Parental Depression and Contextual Selection: The Case of School Choice

Abstract

Parental depression constricts children’s development, but the mechanisms implicated—beyond daily parenting tactics—remain unknown. Today, parents must evaluate and select environmental contexts for child-rearing within increasingly complex residential and educational markets. Depression may hamper parents’ abilities to navigate this terrain, constraining information collection and impairing child-oriented decision-making. In turn, depressed parents’ children may lack access to developmentally enriching neighborhood, school, and child care settings. K–12 school sorting offers a strategic case to assess these expectations, given proliferating nontraditional options and school quality data. Analyses using the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (N = 2,754) linked to administrative data suggest that depressed parents’ children attend magnet, charter, or private schools at lower rates than similarly situated children of nondepressed parents; depression-based disparities appear largest among Latino and Black families. The study motivates future research examining whether the depression-contextual selection link mediates intergenerational processes and exacerbates segregation.

Neighborhood–School Structures: A New Approach to the Joint Study of Social Contexts

“…Geographic proximity is a major priority when parents consider school options (Hastings & Weinstein 2008, Pattillo 2015, Singer & Lenhoff 2022, especially given variation in student transportation availability (Chingos & Blagg 2017), though some students, especially those from neighborhoods far from attractive school options, do travel long distances to attend choice schools (Burdick-Will 2017, Schachner 2021). Additionally, many families encounter administrative hurdles and enrollment lotteries that make exercising choice outside of their assigned neighborhood school difficult, and parents' mental health and cognitive skills also shape whether they elect to use school choice (Schachner 2021, Schachner & Sampson 2020. National survey data show that 69% of all students (and 76% of public school students) attended their assigned public school in 2016, a decline of about 5 points since 1999 (Wang et al 2019).…”

“…Where there remains a direct residential school assignment policy, neighborhood composition directly shapes school composition. Where school choice is available, neighborhood composition indirectly influences school composition: White and higher-income families are more likely to opt out of neighborhood schools serving less White and poorer neighborhoods (Bischoff & Tach 2018Candipan 2019Candipan , 2020Saporito 2003;Saporito & Sohoni 2006Schachner 2021;Sohoni & Saporito 2009). The gap between neighborhood and school racial composition is particularly large in neighborhoods experiencing socioeconomic ascent or gentrification (Bischoff & Tach 2020;Candipan 2019Candipan , 2020.…”

The rise of market‐based “choice” programs: 100 years of social sorting in social welfare services

“…Looking next to education, students who have experienced instability and hardship may opt for shorter post‐secondary programs with lower financial returns in expectation of future shocks (DeLuca et al., 2021). Similarly, children whose parents suffer from depression may be less likely to attend choice‐based magnet, charter, or private schools (Schachner, 2021). These examples are neither exhaustive nor account for the many nuances within and between different programs.…”

“…By changing the formal rules for resource distribution, choice programs furthermore change the behavioral norms through which people holding varying social positions or rank (i.e., social status) accumulate access to opportunities and resources (i.e., life chances). As programs increasingly require individuals to make consequential decisions, there is a growing movement in stratification research to understand or model these newly‐developing behaviors, routines, and relationships as core mechanisms through which one's social status affects their life chances (e.g., Bruch & Feinberg, 2017; Chen, 2020; Chen & Moskop, 2020; DeLuca & Rosen, 2022; Garboden et al., 2018; A. Goldstein & Wharam, 2022; Gutierrez, 2018; Kline & Pais, 2021; Krysan & Crowder, 2017; Rosen, 2020; Schachner, 2021). For example, Gutierrez (2018) finds that the ACA opened new pathways to enroll in health insurance that did not depend upon family or labor market attachments.…”