美国儿童的家庭复杂性
Family Complexity among Children in the United States.
作者信息
Manning Wendy D, Brown Susan L, Stykes J Bart
出版信息
Ann Am Acad Pol Soc Sci. 2014 Jul 1;654(1):48-65. doi: 10.1177/0002716214524515.
Researchers largely have relied on a measure of family structure to describe children's living arrangements, but this approach captures only the child's relationship to the parent(s), ignoring the presence and composition of siblings. We develop a measure of family complexity that merges family structure and sibling composition to distinguish between simple two-biological-parent families, families with complex-sibling (half or stepsiblings) arrangements, and complex-parent (stepparent, single-parent) families. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we provide a descriptive profile of changes in children's living arrangements over a 13-year span (1996-2009). SIPP sample sizes are sufficiently large to permit an evaluation of changes in the distribution of children in various (married, cohabiting, and single-parent) simple and complex families according to race/ethnicity and parental education. The article concludes by showing that we have reached a plateau in family complexity and that complexity is concentrated among the most disadvantaged families.
研究人员在很大程度上依赖于一种家庭结构衡量标准来描述儿童的生活安排,但这种方法只体现了孩子与父母的关系,却忽略了兄弟姐妹的存在及其构成情况。我们制定了一种家庭复杂性衡量标准,将家庭结构和兄弟姐妹构成结合起来,以区分简单的双亲家庭、有复杂兄弟姐妹关系(同父异母或同母异父、继兄弟姐妹)的家庭以及复杂父母关系(继父母、单亲)的家庭。通过使用收入与项目参与调查(SIPP),我们描绘了13年期间(1996年至2009年)儿童生活安排变化的概况。SIPP的样本量足够大,能够让我们根据种族/族裔和父母教育程度,评估不同类型(已婚、同居和单亲)的简单家庭和复杂家庭中儿童分布的变化情况。文章最后指出,我们在家庭复杂性方面已达到一个平稳状态,且这种复杂性集中在最弱势的家庭中。