Bzostek Sharon H, Berger Lawrence M
Department of Sociology and Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
Institute for Research on Poverty and School of Social Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
Demography. 2017 Apr;54(2):513-540. doi: 10.1007/s13524-017-0563-5.
A vast amount of literature has documented negative associations between family instability and child development, with the largest associations being in the socioemotional (behavioral) domain. Yet, prior work has paid limited attention to differentiating the role of the number, types, and sequencing of family transitions that children experience, as well as to understanding potential heterogeneity in these associations by family structure at birth. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and hierarchical linear models to examine associations of family structure states and transitions with children's socioemotional development during the first nine years of life. We pay close attention to the type and number of family structure transitions experienced and examine whether associations differ depending on family structure at birth. For children born to cohabiting or noncoresident parents, we find little evidence that subsequent family structure experiences are associated with socioemotional development. For children born to married parents, we find associations between family instability and poorer socioemotional development. However, this largely reflects the influence of parental breakup; we find little evidence that socioemotional trajectories differ for children with various family structure experiences subsequent to their parents' breakup.
大量文献记录了家庭不稳定与儿童发展之间的负面关联，其中最大的关联存在于社会情感（行为）领域。然而，先前的研究在区分儿童经历的家庭转变的数量、类型和顺序所起的作用方面关注有限，在理解这些关联因出生时的家庭结构而产生的潜在异质性方面也关注有限。我们使用脆弱家庭与儿童福利研究的数据和分层线性模型，来检验家庭结构状态和转变与儿童生命最初九年的社会情感发展之间的关联。我们密切关注所经历的家庭结构转变的类型和数量，并考察这些关联是否因出生时的家庭结构而异。对于同居或非共同居住父母所生的孩子，我们几乎没有发现证据表明随后的家庭结构经历与社会情感发展有关。对于已婚父母所生的孩子，我们发现家庭不稳定与较差的社会情感发展之间存在关联。然而，这在很大程度上反映了父母离异的影响；我们几乎没有发现证据表明，在父母离异后，具有不同家庭结构经历的孩子的社会情感轨迹存在差异。
