BOCYF Projects

Changing Definitions, Realities, Challenges, and Stressors on Families: The Impact of these Changes on the Well-being of Children, Adolescents, and Families

Years of research have shown that children and adolescents are most likely to develop into healthy, happy, and productive adults when a caring family supports them. Such a positive environment is characterized by nurturing and mutual respect and by the serious and sustained interest of parents in the lives of their adolescent children.

Contrary to popular belief, adolescence is a time when many young people continue to need more parental attention. They need guidance and close supervision. They need a parent or other responsible adult to listen and respond to them as they shape their ideas. They need help with setting goals. And they still need to be taught ethical behavior and the appropriate ways of handling conflict with others. Parents who offer this type of support to their adolescent children can provide powerful protection against the possibility that they may engage in unhealthy practices, become socially isolated, or become troubled or depressed.

Today, children and adolescents are growing up in families that are diverse with respect to their size, shape, and structure. From families characterized as traditional with two parents and a stay at home mother, which was typical in the 1950s and 1960s, to the dual-career families and stepfamilies that gained in prominence in the late 1980s and 1990s, today there is no typical or normative family setting in which adolescents grow and develop. Children today are much less likely than a quarter-century ago to be living with two parents. Between 1975 and 1998, the proportion living with two parents fell from 82% to 69%. Most of this decline can be accounted for by the increase in the proportion of young children living in never-married as opposed to divorce or separated mothers. Indeed, in 1998, more than three quarters of young children living in mother-only families had mothers who had never been married. Two parent family structures have declined much more rapidly among Black (16 percentage point decline) and Hispanic (18 percentage points) than white (10 percentage points) families.

In addition, changing societal and economic factors have threatened the stability of many families in today’s society. Many of these changes have occurred during the past 30 years, including increased rates of divorce, increases in the number of single parents, increases in the rate of mothers’ employment, and increases in the proportion of families living in poverty. For example, by the early 1990s, nearly half of all marriages ended in divorce, a rate twice that of 1960, and about a quarter of all births were to unmarried women. The net result has been that nearly 25 percent of all children live with only one parent, usually the mother, a rate double that of 1970. Overall, about 50 percent of all children today will reside in a single-parent home before age 18, spending an average of 6 years with a single parent. These changes have transformed the nature of family life, as well as the experiences of children and adolescents.

Although there has been less research than the issue deserves, many argue that the time that American children spend with their parents has decreased significantly during the past few decades. Under the best of circumstances, raising a child is a difficult experience, but during this past decade, as more families are defined as dual-income and single-parent households, parent spend on average 11 fewer hours with their children each week compared with parents in 1960. In addition, less than 5 percent of all families have another adult (such as a grandparent) living in the home, compared with 50 percent two generations ago. This reduces the backup support that might otherwise be available to working parents. It is also a commonly held belief that as parents spend less time with their children, they have less time available to provide guidance and supervision, and fewer opportunities to instill values. More research is needed, however, to determine if in fact it is true that parents are spending less time with their teens, and what impact this has on the safety, security, and well-being of today’s adolescents.

The Forum and Board are proposing to convene a workshop that will examine recent changes in the way U.S. families are characterized and defined, the challenges and stressors experienced by families, and the implications of these changes to the development, health, and well-being of children. The workshop will be organized into three sessions. The first session will examine demographic and other relevant data regarding the challenges faced by families, such as the percentage of families living in poverty, single headed households, and households with both parents as members of the workforce. This session will also examine changes in the way in which families are being characterized and defined, including multicultural families, multigenerational families, and same-sex households and parenting. The second session will examine research regarding the impact of these changes on the health, development, and well-being of children. Finally, the third session will explore the implications of this research for policy and practice. The workshop is likely to yield a summary report, as well as yield a proposal for what future project might be developed to further pursue this topic.

A small advisory group comprised of Forum and Board members has been established to help guide this activity, including Steven Small, Professor of the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison; Gary Sandefur, Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison; Mindy Fullilove, Research Psychiatrist at Columbia University; Vonnie McLoyd, Professor at the Center for Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan.