Should Single Parents Remain That Way?
In an age when cohabitation and divorce are common, single parents concerned about the developmental health of their children may want to choose new partners slowly and deliberately, new research from The Johns Hopkins University suggests.
But why that?
The more transitions children go through in their living situation, the more likely they are to act out. They also found that the effect of family upheaval on children varies by race.
Each breakup, divorce, remarriage or new cohabitation, there is a period of adjustment as parents, partners, and children establish their places in a new family setting. Studying a nationally representative sample of mothers and their children, the researchers found that children who go through frequent transitions are more likely to have behavioral problems than children raised in stable two-parent families and maybe even more than those in stable single-parent families.
Changes at home seem to have a stronger negative impact on white children than on black children, the researchers found. There is also Family instability does appear to have a causal role in determining whether white children exhibit more behavior problems.
Instability isn’t the whole story, but looking at change tells us more about what explains children’s behavioral development than what we would see by looking at a cross-section. Read more here.