Marital Transitions, Parenting, and Schooling: Exploring the Link Between Family-Structure History and Adolescents' Academic Status

Abstract

The linkage between family structure and adolescents' academic experiences is part of a larger, dynamic process unfolding over time. To investigate this phenomenon, this study drew on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study. Logistic regressions revealed that family structure at birth predicted students' academic status in math in the ninth grade, and multinomial regressions revealed that family instability, along with curricular location in the ninth grade, parenting behaviors, and adolescents' adjustment and aspirations, distinguished those who completed higher-level math by the end of high school from those who did not but still graduated from high school and from those who dropped out of high school.The life-course paradigm views human development as an interplay between individuals' developmental trajectories and the trajectories of their significant others (Elder 1998). One of the most intuitive examples of this linked-lives principle is the parentchild relationship. Parents, through the choices and decisions they make for themselves and their children, influence how their children grow and develop over time (Furstenberg et al. 1999).This view of the linked lives of parents and children offers unique insights into a hotly contested issue in contemporary American society: the implications of changes in family structure for adolescents' well-being, including adolescents' academic experiences. A large, multidisciplinary literature has examined the association between family structure and adolescents' academic outcomes, documenting that young people who live in "alternative" families (i.e., reside with a single parent or a stepparent) have more problems in school than do those who live in two-biological-parent families McLanahan 1991, 1994;Coleman 1988;DeLeire and Kalil 2002;Hill, Yeung, and Duncan 2001;McLanahan and Sandefur 1994;Schiller, Khmelkov, and Wang 2002;Wojtkiewicz 1993). The image that emerges from these snapshots of the effects of family structure suggests something more dynamic about family life and its role in education. Specifically, one of the most significant trajectories of parents' lives, their marital histories, is closely connected to one of the most significant trajectories of their children's lives, their academic careers.Address correspondence to Shannon Cavanagh, Population Research Center, University of Texas, 1 University Station G1800, Austin, TX, 78712; scavanagh@mail.la.utexas.edu. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptWorking from a life-course perspective, the general goal of the study presented here was to examine whether this dynamic aspect of linked lives exists and, if so, to explore the reasons why it does. We addressed this goal through four objectives. First, we constructed measures of family-structure history that reflect the number of family transitions that children experienced from birth through early adolescence, as well as the family ...

Dropping out of high school: Effects of close and distant friendships

“…Upon further examination, we found the self-reports to be more reliable as 80% of the cases with a discrepancy between the transcript and self-report were missing the year of graduation on the transcript. Previous studies analyzing the Add Health dataset (including Cavanaugh et al (2006) and Staff and Kreager (2008)) have used student selfreports for measuring school completion.…”

Factors associated with positive relationships between stepfathers and adolescent stepchildren

“…A previously unexplored factor involves the number of prior father figures . Children who have experienced the turmoil created by prior entrances and exits of multiple stepfather figures may be reluctant to form attachments to a new stepfather, as greater family instability undermines parent-child relationships in general (Cavanagh, Schiller, and Riegle-Crumb, 2006). …”

Ecological Instability and Children’s Classroom Behavior in Kindergarten

“…This finding continues to warrant attention because it is underlain by an expectation that aggressive and disruptive behavior compromises children’s academic trajectories. This expectation has been supported to some extent by evidence that children who have experienced some types of instability are less likely than their peers to complete college-preparatory coursework in high school or to attend college (Cavanagh and Fomby 2012; Cavanagh et al 2006; Fomby 2013). However, the pathways through which this compromise occurs are not well-articulated.…”