Partnership Instability and Child Well-being

Preprint
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
  • 1 January 2007
    • preprint
      • Published in RePEc
Abstract
We use data from three waves of the Fragile Families Study (N = 2,111) to examine the prevalence and effects of mothers? partnership changes between birth and age 3 on children?s behavior. We find that children born to unmarried and minority parents experience significantly more partnership changes than children born to parents who are married or White. Each transition is associated with a modest increase in behavioral problems, but a significant number of children experience three or more transitions. The effects of instability do not depend on the mothers? relationship status or race/ethnicity with one exception: instability has a stronger effect on aggression among Hispanic children. The association between instability and behavior is mediated by maternal stress and lower quality mothering.
All Related Versions

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: