Abstract
Objective: This study examines how the quality of family relationships in stepfamilies during adolescence are associated with stepchildren's 4-year college attendance in young adulthood. Background: On average, college attendance is lower for youth in stepfamilies when compared with those living with two biological parents, but many children thrive and attain high levels of education despite the risks associated with stepfamily formation. The role of parents is central to understanding youths' educational attainment, but studies have not examined how adolescents' relationships with each of their parents in stepfamilies are related to college attendance. Method: This study uses a sample of 881 respondents who were in stable stepfamilies from Wave 1 to Wave 3 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate both the direct and indirect pathways from family relationships at Wave 1 to young adults' college attendance at Wave 3. Results: Both higher quality stepfather–child relationships and nonresident father–child relationships were positively associated with young adults' college attendance. Mother–child relationship quality was not associated with college attendance. Conclusion: Maintaining children's ties to nonresident fathers after parental separation and fostering close ties to stepfathers when mothers repartner may have long-term positive consequences for youths' educational attainment. The findings also suggest an important need for future research to examine children's relationships with each of their parents to better understand youth outcomes in stepfamilies.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 622-638 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of Marriage and Family |
| Volume | 82 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 1 2020 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Anthropology
- Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
- Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
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In: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 82, No. 2, 01.04.2020, p. 622-638.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
TY - JOUR
T1 - Family Relationships During Adolescence and Stepchilden's Educational Attainment in Young Adulthood
AU - King, Valarie
AU - Pragg, Brianne
AU - Lindstrom, Rachel
N1 - Funding Information: This research was supported by funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Population Research Institute at The Pennsylvania State University for Population Research Infrastructure (P2C HD041025) and Family Demography Training (T32 HD007514). This research uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and funded by Grant P01 HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health data files is available on the Add Health website ( http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth ). No direct support was received from Grant P01 HD31921 for this analysis. Funding Information: This research was supported by funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Population Research Institute at The Pennsylvania State University for Population Research Infrastructure (P2C HD041025) and Family Demography Training (T32 HD007514). This research uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and funded by Grant P01 HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from Grant P01 HD31921 for this analysis. This study contributes to the stepfamily literature by showing the ways in which different parental relationships independently have direct and indirect relationships with adolescents' educational attainment. Consistent with family systems theory and the principles of family social capital, this study found that the relationships that children have with their parents during adolescence were associated, to varying degrees, with their educational attainment in young adulthood. Both the stepfather?child relationship and the nonresident father?child relationship were associated with adolescents' educational outcomes. Although the stepfather?child relationship did not directly predict adolescents' college attendance, we found that this relationship was positively associated with adolescents' grades, which in turn was positively associated with adolescents' 4-year college attendance. The stepfather?child relationship also had an indirect effect on college attendance through the adolescent's perception of whether their stepfather would be disappointed if they did not graduate from college and the adolescent's college expectations. The nonresident father?child relationship was also positively associated with adolescents' grades, which in turn was positively associated with 4-year college attendance. Our finding that both the stepfather?child and nonresident father?child relationships (but not the mother?child relationship) were positively associated with adolescent grades mirrors the findings of King (), who examined these associations in Wave 1 of Add Health. Our study extends these findings by suggesting that grades may be one possible pathway through which stepfathers and nonresident fathers influence youths' educational attainment. Future research would benefit from better understanding the mechanisms through which close ties to stepfathers and nonresident fathers are associated with better grades in adolescence, especially given the fact that grades in adolescence are among the strongest predictors of college attainment (see also Hirschman,). For example, close relationships may foster (step)father involvement in children's schooling by supporting academic achievement at home (e.g., helping children with homework) and at school (e.g., helping children take advantage of school resources), which in turn promotes better grades. One finding worth pursuing in future research was the direct effect of the nonresident father?child relationship on 4-year college attendance. Through what other pathways might positive relationships with nonresident fathers be linked to college attendance? For example, are nonresident fathers more likely to help pay for college if they have closer and more involved relationships with their children? Unfortunately, Add Health did not ask questions about financial contributions by parents toward their children's college education. Another limitation of the data regarding the nonresident father is that adolescents were not asked whether they thought that their nonresident fathers would be disappointed if they did not graduate from college. Such information could shed additional insight into the importance of nonresident father's aspirations for their children's educational attainment beyond that of mothers and stepfathers. Nearly every family relationship indicator in our structural model predicted adolescents' college attainment, either directly or indirectly. The only relationship variable that did not have any direct or indirect effects on adolescents' college attainment was the quality of the mother?child relationship. There was relatively little variation in the distribution of this variable, which may help explain why the mother?child relationship did not have a statistically significant relationship with adolescents' college attainment. However, the correlation between the mother?child relationship and the stepfather?child relationship, the latter of which was indirectly associated with adolescents' college attainment, was strong and statistically significant. As several scholars have noted, mothers can play a pivotal role in stepfamilies by facilitating the development of positive ties between adolescents and their stepfathers (King, Amato, & Lindstrom,; King & Lindstrom,; Weaver & Coleman,). In addition, our findings suggest that mothers may influence youths' educational outcomes through parental educational aspirations and adolescents' own educational expectations. Both mothers' and stepfathers' aspirations for the adolescents' college attendance were associated with adolescents' own educational expectations, which were associated with college attendance. Future research would benefit from considering other dimensions of mother?child relationships (e.g., mother's involvement in the child's schooling or school-related activities) that may be influential in predicting youths' educational outcomes. Overall, our findings suggest a need for future research to examine children's relationships with each of their parents to better understand youth outcomes in stepfamilies. The potential importance of stepfathers and nonresident fathers, in particular, may be underestimated in studies that only examine mother?child relationships, average measures for resident parents, or ask about ?parents? in general. Our finding that the mother?stepfather relationship had significant indirect effects on college attainment through the stepfather relationship provides additional support for the interconnection of family systems and the importance of positive parental relations for child outcomes, as suggested by family systems theory. Consistent with the father vulnerability hypothesis, we also found evidence that the quality of the parental relationship had greater consequences for the quality of the stepfather?child relationship than for the quality of the mother?child relationship, although parental relationship quality was positively associated with both. This study has several limitations to consider. Add Health does not have information about the quality of the relationship between mothers and nonresident fathers, which could also influence ties between nonresident fathers and their children. We also lacked more detailed measures of adolescents' other family members that may be influential in predicting their college attainment, such as siblings and grandparents. For example, it is possible that adolescents' close relationships with half or step-siblings may lead their stepfathers to be more emotionally and financially supportive of their stepchildren. Unfortunately, due to this data limitation, we could only control for the presence of siblings living in the household during adolescence in our model. Future research should examine whether and under what conditions family relationships beyond those between (step)parents and their children predict adolescents' educational attainment. This study only examined our key predictors (family relationships, college expectations, and grades) at one point during adolescence. Future research would benefit from considering these factors at multiple time points. Some of these factors may be more influential at certain time points than others. These factors are also likely to be reciprocally related to each other, with changes in one domain likely to influence changes in another (Zhang et al.,). The data used in our analyses were collected between 1994 and 2002. Although it is unclear why our findings about parent?child relationships and educational attainment would be any different today, the rapid pace of family and social change opens the possibility of cohort differences in many aspects of family life, and our results may not necessarily extend to today's adolescents. In addition, our study only included youth who were in stable stepfamilies between adolescence and young adulthood. Our results may not extend to youth who experience stepfamily instability. Future research should examine how parent?child relationships in unstable stepfamilies are associated with stepchildren's educational attainment. On average, children in stepfamilies have lower educational attainment than children in two-parent-biological families, but there is much variation within stepfamilies. This study has important implications for children in stepfamilies, as the results demonstrate some reasons why merely living in a stepfamily does not destine children for poor outcomes. Although experiencing parental dissolution and repartnering can be challenging for families and pose potential risks for child well-being, our findings suggest that maintaining children's ties to nonresident fathers after parental separation and fostering close ties to stepfathers when mothers repartner may have long-term positive consequences for youths' college attainment and the many benefits associated with it. This research was supported by funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to the Population Research Institute at The Pennsylvania State University for Population Research Infrastructure (P2C HD041025) and Family Demography Training (T32 HD007514). This research uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and funded by Grant P01 HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from Grant P01 HD31921 for this analysis. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 National Council on Family Relations
PY - 2020/4/1
Y1 - 2020/4/1
N2 - Objective: This study examines how the quality of family relationships in stepfamilies during adolescence are associated with stepchildren's 4-year college attendance in young adulthood. Background: On average, college attendance is lower for youth in stepfamilies when compared with those living with two biological parents, but many children thrive and attain high levels of education despite the risks associated with stepfamily formation. The role of parents is central to understanding youths' educational attainment, but studies have not examined how adolescents' relationships with each of their parents in stepfamilies are related to college attendance. Method: This study uses a sample of 881 respondents who were in stable stepfamilies from Wave 1 to Wave 3 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate both the direct and indirect pathways from family relationships at Wave 1 to young adults' college attendance at Wave 3. Results: Both higher quality stepfather–child relationships and nonresident father–child relationships were positively associated with young adults' college attendance. Mother–child relationship quality was not associated with college attendance. Conclusion: Maintaining children's ties to nonresident fathers after parental separation and fostering close ties to stepfathers when mothers repartner may have long-term positive consequences for youths' educational attainment. The findings also suggest an important need for future research to examine children's relationships with each of their parents to better understand youth outcomes in stepfamilies.
AB - Objective: This study examines how the quality of family relationships in stepfamilies during adolescence are associated with stepchildren's 4-year college attendance in young adulthood. Background: On average, college attendance is lower for youth in stepfamilies when compared with those living with two biological parents, but many children thrive and attain high levels of education despite the risks associated with stepfamily formation. The role of parents is central to understanding youths' educational attainment, but studies have not examined how adolescents' relationships with each of their parents in stepfamilies are related to college attendance. Method: This study uses a sample of 881 respondents who were in stable stepfamilies from Wave 1 to Wave 3 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate both the direct and indirect pathways from family relationships at Wave 1 to young adults' college attendance at Wave 3. Results: Both higher quality stepfather–child relationships and nonresident father–child relationships were positively associated with young adults' college attendance. Mother–child relationship quality was not associated with college attendance. Conclusion: Maintaining children's ties to nonresident fathers after parental separation and fostering close ties to stepfathers when mothers repartner may have long-term positive consequences for youths' educational attainment. The findings also suggest an important need for future research to examine children's relationships with each of their parents to better understand youth outcomes in stepfamilies.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85076207749&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85076207749&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/jomf.12642
DO - 10.1111/jomf.12642
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85076207749
SN - 0022-2445
VL - 82
SP - 622
EP - 638
JO - Journal of Marriage and Family
JF - Journal of Marriage and Family
IS - 2
ER -