Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
DOI
10.3390/socsci9120229
Publication Title
Social Sciences
Volume
9
Issue
12
Pages
229 (1-14)
Abstract
The family environments children live in have profound effects on the skills, resources, and attitudes those children bring to school. Researchers studying family structure have found that children who live with two married, opposite-sex, biological parents, on average, have better educational outcomes than children living in alternate family structures, perhaps due to higher resources, lower stressors, or different selectivity patterns. Socioeconomic stratification plays a major role in family structure, with low-income families seeing more instability. We argue that the impact of family structure is attenuated by transitions in and out of family structures that may decrease a specific resource important to child academic outcomes: parental involvement. This may contribute to increased academic differences already noted across class gaps. Using waves 1 to 6 of the Growing Up in Australia: Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) data, we examine the relationship of family stability and transitions from birth to age 10/11 years on parental involvement and educational outcomes, adjusted for resource, stressor, and selectivity covariates. We find that changes in parental involvement are only apparent for families that experience both a transition and single parenting, and that these differences in parental involvement impact academic outcomes
ORCID
0000-0001-9157-3493 (Pribesh)
Original Publication Citation
Pribesh, S. L., Carson, J. S., Dufur, M. J., Yue, Y., & Morgan, K. (2020). Family structure stability and transitions, parental involvement, and educational outcomes. Social Sciences, 9(12), 1-14, Article 229. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci9120229
Repository Citation
Pribesh, Shana L.; Carson, Jane Smith; Dufur, Mikaela J.; Yue, Yuanyuan; and Morgan, Kathy, "Family Structure Stability and Transitions, Parental Involvement, and Educational Outcomes" (2020). Educational Foundations & Leadership Faculty Publications. 80.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/efl_fac_pubs/80
Included in
Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Disability and Equity in Education Commons, Education Economics Commons, Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons
Comments
© 2020 by the authors.
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.