Effects of Diverse Forms of Family Structure on Female and Male Homicide

Utilizing 2000 data on 1,618 counties and seemingly unrelated regression, I assess whether family structure effects on homicide vary across family structure measures and gender. There is evidence of robust, multidimensional family structure effects across constructs reflecting the presence of two-parent families: mother/father absence, shortages of employed men, and nonmarital/teen childbearing. Findings indicate mainly gender similarity in family structural sources of homicide, but subtle gender differences include stronger effects on male homicide patterns and female-specific mediating effects of the care burden on homicide. Further exploration of diverse family constructs is warranted, but, methodologically, father absence is adequate as a control for family structure. Public policies and social programs aimed at strengthening families could lessen violence among both women and men. Key Words: crime and delinquency, family structure, gender, measurement, social context, violence. The notion that families are integral to community functioning has been central in the recent and growing body of cross-disciplinary ecological research affirming the significance of social context for shaping behavioral outcomes (see reviews in Burton & Jarrett, 2000; Sampson, Morenoff, & Gannon-Rowley, 2002). Recent scholarship has identified robust communitylevel family structure effects on problem-related behaviors such as crime and delinquency as well as depression and other mental health outcomes, high-risk sexual behavior, and failure in school or employment (e.g., Crane, 1991; Sampson, 1986, 1987; Wickrama & Bryant, 2003). Despite the central role of families in scholarship examining social problems at the community level and the growing consensus that macrolevel "family disruption" affects antisocial behavior, two issues remain unresolved. First, though it is widely recognized that family forms have become increasingly diverse, ecological research has largely focused on the violenceproducing effects of family disruption, disruption narrowly defined as the percent of female-headed households or the divorce rate (see Parker, McCaIl, & Land, 1999, for a review). Empirical research on the effects of other measures of family structure on violence, such as the shape of the marriage market (e.g., sex ratios, male marriage pool) or other dimensions of family structure (e.g., nonmarital births, the care burden), has been more limited despite extensive theoretical statements positing their significance for community violence control efforts (Wilson, 1987). Increasingly prevalent family forms, such as mother absence, have not been empirically explored at the macrolevel. In this research, I examine the concept of family structure more closely by exploring the nature and consistency of effects across diverse measures of family structure including father and mother absence, divorce, the male marriage pool index, sex ratios, the care burden, and two measures of nonmarital childbearing. In doing so, I begin to specify which aspects of community family structure are most salient for the etiology of problem behaviors such as violence and I contribute to the development of ecological family constructs. second, whereas there is a growing body of individual-level research examining gender differences in behavioral outcomes related to family form and an accumulating literature on the causes of and pathways into female offending, there is a scarcity of research at the aggregate level that examines the gendered behavioral implications of family structure (Steffensmeier & Haynie, 2000). The theoretical question of whether macrolevel family structure indicators operate similarly for female and male rates of problem behavior has been debated extensively, but an empirical resolution has yet to be offered. Genderdisaggregated research focusing on a range of family structure variables is particularly warranted given individual-level evidence that young women and men may enact different responses to family disruption (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994; Mott, Kowaleski-Jones, & Menaghan, 1997), as well as conflicting theoretical statements within criminology presuming greater salience of family conditions for antisocial behavior among both women (Broidy & Agnew, 1997; Morris, 1964) and men (Anderson, 1990; Steffensmeier & Haynie, 2000). …