Past research suggests that children who experience multiple transitions in family structure may face worse developmental outcomes than children raised in stable two-parent families and perhaps even children raised in stable, single-parent families. However, multiple transitions and negative child outcomes may be associated because of common causal factors such as parents' antecedent behaviors and attributes. Using a nationally-representative, two-generation longitudinal survey that includes detailed information on children's behavioral and cognitive development, family history, and mother's attributes prior to the child's birth, we examine these alternative hypotheses. Our results suggest that, for white children, the association between the number of family structure transitions and cognitive outcomes is largely explained by mother's prior characteristics but that the association between the number of transitions and behavioral outcomes may be causal in part. We find no robust effects of number of transitions for black children.The instability of family structure has become an increasingly salient part of children's lives in the United States over the past half-century. During this period, as is well-known, divorce rates increased (Cherlin 1992), as did the prevalence of nonmarital cohabitation, which is less stable than marriage (Bumpass and Lu 2000). Moreover, cohabitation and marriage appear to be more unstable in the United States than in most other developed countries; and a relatively high percentage of American children experience transitions into single-parent families and stepfamilies (Andersson, 2002;Heuveline, Timberlake and Furstenberg 2003).A growing body of literature suggests that children who experience multiple transitions in family structure may fare worse developmentally than children raised in stable two-parent families and perhaps even than children raised in stable, single-parent families. This body of research presents what we call the instability hypothesis, the prediction that children are affected by disruption and changes in family structure as much as (or even more than) by the type of family structures they experience. If this hypothesis were true, it would suggest that a significant reinterpretation of the effects of family structure on children's well-being may be warranted. For example, it would imply that a child born to a single parent might be as well off, or perhaps even better off, if the parent did not cohabit or remarry.However, most empirical tests of the instability hypothesis have neglected an alternative explanation. The association between multiple transitions and negative child outcomes does not necessarily imply that the former causes the latter. In fact, multiple transitions and negative child outcomes may be associated with each other through common causal factors reflected in the parents' antecedent behaviors and attributes. We call this explanation the selection hypothesis. A test of the instability hypothesis versus the selection hypothesis would there...

Scholars have long looked to family composition to understand child well-being. The study of family instability, or the experience of repeated changes in parents’ union status during childhood, represents a recent advance in this field that takes into account the dynamic nature of contemporary family organization and considers its implications for children's adjustment and development. We review some of the structural and cultural factors that have contributed to rising levels of family instability and highlight the emergence of national data to measure it. We then review the perspective that guides much of the scholarship on family instability and critically assess the contributions of this work to the understanding of child well-being. We close by suggesting new directions for research, with a call for work that broadens the conceptualization and measurement of contemporary children's family systems and home environments as well as the mechanisms that explain why—or whether—instability matters.

We used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 7,686) to determine whether racial and ethnic differences in socioeconomic stress and social protection explained group differences in the association between family structure instability and three risk behaviors for White, Black, and Mexican American adolescents: delinquent behavior, age at first nonmarital sex, and age at first nonmarital birth. The positive association between mothers' union transitions and each outcome for White adolescents was attenuated by social protection. The association of instability with age at first sex and first nonmarital birth was weaker for Black adolescents, but not for Mexican American adolescents. The weaker association was explained by Black adolescents' more frequent exposure to socioeconomic stress in the context of union instability. KeywordsDevelopment/outcomes; Adolescence; Family Diversity; Family Structure; Social Context A growing body of research has documented that family instability, defined as children's exposure to repeated changes in a parent's union status, has negative consequences for children's and adolescents' behavioral adjustment and school performance, independent of family structure at any point in time (Cavanagh & Huston, 2006;Fomby & Cherlin, 2007;Wu, 1996). The social significance of family instability has increased with its prevalence: today, approximately one-fifth of adolescents in the United States have experienced two or more changes in family structure (Cavanagh, 2008), a significant contrast to family organization during much of the twentieth century (Cherlin, 2009). The consequences of instability for children have become increasingly salient as the prevalence of births within cohabiting unions has increased (Chandra, Martinez, Mosher, Abma, & Jones, 2005) while cohabiting unions have remained relatively unstable union types compared to marriage (Manning, Smock, & Majumdar, 2004); as research has sought to explain why children born to single mothers who remain unmarried fare at least as well and perhaps better than children residing in stepfamilies (Cherlin & Furstenberg Jr., 1994); and as researchers have NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript evaluated the consequences of marriage promotion programs targeted at low-income single mothers (Graefe & Lichter, 2007).Despite the increasing relevance of family instability to explain variation in children's behavioral and academic development, there has been little research to explain a provocative finding: instability appears to have a strong association with some aspects of behavioral development for White children, but not for Black children (Fomby & Cherlin, 2007;Wu & Martinson, 1993;Wu & Thomson, 2001). To address this discrepancy, we test two explanations that have been posited to explain racial and ethnic differences in children's adjustment to family change: social protection and socioeconomic stress (McLoyd, Cauce, Takeuchi & Wilson, 2000). We use nationally representati...

Studies have long demonstrated the importance of mothers' time investments for healthy child

Children's experience of repeated family structure change has a robust association with compromised development across the early life course. Implicit in prior research is the expectation that disparities in cognition and behavior accumulate through childhood and adolescence to influence the transition to adulthood. The authors assessed the association of early and later family structure instability with events in the transition to adulthood up to age 24 using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 8,841).They found that early and later family instability are associated with low rates of college completion, early union formation and childbearing, and an early entry into the labor force. The associations are explained by family structure, delinquency, and academic performance in adolescence.