The Timing of Family Instability and Children’s Social Development

This study extends the growing literature of family instability by investigating the significance of its timing for children's social adjustment. We find that more than a third of the 1,364 elementary school children in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development experienced some family structure change. Their cumulative level of family instability was associated with multiple indicators of social development at the end of elementary school, associations that were especially strong for boys. These associations were driven largely by the lasting effect of family change in early childhood, demonstrating the significance of early family instability for children's later social development. Key Words: development or outcomes, family structure, middle childhood. Family scholars have increasingly recognized the significance of cumulative family instability for children's development (Cavanagh & Huston, 2006; Fomby & Cherlin, 2007; Osborne & McLanahan, 2007; Teachman, 2003; Wu & Martinson, 1993). A question often raised by this research has to do with timing, or when young people experience family instability. Given that the implications of the many changes set in motion by family instability-changes in parenting behaviors and the home environment, social and economic resources, and emotional attachments between the child and parents, extended family, and community-often depend on the age of the child at the time of the transition, the associations between family instability and child well-being should vary as a function of child age (Elder, 1998). Yet the extant research suggests that the developmental significance of family instability is not age specific (Wu & Martinson; Teachman). In this study, we put forward the proposition mat this surprising lack of empirical support for the theoretically hypothesized timing effect is a result of both the domain of child development investigated and the life stage in which family researchers typically search for it. We argue that social development during elementary school is where mese timing effects will most likely appear and present evidence from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) to support this claim. In this way, the aim of this study is to rejuvenate a promising area of family research that seems to have stalled. FAMILY INSTABILITY AND THE ISSUE OF TIMING Dramatic changes in marriage and divorce over the past 60 years have generated a voluminous literature on the effects of divorce on child wellbeing. The living arrangements of American children, however, are more fluid man much of this literature implies (Bumpass & Lu, 2000). Recently, scholars have begun to explore the developmental significance of relationship instability in the parent generation for well-being in the child generation. Viewed through the instability and change perspective, this research emphasizes family transitions, not statuses, as a key dimension of children's family structure history. Combining insights from stress theory with evidence of the negative effects of residential mobility, this perspective posits that a change in a parent's marital and romantic history-be it divorce, remarriage, or the start or end of a cohabiting union-introduces stress into parents' lives that passes down to children (Teachman, 2003; Wu & Martinson, 1993). From the perspective of resident parents, a family change can produce feelings of depression and financial stress as they, typically mothers, juggle a host of new demands, including the emotional needs of household members and changes in parenting and other responsibilities (Amato, 2005). This stress, in turn, can disrupt children's sense of security and feelings of connectedness with parents and create ambiguity in family relationships, household rules, and parental expectations. Moreover, a transition can create dramatic changes in family income and parents' employment pattems (Simons & Associates, 1996). …