Family diversity and children's mental health in the UK : a longitudinal study

Abstract

Due to the rise of divorce, cohabitation, repartnering, and multi-partner fertility, today’s children are more likely to experience less common and less stable family settings compared to previous generations. Past research suggests that children who do not grow up with their married biological parents fare worse across many developmental outcomes. However, only fragmented evidence exists on children’s diverse family trajectories and the associations with child mental health. This thesis augments current knowledge by applying a children’s perspective to study this issue, thereby deepening understandings of the life course origins of population health inequalities. Multi-channel sequence analysis is applied to UK Household Longitudinal Study data to construct maternal partnership and father co-residence trajectories from the children’s perspective. Employing the resulting children’s family trajectories in regression models, the thesis finds that children differ in their propensity to experience less common/less stable family trajectories based on their mother’s characteristics, such as education, age at birth and ethnicity. Heterogeneous associations emerge between children’s family trajectories and their mental health levels: whilst children whose mothers repartner with a non-biological father or who experience parental separation have the lowest levels of mental health, children of never partnered mothers and of those who repartner with the biological father have comparable mental health to children who live continuously with married biological parents. This research further finds that family structure is important for the levels and stability of adolescents’ mental health. Compared to adolescents living with their married, biological parents, those living with divorced/separated mothers or non-biological fathers have worse levels of mental health. Using a child-centred, longitudinal approach to understanding family diversity and its impacts, this thesis demonstrates the heterogeneity and inequalities in children’s experiences.