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Demography

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25-11-2015

Family Complexity, Siblings, and Children’s Aggressive Behavior at School Entry

Authors: Paula Fomby, Joshua A. Goode, Stefanie Mollborn

Published in: Demography | Issue 1/2016

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Abstract

As family structure in the United States has become increasingly dynamic and complex, children have become more likely to reside with step- or half-siblings through a variety of pathways. When these pathways are accounted for, more than one in six U.S. children live with a step- or half-sibling at age 4. We use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (N ~ 6,550) to assess the independent and joint influences of residing with a single parent or stepparent and with step- or half-siblings on children’s aggressive behavior at school entry. The influences of parents’ union status and complex sibship status on aggressive behavior are independent. Family resources partially explain the association between residing with an unpartnered mother and aggressive behavior regardless of sibship status. However, the resource hypothesis does not explain the association of complex sibship with aggressive behavior.

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Our estimates from the ECLS-B indicate that about 20 % of children ever lived with a stepsibling or half-sibling by age 4.

The ECLS-B restricted-use license requires reporting analytic sample sizes rounded to the nearest 50.

We use the term “union status” throughout to refer to whether a child’s mother is unpartnered, partnered with the child’s biological father, or partnered with another (male) adult. Because of sample size limitations, we are not able to account for marital status and the partner’s biological relatedness to the focal child simultaneously (but see the discussion of supplementary models). We use the word “stepfather” here to represent marital and cohabiting unions between mothers and new partners.

Because selection into complex sibship preceded the focal child’s birth in many cases, resource measures from after the birth are not appropriate for capturing resource-based selection into complex families. We tested mediation of the family structure/aggressive behavior relationships according to Baron and Kenny (1986).

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends fewer than two hours of television viewing per day for young children (https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/pages/media-and-children.aspx). Results were similar using two hours or four hours as the cutpoint for intensive television viewing.

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Title: Family Complexity, Siblings, and Children’s Aggressive Behavior at School Entry
Authors: Paula Fomby
Joshua A. Goode
Stefanie Mollborn
Publication date: 25-11-2015
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Demography / Issue 1/2016
Print ISSN: 0070-3370
Electronic ISSN: 1533-7790
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-015-0443-9

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