Children in Changing Family Structures

1. Children in Changing Family Structures Jan Pryor Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families Victoria University Wellington New Zealand

2. ‘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.

3. Four paradigms of childhood • Children as devils (original sin) • Children as tabula rasa (John Locke) • Children as angels (Rousseau) • Children as embryonic adults

4. ‘For those researchers for whom exploring children’s roles as social actors constitutes a central concern, children’s 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 children’s everyday relationships.’ James, 1998.

5. ‘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.

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

7. Twentieth century changes • Lower mortality and ability to control fertility • Heyday of nuclear family • ‘Companionate’ marriages • Feminist movement

8. 20th Century changes cont. • Women moving into the workforce • Increased rates of separation and divorce • Increased rates of cohabitation • Increased rates of re-partnering

9. How do today’s families look? • Marriage and childbirth happening at later ages • Commitment no longer precedes cohabiting • Fathers both more and less involved with children

10. 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

12. Today’s 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

13. 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

14. 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.

15. Today’s families cont. • Paramountcy of the parent-child relationship • Multiple ethnicities • Children’s power in families and society

16. Implications for Developmental Psychology • Attachment • Parenting • Biological vs fictive kin • Identity