well as for meeting individual developmental needs, and China is beginning the process of exploring how to make this shift. In 2014 and 2015, a situation analysis examining the lived experiences of parents of children with disabilities in Zhengzhou, Henan, China, was undertaken. Perceptions of strengths, needs, opportunities, and barriers experienced by parents of children in intact families (i.e. families where children with disabilities remain in their birth families) were explored by means of parent interviews and focus groups. Families identify experiences of stigma and acceptance related to traditional and alternative social constructions of intellectual and developmental disabilities, and how they use social networks and information-sharing to help develop community-based services.

Parental break-ups and stress: roles of age & family structure in 44 509 pre-adolescent children.

Parental break-up is wide spread, and the effects of parental break-up on children's well-being are known. The evidence regarding child age at break-up and subsequent family arrangements is inconclusive. Aim: to estimate the effects of parental break-up on stress in pre-adolescent children with a specific focus on age at break-up and post-breakup family arrangements. We used data from the Danish National Birth Cohort. Participants included 44 509 children followed from birth to age 11. Stress was self-reported by children at age 11, when the children also reported on parental break-up and post break-up family arrangements. Twenty-one percent of the children had experienced a parental break-up at age 11, and those who had experienced parental break-up showed a higher risk of stress (OR:1.72, 95%CI:1.55;1.91) regardless of the child's age at break-up. Children living in a new family with stepparents (OR = 1.63, 95%CI:1.38;1.92), or shared between the parents (OR = 1.48, 95%CI:1.26;1.75) reported higher stress than children of intact families. Single parent families reported markedly higher stress levels than children in intact families (OR = 2.18, 95%CI:1.90;2.50) and all other family types. Children who were satisfied with their living arrangements post-break-up reported the same stress level as children living in intact families (OR = 1.01, 95%CI:0.86;1.18). Children who experience parental break-up have higher stress levels, also many years after the break-up, and those living in a single parent household post break-up seem to be most vulnerable. Living arrangements post-breakup should be further investigated as a potential protective factor.

Impacto de la ruptura de los progenitores en el estado de salud física de los hijos

The aim of the present study is to assess the risks associated with parental breakup on the children's physical health indicators in relation to adaptive and maladaptive behaviour. A cross-sectional designed study was conducted to assess the physical health indicators of children in relation to the family type (intact homes vs. separated parents). The study was performed in the Primary Healthcare Area of the University Hospital of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). The sample consisted of 467 children and adolescents, of whom 300 (64.2%) were from broken homes, and 167 (35.8%) from intact families. The data on physical health were gathered using a structured interview, the Structured Developmental History of the BASC. Children living with separated parents had approximately double the risk of gastrointestinal, genitourinary, dermatological and neurological disorders than children in intact families. Parental breakup is a risk factor for the children's physical health in terms of genitourinary, gastrointestinal, dermatological, and neurological disorders.

Father-Child-Contact and Well-being of the Children in Separated and Non-Separated Families

Father-Child-Contact and Well-being of the Children in Separated and Non-Separated Families This study investigated determinants of the contact between children and fathers after parental separation and the interplay of family status (non-separated vs. separated families), father-child relationship-quality and child's well-being. We compared 254 adolescents aged 15 to 19 years, from non-separated and separated families, by administering an adaptation of the "Inventory of Life Quality in Children and Adolescents" (Mattejat u. Remschmidt, 1998) and the scale emotionality of the FPI-R (Fahrenberg, Hampel, Selg, 2000). Contact between fathers and children after parental separation was mainly associated with parental conflict and contact during and after the separation. No significant associations were found with age and gender of the child, maternal remarriage or paternal education. The relationship to the father mediated the effects of family arrangement on different measures of child well-being. In separated families children with little contact to their fathers showed worse relationships to them compared to children in intact families. Good father-child relationships were positively associated with different measures of children's well-being. A central conclusion of this study is, that the father-child relationship is an important source for child's well-being.

Parental Divorce, Psychological Well-Being and Educational Attainment: Changed Experience, Unchanged Effect Among Swedes Born 1892–1991

During the last century, the proportion of children and adolescents who have experienced a parental divorce or separation has increased dramatically, in Sweden and elsewhere. Vast research has shown that children in these families fare less well than children in intact families, both in the short and in the long run and on a number of outcomes. Much less is known about whether parental divorce means the same for children and adolescents today as it did a century ago. Have living conditions changed and, if so, how? Moreover, has the association between parental divorce and child well-being changed in magnitude over time? To answer these questions six waves of the Swedish Level of Living Survey were used. The data set contains indicators on childhood living conditions for an entire century of Swedes, born 1892–1991. We show that living conditions for children of divorce have indeed changed on a number of dimensions but there is no evidence of magnitude change in the association between parental divorce/separation and two child outcomes, psychological well-being and educational attainment.

Child mental health after parental separation: The impact of resident/non-resident parenting, parent mental health, conflict and socioeconomics

Children of separated parents are consistently shown to have greater likelihood of poor mental health than children of intact families. Explanations to date have focused on the impacts of parental conflict, and the role of resident mothers, neglecting the potential importance of non-resident fathers. Using recent data from the longitudinal study of Australian children, this study: (1) compares the mental health of children from intact families with resident fathers to those from separated families with non-resident fathers; and (2) explores predictors of poor mental health among children from separated families. Children from separated families had poorer mental health than those from intact families, but this difference was explained fully by exposure to parental conflict, socioeconomic status and parent mental health, and to a lesser extent by parenting practices. Among children from separated families, the strongest predictor of child mental health was maternal parenting consistency. Policy implications are discussed.

Child mental health after parental separation: the impact of resident/non-resident parenting, parent mental health, conflict and socioeconomics.

Children of separated parents tend to have poorer mental health than children of intact families. Explanations to date have tended to focus on resident mothers, neglecting the potential importance of non-resident fathers. Using recent data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, and independent teacher-reports of child mental health, this study 1) compares the mental health of children with resident and non-resident fathers and 2) explores predictors of poor mental health among children with a non-resident father. Children with a non-resident father had poorer mental health than those with a resident father, but this difference was explained fully by exposure to parental conflict, and to a lesser extent by socioeconomic status, parenting, and parent mental health. For children with a non-resident father, the strongest predictors of child mental health were mothers' employment and maternal parenting consistency. Policy implications are discussed.

Family Types, Direct Money Transfers from Parents, and School Enrollment among Youth

Intrafamily resource transfers have not been studied extensively as a process that may help reduce the well-being disadvantage of stepchildren in parental remarriages relative to biological children in parental first marriages. The process is examined here by analyzing the link between direct parental money transfers and academic outcomes, as measured by enrollment. I develop and test two alternative hypotheses pertaining to a part of this link, which distinctly applies to children of remarried stepfamilies—the component not shared with children in intact families. An adaptive strategy hypothesis posits a well-being enhancing distinct component, operationalized as a positive interaction effect between measures of parental transfers × stepchildren in parental remarriages. A compromised use hypothesis posits a well-being compromising one, implying a negative interaction effect. Two sets of results from analyzing data on 18- to 21-year-olds over multiple years (Nyouth-age = 5,736, Nperson = 3,615) in the first five waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 support the adaptive strategy hypothesis: (1) the interaction effect (income received from parents × being a stepchild in a parental remarriage) has a positive sign, and (2) this interaction effect is consistently positive, whether the youth is at risk of attending high school or college, even when the direction of the shared component of the link, as measured by the main effect of income from parents, varies by the level of schooling. The results suggest the presence of a robust well-being enhancing money transfer mechanism supporting children in some remarried stepparent families.

Shared Parenting: Adding Children's Voices and Their Measures of Adjustment to the Evaluation

Shared parenting has been advocated to be a better arrangement for children than sole residence and access arrangements after parental separation. Although there is some research on this issue, studies have been restricted in their reliance on the reports of others. In this paper, we report on a study in Australia, in which children in each of these arrangements were compared with children in intact families on a range of adjustment measures and with each other in relation to their responses to their parents' separation, using both self- and parent-reporting. We found that there was little difference between children in the three family configurations, suggesting that shared parenting is not necessarily associated with better outcomes for the child. On other aspects of adjustment, the children in shared parenting and sole residence/access families did not differ. We also found that parents in all groups underestimated the emotional problems reported by children. In separated families, they also overestimated the children's desire for parents to re-unite. Finally, we found that parents in shared parenting families are more satisfied with their situation than are their children, and fathers are particularly so. The findings suggest that the promotion of shared parenting as the best post-separation family structure is contestable.

Family Relationships and the Psychosocial Adjustment of School-Aged Children in Intact Families

ABSTRACT The authors investigated whether the quality of three family relationships (i.e., marital, parent–child, sibling) in intact families are associated with each other and with children's psychosocial adjustment. Data were collected by means of maternal and child reports (N = 88) using standardized instruments (i.e., Marital Satisfaction Scale, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire). The findings confirm associations between the marital and the parent–child relationship, and between the parent–child and the sibling relationship. Further, both father–child relationships and sibling relationships predict children's adjustment. Father–child conflicts contribute to children's problem behavior, while father–child acceptance and sibling affection contribute significantly to children's general self-esteem. However, contrary to previous studies no support was found for the association between marital relationship and sibling relationship, or for that between marital relationship quality and children's adjustment.

Divorce, Remarriage, and Child Support

There is some evidence that children of divorced parents do not perform as well as comparable children in intact families but that this gap declines with the aggregate divorce rate. We develop a model in which the higher expectations for remarriage associated with higher divorce rates can trigger an equilibrium in which divorced fathers make more generous transfers that benefit their children and the mother in the aftermath of divorce. As a result, the welfare loss of children from the separation of their parents can be lower when divorce and remarriage rates rise.

Undesirable Juvenile Behavior and the Quality of Parental Relationships

[Author Affiliation]Stephen T Mennemeyer, Department of Health Care Organization and Policy, 330 RBPH, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-0022, USA; smenneme@uab.edu; corresponding authorBisakha Sen, Department of Health Care Organization and Policy, 330 RBPH, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-0022, USA; bsen@uab.edu[Acknowledgment]We are grateful to editor Julie Hotchkiss and two anonymous referees for many excellent suggestions. The responsibility for all errors is ours.... children don't need their parents to like each other. They don't even need them to be especially civil. They need them to stay together, for better or worse.... Physical abuse, substance addiction and other severe pathologies cannot be tolerated in any home. Absent these, however, Wallerstein stands firm: a lousy marriage, at least where the children's welfare is concerned, beats a great divorce.11. IntroductionHow do the structure of a family and the quality of parental relationships relate to the behavior of children? Extant literature has consistently found that parental divorce and/or the absence of fathers from a household are correlated with numerous undesirable outcomes for children, including lower educational attainment, emotional problems, substance use, participation in undesirable activities, and other problematic outcomes.2 The correlation persists even after controlling for factors such as household income, indicating that remedies such as better enforcement of child support or enhancement of the single-parent's income by other methods will not suffice to counter the negative outcomes for children.It is tempting to infer from the above findings that one way to reduce negative outcomes for children is to make divorce between parents more difficult. In contrast, proponents of no-fault divorce have argued that unhappy marriages should be dissolved easily because neither parents nor children benefit under such a situation. Indeed, survey results reported by the BBC in November 2000 found that 64% of surveyed adults believed that for children, divorce was preferable to living with permanently squabbling parents.3 However, opponents have countered that household structure matters for children because they need supervision and guidance from both parents (and that stepparents are typically poor substitutes). In the highly publicized and controversial book The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (2000), Wallerstein (a therapist and retired lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley) and her coauthors make the argument that an intact marriage is beneficial to children, regardless of the quality of parental relationships.While the work of Wallerstein et al. has been criticized for a lack of methodological rigor and although the nonrandom nature of the authors' sample prevents generalization of their findings,4 the authors' assertions draw attention to the fact that there remains a dearth of studies that compare outcomes for children in divorced families versus children in intact families in which the quality of the parental relationship is poor. There are obvious problems with comparing the behavior or outcomes of children from divorced families with those of families that choose to stay together, presumably because the marital relationship is harmonious, and then attributing the differences to family structure. Ideally, one would like to compare the outcomes for children belonging to a divorced household with those of a control group of children from an unhappily married household in which the parents are prevented from getting divorced because of purely external reasons. Failing this, it is still useful to try to disentangle, to the degree possible with existing data, the separate effects on child behavior of household structure and the degree of harmony among the adults therein. …

Fathering practices in twenty-six intact families and the implications for child contact

The nature of the contribution that fathers make to families is the subject of intense debate by both academics and policymakers. Contact between non-resident fathers and their children has been promoted by government and the courts, but remains difficult to achieve. This paper reports on interview data collected from fathers, mothers and their adolescent children in intact families on the perceptions of fathering practices and the factors that influence them. In addition, the nature and extent of fathers’ involvement with their children is explored in relation to the problem of ‘boundary setting’.While the traditional, rather distant, breadwinning father has disappeared, there is no evidence from this study of a shift towards the kind of father who takes equal day-to-day responsibility for his children. Rather, the changes in the nature of fathers’ involvement with their children are more subtle, relying to a large extent on an appreciation of the importance of ‘passive care’ and of mediation by mothers. We suggest that these findings have important implications for what might be expected by and of fathers when relationships break-up, and for the development of policies to encourage father involvement.

The Effect of Divorce on Personal and Familial Images

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of divorce on personal and familial images of adolescents by comparing the image construction of adolescents from intact families with that of adolescents from divorced families. The study consisted of a probability sample of 957 Jewish Israeli youths between the ages of 13-18. Findings indicate that parental divorce has a moderate negative impact on children's construction of personal and familial images as compared to that of children in intact families. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

LOCUS OF CONTROL OF CHILDREN EXPERIENCING SEPARATION AND DIVORCE IN THEIR FAMILIES IN IRAN

A comparison of scores on locus of control by three groups of children in intact families (n = 676), parent loss through death (n = 30), and parent loss through divorce (n = 20) showed that children from divorced families scored significantly more external than children from intact families. The results are considered in relation to previous studies and some educational implications noted.

Parental behavior and attitudes of their parents reported by young adults from intact and stepparent families and relationships between perceived parenting and personality

This study compares the perceptions of mothers and fathers by their children in intact families and stepparent families and the relationships between these descriptions of parenting and personality traits of the children. Subjects were college students: 133 from intact families, 87 from families with a stepfather and 19 from stepmother families. Descriptions of parenting by their children were obtained by a short form of the EMBU yielding three scores: Love, Punishment–Rejection and Control. Personality traits were measured by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQ-R) and the Zuckerman–Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire (ZKPQ). Stepmothers were rated lower on Mother Love and stepfathers were rated lower on Father Love than mothers and fathers in intact families. Mothers in stepfather families were rated higher in Punishment–Rejection and fathers in stepmother families were rated lower in Father Love than mothers and fathers in intact families. Despite their differences in perceptions of parents there were no differences in personality traits between children from the three types of families. Correlations between descriptions of parents and personality traits in the intact families for both sexes were mostly between Father Love (lack of) and Punishment–Rejection and Neuroticism in both the EPQ and ZKPQ. Father Punishment also correlated with Neuroticism in the stepfather families.

Paternal involvement with adolescents in intact families: The influence of fathers over the life course

We measure the quality and quantity of fathers' involvement with adolescent children in intact families over time using longitudinal data from The National Survey of Children. We examine differentials in fathers' involvement by children's and family characteristics and model the long-term effects of fathers' involvement on children's outcomes in the transition to adulthood. Fathers are more involved with sons than with daughters and they disengage from adolescents with increasing marital conflict. We find beneficial effects for children of father's involvement in three domains: educational and economic attainment, delinquent behavior, and psychological well-being. The course of affective relations throughout adolescence also has a beneficial effect on delinquent behavior and psychological well-being.

Family dissolution, family reconstitution, and children’s educational careers: Recent evidence for Sweden

Both longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses on a large and recent Swedish data set demonstrate that, compared to children in intact families, children who have experienced family dissolution or reconstitution show lower educational attainment at age 16. Time constraints do not seem to be an important mechanism behind the negative effect of separation. Economic deprivation affects children's attainment negatively, but downward social mobility appears to be an even more important causal mechanism: Losing the parent with the higher social position probably reduces social capital and aspirations. When we control for socioeconomic characteristics, a small net effect of separation and reconstitution remains.