Family structure instability and the educational persistence of young people in England

Abstract

Research in the area of family structure and educational outcomes has often failed to account for instability in family structure. Furthermore, prior research in this area has been dominated by North American studies with a smaller body emerging from Europe. This study draws upon 10,783 young people and their parents from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England to examine the association between family structure and family structure instability on post-16 educational persistence. Multivariate models indicate that family structure instability has a negative impact on educational persistence. After controlling for covariates, young people who had experienced family structure instability were 33% less likely to stay in education than young people who resided in married biological families during the four years prior to the end of compulsory schooling. The findings of this research provide evidence that young people who have experienced a change in family circumstances during these four years are potentially at risk of dropping out of school -this is the case irrespective of the nature of the change. Once covariates were accounted for, young people who resided in stable lone-parent households were just as likely as those in stable married biological families to continue to post-16 education. Analyses were also conducted to determine the educational persistence of young people from biological vs step-cohabitating families.

Educational aspirations amongUKYoung Teenagers: Exploring the role of gender, class and ethnicity

“…In other words, all things being equal, children living with a single parent in the UKHLS sample have the highest odds of aspiring. This important finding, consistent with Hampden‐Thompson and Galindo (), undermines persistent discourses that position single‐parent families as morally reprehensible and damaging for children (McRobbie ; Allen & Osgood ). On average, lone parents tend to have lower financial and educational resources, and it is this which is associated with lower educational aspirations.…”

“…Parental education is included as a measure of human capital, but also identifies previous experience and knowledge of how HE works. While acknowledging that family structure as measured at a single point in time is a limited indicator of the teenager's experience of family dynamics, we might expect living within a single‐parent family to be associated with lower educational aspirations due to other, generally unobserved factors such as downward economic mobility upon parental separation (Thomson & McLanahan, ; Hampden‐Thompson & Galindo, ) and other disruptive life events such as moving from the family home into less expensive accommodation in a poorer neighbourhood (Amato, ). These parental‐background factors work through (or are mediated by) more proximal transmission mechanisms to influence educational outcomes (Chowdry et al ., ).…”

Do Changes to Family Structure Affect Child and Family Outcomes? A Systematic Review of the Instability Hypothesis

“…There were numerous studies in which some groups of transitions were mediated by changes in financial resources, but other types of transitions or outcomes were not (Bachman et al, , ; Sun & Li, , ) and many studies in which no evidence of mediation by income was found at all (Havermans et al, ; Shaff et al, ; Walper et al, ). Indeed, there was a clear pattern of mediation by financial resources in only one study: Hampden‐Thompson and Galindo () found that the effects of a transition on education persistence were partially mediated by a change to a lower income bracket. Many parents experience changes in income as a result of a family transition—and this change in financial resources may lead to changes in school or residence (Amato, ; Avellar & Smock, )—but neither mobility nor income changes appear to be particularly strong mediators of transition effects in adolescence.…”

“…They are associated with poorer socioemotional development (Lee & McLanahan, ), increased behavior problems (Magnuson & Berger, ), poorer academic achievement (Sun & Li, ), and worse physical health (Bzostek & Beck, ). Family transitions continue to have an impact on children across their life course, being associated with less income mobility, an increased risk of dropping out of high school, reduced likelihood of university completion, early family formation, and an increased likelihood of having multiple marriages (Bloome, ; Fomby & Bosick, ; Hampden‐Thompson & Galindo, ; Hofferth & Goldscheider, ). Each additional transition appears to cause cumulative stress and increase the negative effects on children's mental and physical well‐being (Bachman et al, ).…”

Family Structure and Child Educational Attainment in the Slums of Nairobi, Kenya

“…These authors further contend that one in every six households, usually female-headed, cares for children who are orphaned (Monasch & Boerma, 2004), With these dramatic changes, few empirical studies have examined the effects of family structure on educational attainment in Africa and fewer still have explicitly investigated the intra-household allocation of educational resources to children (Buchmann, 2000;Takeuchi, 2015). Much of the literature focuses on developed countries, particularly the United States (Browne & Battle, 2018;Hampden-Thompson & Galindo, 2015;Hao & Xie, 2002;Heard, 2007;McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994;Monserud & Elder, 2011;Sousa & Sorensen, 2006;Sun & Li, 2011). Studies of other cultures, particularly SSA, are needed to move the discussion forward.…”