Children in Changing Family Structures

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Children in Changing Family Structures

• Jan Pryor
• Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families
• Victoria University
• Wellington
• New Zealand

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• Child Development a field of study devoted to
  understanding all aspects of human growth and
  change from conception through adolescence.
  Laura Berk.
• A family is a group of people which all care
  about each other. They can cry together, laugh
  together, argue together and go through all the
  emotions together. Some live together as well.
  Families are for helping each other through
  life. 13 year old girl.

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Four paradigms of childhood

• Children as devils (original sin)
• Children as tabula rasa (John Locke)
• Children as angels (Rousseau)
• Children as embryonic adults

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• For those researchers for whom exploring
  childrens roles as social actors constitutes a
  central concern, childrens competence is taken
  for granted. The question they pose, instead, is
  how that competence is acknowledged and expressed
  or disguised and controlled in and through
  childrens everyday relationships. James, 1998.

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• The peculiarity of the late twentieth century
  and the root cause of much confusion and angst
  about childhood, is that a public discourse that
  argues that children are persons with rights to a
  degree of autonomy is at odds with the remnants
  of the romantic view that the right of a child is
  to be a child. Cunningham 1995.

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History of Families

• Households as economic units (17th and 18th
  centuries)
• Industrial revolution (19th century)
• Compulsory education for children (late 19th
  century)

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Twentieth century changes

• Lower mortality and ability to control fertility
• Heyday of nuclear family
• Companionate marriages
• Feminist movement

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20th Century changes cont.

• Women moving into the workforce
• Increased rates of separation and divorce
• Increased rates of cohabitation
• Increased rates of re-partnering

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How do todays families look?

• Marriage and childbirth happening at later ages
• Commitment no longer precedes cohabiting
• Fathers both more and less involved with children

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Sole father households in NZ 2001

• 16.5 of sole parent households headed by fathers
• Over a quarter of sole parent households with
  15-17 year olds headed by fathers
• Over 22 of sole parent households with 10 to 14
  year-olds headed by fathers

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Todays families cont.

• Diversity of family structures children may be
  raised by same-sex, unmarried, multiple,
  nonrelated parents.
• Children likely to experience one or more family
  transitions in childhood

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Transition statistics from Christchurch
longitudinal study

• 50 of children either born into or entered a
  single parent family by age 16
• 71 of these re-entered a 2 parent family within
  five years
• 53 remarriages or repartnerships dissolved
  within five years

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Christchurch longitudinal study cont.

• 70 reconciled families dissolved within five
  years
• 27 children had experienced 2 family situations
  by the age of nine
• 18 had experienced 3 family situations by the
  age of nine.

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Todays families cont.

• Paramountcy of the parent-child relationship
• Multiple ethnicities
• Childrens power in families and society

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Implications for Developmental Psychology

• Attachment
• Parenting
• Biological vs fictive kin
• Identity