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Family structure transitions and adolescent well-being

Demography volume 43, pages 447–461 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

Using data from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I extend prior research on family transitions and adolescent well-being by examining the influence of parental marital and cohabitation transitions on adolescent delinquency, depression, and school engagement. Adolescents who experienced a family transition reported decreased well-being, on average, relative to those in stable, two-biological-parent families. Specific comparisons of various types of family stability and change revealed that cohabitation is often associated with poorer outcomes. Moving out of a cohabiting stepfamily into a single-mother family was not harmful and was actually associated with improvements in school engagement. Moving into a cohabiting stepfamily from a single-mother family decreased adolescent well-being, and this impact was greater than that experienced by those who moved into a married stepfamily. Stable cohabiting stepfamilies were associated with lower levels of well-being than stable married stepfamilies. Formalization of a cohabiting stepfamily through marriage did not translate into any appreciable benefits for adolescent well-being.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, 239 Williams Hall, 43403, Bowling Green, OH

    Susan L. Brown

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  1. Susan L. Brown
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Additional information

The research for this article is supported by a grant to the author from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K01-HD424781) and by the Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, which has core funding from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (R24- HD0050959). This research uses data from the Add Health project, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry (PI) and Peter Bearman and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Persons interested in obtaining data files from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2524 (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). The author thanks the seminar participants at the Initiative in Population Research at the Ohio State University and the Center for Family and Demographic Research at Bowling Green State University for their feedback on this research. Additional thanks to I-Fen Lin, Wendy D. Manning, the anonymous reviewers, and Demography editors for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

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Brown, S.L. Family structure transitions and adolescent well-being. Demography 43, 447–461 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2006.0021

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/dem.2006.0021

Keywords

  • Relationship Quality
  • School Engagement
  • Family Transition
  • Adolescent Outcome
  • Parenting Resource