In this project we conceptualize childhood complexity based on the family lives of children’s parents and reveal how family complexity evolves dynamically over the life course. First, we introduce the concept and measurement of family life course complexity. For this, we test different concepts of family complexity. Second, we show how life course variation in the family complexity of adults and children has developed over cohorts. Third, we assess the impact of dynamic family complexity on children’s outcomes, such as education or mental health.

Published

Cohort Change in the Family Complexity of Adults and Children

With Zachary Van Winkle

Although research on the complexity of family lives is motivated by its potential consequences for children, few studies have assessed to what extent children have been exposed to increased family complexity. We address how family complexity evolved over the life course of adults in the United Kingdom, how it varied by birth cohort, gender, and parenthood status, and most importantly, how it varied across the early life courses of children by birth cohort. Although research on the complexity of family lives is motivated by its potential consequences for children, few studies have assessed to what extent children have been exposed to increased family complexity. We used rich retrospective UKHLS and BHPS data to reconstruct the family histories of adults born across the twentieth century and calculate life course complexity. We then transposed parents’ family sequences to reflect what their children experienced in their first 16 years of life. Our methodological approach provides a broader and more dynamic measure for children’s family life complexity compared to measures used in previous studies, such as a simple count of household transitions. We found an overall increase in life course family complexity over cohorts. Mothers had the most complex family life courses, followed by fathers, childless women and, lastly, childless men. However, differences between parents and childless adults converged across cohorts. By changing the perspective from parents to children, we revealed that children’s family complexity increased dramatically across birth cohorts. The two most recent cohorts of children experienced a considerably higher number of family transitions and greater family unpredictability at young ages compared to older cohorts. We provide conceptual and methodological contributions to spur future research on the consequences of increasing family complexity for children.

Publication

Work in progress

Children’s Family Life Course Complexity and Consequences for Educational Outcomes in the UK

With Martin Gädecke & Zachary Van Winkle

Empirical research has demonstrated a negative association between parental union dissolution or the number of family transitions and children’s educational outcomes. However, there is a tension regarding the most appropriate measures to reflect family complexity, and recent studies call for broader measures. We propose more comprehensive measures than those utilized in previous studies. Applying diverse theoretical perspectives to dynamic sequence complexity indices we first conceptualise a multitude of measures, each focusing on a distinct notion of family complexity, and explore how family complexity evolves over children’s school career. Secondly, we examine the relationship between family complexity and educational outcomes by applying fixed-effects regression models. We utilise the distinct sequence complexity indices as the primary covariate, with the objective of comparing their efficacy with the common measures. The result will elucidate whether it is union dissolution itself that impacts children’s outcomes or whether other facets of family complexity are more important.

Family Environments and Children’s Mental Health: A Holistic Examination Across Five Perspectives

With Lauren Bishop, Philipp Dierker, Martin Gädecke, Zachary Van Winkle, Pekka Martikainen, Liina Junna

Family life has a crucial impact on children’s wellbeing. Studies often rely on single events like union dissolution or the number of transitions or family structure types. However, recent literature calls for more comprehensive approaches that capture the complex and dynamic nature of family environments. Using Finnish population data, we address this need by applying a recently developed conceptualization of family complexity to five distinct dimension of family lives: parental partnership states, sibling complexity, parental family structure, other adult’s household structure, and residential moves. This enables us to disentangle how distinct concepts of family complexity differ across different dimensions of family lives across the childhood. Preliminary results show that family complexity differ largely across socioeconomic background of children, and the temporal dynamics and levels of the gaps differ across family dimensions and complexity measures. As next step we include the family measures complexity in individual Fixed-Effects models to assess the impact of different complexity facets of different family dimensions on children’s mental health.