Family Instability, Multipartner Fertility, and Behavior in Middle Childhood
| Author | Paula Fomby,Cynthia Osborne |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12349 |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
P F University of Michigan
C O University of Texas at Austin∗
Family Instability, Multipartner Fertility,
and Behavior in Middle Childhood
Two concepts capture the dynamic and complex
nature of contemporary family structure: family
instability and multipartner fertility. Although
these circumstances are likely to co-occur,
their respective literatures have proceeded
largely independently. The authors used data
from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing
Study (N=3,062) to consider these dimensions
of dynamic family structure together, asking
whether they independently predict children’s
behavior problems at age 9. Frequent family
instability was consistently predictive of higher
predicted levels of behavior problems for chil-
dren born to mothers who were unmarried, an
association largely attenuated by factors related
to family stress. Multipartner fertility was
robustly related to self-reported delinquency
and teacher-reported behavior problems among
children born to mothers who were married.
Two concepts capture the increasingly dynamic
and complex nature of contemporary family
structure: family instability and multipartner fer-
tility. Family instability is dened as repeated
changes in a child’s family structure and is
University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 426
Thompson St. 1248, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248
(pfomby@umich.edu).
∗University of Texasat Austin, LBJ School of Public
Affairs, 2315 Red River St., PO Box Y, Austin, TX 78713.
Key Words: behavior, family dynamics, family structure,
fertility.
often measured as a count of the entrances and
exits by a biological parent’s romantic partners
or spouses into or out of a child’s household
(Fomby & Cherlin, 2007; Osborne & McLana-
han, 2007; Wu & Martinson, 1993). Multipart-
ner fertility is dened as a parent’s experience of
having biological children with more than one
partner during his or her lifetime (Carlson &
Furstenberg, 2006; Guzzo, 2014).
Children’s experience of family instability
and multipartner fertility has become more fre-
quent in the last half-century in response to ris-
ing and then plateauing rates of divorce and
remarriage and a steady increase in the preva-
lence of nonmarital childbearing among unpart-
nered or cohabiting parents (Cancian, Meyer,
& Cook, 2011; Cavanagh, 2008; Osborne &
McLanahan, 2007; Ryan & Claessens, 2012).
These aspects of family structure change have
largely been considered separately,but it is likely
that family instability and multipartner fertil-
ity co-occur. For example, when a child’s par-
ent dissolves one union and begins another, the
parent may have an additional child with his
or her new partner. Under those circumstances,
a child experiences family instability (the dis-
solution of one union and the formation of
another) and multipartner fertility (the addition
of a half-sibling to his or her family tree). Each
type of family change is associated with chil-
dren’s compromised well-being and particularly
with higher rates of externalizing behavior prob-
lems, delinquency, and risky behavior across
the early life course (Bronte-Tinkew, Horowitz,
& Scott, 2009; Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006;
Journal of Marriage and Family 79 (February 2017): 75–93 75
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12349
76 Journal of Marriage and Family
Cavanagh & Huston, 2008; Fomby & Cher-
lin, 2007; Gennetian, 2005; Halpern-Meekin &
Tach, 2008; Lee & McLanahan, 2015; Osborne
& McLanahan, 2007).
Despite the potential co-occurrence of these
phenomena and their shared association with
compromised behavior outcomes, little scholar-
ship has considered their independent or com-
mon association with child well-being. Rather,
these two literatures have developed in parallel,
considering separate but related reasons that
family instability or multipartner fertility would
be associated with children’s behavior. We
propose that a comprehensive view of dynamic
family structure accounting for parents’ union
status change and multipartner fertility will
better characterize children’s family systems
and potentially expose circumstances in com-
plex families where children may experience
diminished access to family-based resources
or lower relationship quality with parents
and siblings.
Weassess the independent association of fam-
ily instability and multipartner fertility with chil-
dren’s externalizing and delinquent behavior in
middle childhood, at age 9. We draw on two
theoretical perspectives to consider why family
instability and multipartner fertility may each
relate to children’s behavior: family stress and
family boundary ambiguity. Children’s external-
izing behavior and delinquency are outcomes of
particular interest because of their robust asso-
ciation with family instability and multipartner
fertility across a range of age groups and social
contexts (Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2009; Cavanagh
& Huston, 2006; Fomby, 2011; Fomby & Cher-
lin, 2007; Ryan & Claessens, 2012).
B
Family instability and multipartner fertility
occur among a signicant share of U.S. children.
Approximately 18% of adolescents interviewed
in the mid-1990s had experienced two or more
changes in family structure (Cavanagh, 2008),
and estimates from a nationally representative
sample of children born in 2001 indicate that
the prevalence of family instability has held
steady or increased since then: About 10% of
children had experienced two or more changes
in family structure by school entry (Fomby &
Cavanagh, 2011). Family instability is more
common among children born to parents who
were unmarried. Using data from the Fragile
Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFS),
Osborne and McLanahan (2007) found that
more than one third of children born to mothers
who were unmarried had experienced two or
more changes in union status by age 3, including
the mother’s dating relationships.
Drawing on a variety of data sources and
methodologies, scholars have established a
robust association between the experience of
family instability and externalizing behavior,
aggressive behavior, and delinquency across
childhood and adolescence (Cavanagh, 2008;
Cavanagh & Huston, 2006, 2008; Cooper,
Meadows, McLanahan, & Brooks-Gunn, 2011;
Fomby, 2011; Fomby & Cherlin, 2007; Lee
& McLanahan, 2015; Magnuson & Berger,
2009; Osborne & McLanahan, 2007; Ryan
& Claessens, 2012). Hypotheses concerning
income volatility (Wu, 1996), relationship qual-
ity between parents and children (Cavanagh &
Huston, 2006), parental selection into unstable
unions (Fomby & Cherlin, 2007), and maternal
stress (Osborne & McLanahan, 2007) have
partially explained this association.
Another literature has documented the
increase in multipartner fertility in the United
States and its association with children’s behav-
ior. Using data from the FFS to describe children
born in large U.S. cities, Carlson and Fursten-
berg (2006) reported that more than one third of
births occurred to parents in which the mother
or father had at least one child with a previous
partner. Administrative data from Wisconsin
show that 60% of rstborn children with parents
who were unmarried in 1997 had at least one
half-sibling through their mother or father by
age 10 (Cancian et al., 2011). Nationally, at
least one in eight children resides in a complex
household with half- or stepsiblings (Manning,
Brown, & Stykes, 2014), and one in six chil-
dren in a recent birth cohort was is in a complex
household at age 4 (Fomby,Goode, & Mollborn,
2016).
As with family instability, multipartner fer-
tility is associated with children’s aggressive
behavior across the early life course. Using
data from the FFS, Bronte-Tinkew et al. (2009)
found that father’s multipartner fertility was
associated with children’s aggressive behavior
at age 3, directly and indirectly through pater-
nal depression. In research on nationally repre-
sentative samples, coresidence with half-siblings
has also been positively associated with chil-
dren’s aggressive behavior at school entry and
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