Family Instability and Adolescent Relationships: The Role of Parental Relationship Churning

Parental relationship histories are associated with adolescents’ romantic and sexual relationships. However, no research examines the association between parents’ being in an on-again/off-again relationship (churning) and adolescent relationship outcomes, even though a substantial minority of youth experience this form of family instability. Using Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study data, the present study examines how parental relationship histories are associated with adolescents’ dating and sexual experiences. We find that differences in outcomes between adolescents who experience parental relationship churning and adolescents who experience other parental relationship histories are largely explained by variation in adolescent and parental characteristics. These findings suggest that adolescents who experience parental relationship churning are a distinctive group, but for reasons other than their parents’ tumultuous relationship histories.

Early-Life Adversities and Recalcitrant Smoking in Midlife: An Examination of Gender and Life-Course Pathways

Background Little is known about life-course factors that explain why some individuals continue smoking despite having smoking-related diseases. Purpose We examined (a) the extent to which early-life adversities are associated with the risk of recalcitrant smoking, (b) psychosocial factors that mediate the association, and (c) gender differences in the associations. Methods Data were from 4,932 respondents (53% women) who participated in the first and follow-up waves of the Midlife Development in the U.S. National Survey. Early-life adversities include low socioeconomic status (SES), abuse, and family instability. Potential mediators include education, financial strain, purpose in life, mood disorder, family problems/support, and marital status. We used sequential logistic regression models to estimate the effect of early-life adversities on the risk of each of the three stages on the path to recalcitrant smoking (ever-smoking, smoking-related illness, and recalcitrant smoking). Results For women, low SES (odds ratio [OR] = 1.29; 1.06–1.55) and family instability (OR = 1.73; 1.14–2.62) are associated with an elevated risk of recalcitrant smoking. Education significantly reduces the effect of childhood SES, yet the effect of family instability remains significant even after accounting for life-course mediators. For men, the effect of low SES on recalcitrant smoking is robust (OR = 1.48; 1.10–2.00) even after controlling for potential mediators. There are noteworthy life-course factors that independently affect recalcitrant smoking: for both genders, not living with a partner; for women, education; and for men, family problems. Conclusions The findings can help shape intervention programs that address the underlying factors of recalcitrant smoking.

Family structure effects on U.S. children’s well-being? Re-examining the family instability hypothesis

Previous studies have shown that children who grow up in marriage-based twoparent families fare better in terms of their well-being than children who do not. Other researchers have instead argued that these negative effects are confounded by the children’s parents characteristics affecting selection into specific family structure trajectories, which likewise affect the children’s well-being. However, researchers have been unable to account for the complex and dynamic relation between the socioeconomic conditions of individuals and their trajectories of family formation and dissolution. Here I argue that even when researchers account for selection based on observable background characteristics, the negative effect of changes in family structure experienced during childhood on children’s well-being may be biased. Exposure-confounder feedback bias may be present in this association in the form of time-varying confounders such as socioeconomic conditions which affect family transitions and are affected by them dynamically. Data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study is used to empirically show this is the case. Family instability is here considered as a timevarying exposure. Estimations of effects of family transitions on multiple dimensions of children’s well-being are obtained through estimation of doubly robust marginal structural models and inverse probability of treatment weighting. It is shown that most of the effects of family instability are negative with a few noticeable exceptions. But more importantly, the paper shows that the size of these negative effects can be substantially reduced after partially accounting for an idiosyncratic selection of baseline background confounders and exposure-confounder feedback mechanisms. A discussion of these findings, as they relate to the association between socioeconomic conditions and contemporary family dynamics in the U.S., ensues.

Contribution of the Rise in Cohabiting Parenthood to Family Instability: Cohort Change in Italy, Great Britain, and Scandinavia

In this study, we investigate through microsimulation the link between cohabiting parenthood and family instability. We identify mechanisms through which increases in cohabiting parenthood may contribute to overall increases in separation among parents, linking micro-level processes to macro-level outcomes. Analyses are based on representative surveys in Italy, Great Britain, and Scandinavia (represented by Norway and Sweden), with full histories of women’s unions and births. We first generate parameters for the risk of first and higher-order birth and union events by woman’s birth cohort and country. The estimated parameters are used to generate country- and cohort-specific populations of women with stochastically predicted family life courses. We use the hypothetical populations to decompose changes in the percentage of mothers who separate/divorce across maternal birth cohorts (1940s to 1950s, 1950s to 1960s, 1960s to 1970s), identifying how much of the change can be attributed to shifts in union status at first birth and how much is due to change in separation rates for each union type. We find that when cohabiting births were uncommon, increases in parents’ separation were driven primarily by increases in divorce among married parents. When cohabiting parenthood became more visible, it also became a larger component, but continued increases in parents’ divorce also contributed to increasing parental separation. When cohabiting births became quite common, the higher separation rates of cohabiting parents began to play a greater role than married parents’ divorce. When most couples had their first birth in cohabitation, those having children in marriage were increasingly selected from the most stable relationships, and their decreasing divorce rates offset the fact that increasing proportions of children were born in somewhat less stable cohabiting unions.