Tan Mei, Li Nan, Mungo Ackim, Thuma Philip E, Grigorenko Elena L
HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, Columbia University/New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA.
Department of Psychological Science, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, TX, USA.
AIDS Care. 2025 Jun;37(6):991-1002. doi: 10.1080/09540121.2025.2484633. Epub 2025 Apr 1.
The African kinship system facilitates the movement of children and adults between households to mitigate hardship, yet few studies have documented membership changes in rural African households over time and addressed the effects of these household dynamics on the developmental outcomes of children. We used a household inventory instrument to document the number of changes in household membership experienced by 93 households in rural Zambia between two timepoints (∼2 years apart). We then used multilevel models to evaluate the effects of migration and household change on the academic learning of the children affected by HIV residing in these households, positing migration between households as a proxy for household connectivity and a potential protective factor for children. Our inventoried households experienced on average 4.12 changes in membership over the measured period. About half of these changes were due to children under 10 moving between relatives' households. No effects of these migration-related variables were found on children's academic progress at the family level. Household connectivity, as operationalized by the movement of individuals between households, may be typical to these children's home life and were not shown to be detrimental to their academic learning.
非洲亲属制度有助于儿童和成年人在家庭之间流动以缓解困难，但很少有研究记录非洲农村家庭随时间推移的成员变化情况，也未探讨这些家庭动态对儿童发育结果的影响。我们使用家庭清单工具记录了赞比亚农村地区93个家庭在两个时间点（相隔约2年）经历的家庭成员变化数量。然后，我们使用多层次模型评估迁移和家庭变化对这些家庭中受艾滋病毒影响儿童学业的影响，将家庭之间的迁移作为家庭联系的代理指标以及儿童的潜在保护因素。在测量期间，我们记录的家庭平均经历了4.12次成员变化。其中约一半的变化是由于10岁以下儿童在亲属家庭之间流动。在家庭层面，未发现这些与迁移相关的变量对儿童学业进步有影响。以个人在家庭之间的流动来衡量的家庭联系，可能是这些儿童家庭生活的常态，并未显示出对他们的学业学习有不利影响。
