Children's Developmental Outcomes in Cohabiting Unions

描述(由申请者提供)：到目前为止，我的研究主要集中在同居婚姻中的成年人幸福。拟议的项目将使我能够扩大我的研究议程，以调查同居家庭的家庭进程和质量及其对儿童和青少年福祉的影响。人口统计学家在将这些因素纳入对个人幸福感的分析方面进展缓慢，转而专注于更大的结构性因素。然而，人口统计学和发展观实际上是相辅相成的，因为它们一起强调家庭环境的个人、过程和背景品质，所有这些都塑造了儿童的幸福。我将考虑家庭环境在人、过程和背景层面(包括父母心理健康、父母行为、亲子关系质量、经济资源和家庭不稳定)对同居家庭青年发展的重要性，并特别关注贫困和少数民族地位带来的复杂情况。我将使用1992-2002年计划动态调查的数据和全国青少年健康纵向研究的三次浪潮，来研究家庭过程和素质对儿童发展的五个核心领域的影响：(1)身体，(2)心理和情感，(3)社会，(4)认知和教育，以及(5)经济福祉。这两个数据集让我能够考虑到以前的生活安排转变以及当前家庭形式的持续时间。计量经济学技术将被用来解释选择效应。我还将对同居父母进行深入访谈，以扩大我从SPD和Add Health获得的结果。这一战略将使我能够更详细地探讨与儿童福祉最密切相关的因素，并查明二次数据分析中没有审查的家庭环境的其他关键方面。K-01奖项将为我提供强有力的指导和儿童和青少年发展方面的专门培训，以及计量经济学和定性方法，这将使我能够扩大我对同居和幸福的人口统计学研究。通过纳入发展视角，我 将更好地解决同居等新出现的家庭结构如何以及为什么影响儿童生活的问题。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): My research to date has focused on adult well-being in cohabiting unions. The proposed project will allow me to expand my research agenda to investigate the family processes and qualities of cohabiting families and their implications for child and adolescent well-being. Demographers have been slow to integrate these elements in their analyses of individual well-being, focusing instead on larger structural factors. Nevertheless, the demographic and developmental perspectives actually are complementary as together they emphasize the individual, process, and contextual qualities of the family environment, all of which shape children's well-being. I will consider the significance of the family environment at the person, process, and context levels (including parental psychological well-being, parenting behaviors, parent-child relationship quality, economic resources, and family instability) for the development of youth in cohabiting families, paying special attention to the complications presented by poverty and minority status. I will use data from the 1992-2002 Survey of Program Dynamics and the three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine the influence of family processes and qualities on five core domains of children's development: (1) physical, (2) psychological and emotional, (3) social, (4) cognitive and educational, and (5) economic well-being. Both of these data sets permit me to account for prior living arrangement transitions as well as duration in the current family form. Econometric techniques will be use to account for selection effects. I will also conduct in-depth interviews with cohabiting parents to expand on the results I obtain from the SPD and Add Health. This strategy will allow me to explore in greater detail the factors that are most strongly linked to child well-being and identify other key aspects of the family environment that were not examined in the secondary data analyses. The K-01 award will provide me with strong mentorship and specialized training in child and adolescent development as well as econometrics and qualitative methods, which will enable me to expand my demographic research on cohabitation and well-being. By incorporating a developmental perspective, I will be better equipped to address how and why newly emerging family structures such as cohabitation influence children's lives.