Conceptual frameworks for measuring children s well-being Accepting that children should be considered a separate social group is only a first step. Children and childhood can be perceived in different ways as an age group, as a social class, and as part of an inter-generational family structure. Measures of well-being must be based on a conceptual framework that integrates these perspectives. In such a framework, the main domains include demography, education, health, children at risk, and juvenile activity, among others. An alternative framework builds upon the relationship between enabling or risk factors and outcomes.
Many variables serve both as outcomes and as enabling factors for other outcomes.
Health status is an outcome, but it facilitates many other outcomes by affecting a child s ability to participate in, or benefit from, various activities. In this context, we must also distinguish between structural and process variables. At the level of the family, family composition or parental characteristics are structural variables, but parenting techniques constitute a process variable. At the societal level, legal provisions for employed mothers are a structural variable, but the way in which employers relate to child-rearing needs is a process variable. In thinking about children s well-being, there exists an important distinction between concern with the present and concern with the future.