Diverse Early-Life Family Trajectories and Young Children’s Mental Health in the UK

Past research suggests that children from two-parent married families fare better than children from other families on many outcomes. Only fragmented evidence on diverse family trajectories in association with child mental health is available. Using multi-channel sequence analysis and data from the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of family issues Vol. 45; no. 12; pp. 3180 - 3208
Main Authors Šťastná, Michaela, Mikolai, Júlia, Finney, Nissa, Keenan, Katherine Lisa
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.12.2024
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Child & adolescent mental health
Children
Coresidence
Families & family life
Fathers
Marital separation
Marriage
Mental health
Parents & parenting
Random effects
United Kingdom > UK
divorce/separation
family demography
parent/child relations
step-families
life course
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Summary:Past research suggests that children from two-parent married families fare better than children from other families on many outcomes. Only fragmented evidence on diverse family trajectories in association with child mental health is available. Using multi-channel sequence analysis and data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, we jointly capture maternal partnership trajectories and type of father co-residence between birth and age 5. We then assess the association between these family trajectories and child mental health at age 5 and 8 using random effects regression. Children whose trajectories include the entrance of a non-biological father or parental separation have the lowest levels of mental health. However, children of never partnered mothers and those who repartner with the biological father have comparable mental health to children of stably married biological parents. Thus, not all types of family complexity or instability appear to be equally detrimental to children’s mental health.
ISSN:0192-513X
1552-5481
DOI:10.1177/0192513X241236561