Family relationships and child wellbeing in post-separation families

• Applicant: Dr. Sandra Krapf
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2019 to 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 434010343

Existing research indicates that children whose parents have separated fare worse in terms of their cognitive, social, psychological, and health outcomes than children who live in a nuclear family; i.e., with two biological parents in the household. But can high-quality family relationships buffer the negative effects of living in a post-separation family arrangement? In light of the unique stressors and demands faced by stepfamilies and one-parent families, the proposed project investigates to what extent positive family relations enable children to cope successfully with new family structures in Germany. The focus of the research is on the relationship quality of up to five family dyads: the resident parent–child, the nonresident parent-child, the biological parents, and (in the case of stepfamilies) the stepcouple as well as the stepparent–child dyad. Because parental separation has become increasingly common in many western countries, such buffering effects have implications for the wellbeing of a sizeable and growing proportion of the child population. Although a large number of studies on the association between family structure and child outcomes have been published, only a few representative datasets allow researchers to analyse the impact of complex (step)family relationships on child wellbeing in post-separation families. The few studies on this topic have found that positive (step)family relations are associated with higher levels of child wellbeing. However, there are some drawbacks of the existing studies. First, little is known about how different family dyads are interrelated. Second, many of the studies had to deal with very small case numbers. Third, most of the existing research was conducted in the US context. Whether the results found in the US can be extended to European countries is unclear, because there are considerable societal as well as institutional differences across countries. Using data from the German Family Panel pairfam, the family relationships and wellbeing of eight- to 15-year-old children in stepfamilies (n=425) and one-parent families (n=277) are investigated. In some of the empirical analyses, these two groups will be compared to 2,211 children living in nuclear families. Investigating this rich dataset will shed light on the question of whether child outcomes in one-parent families and stepfamilies vary depending on the family relations they are exposed to. Moreover, analysing these issues in the German context will indicate to what extent the results found in the US can be replicated in a European country.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants