Family, Life Course, and Society Commons^™

Family Structure And Child Behavior Problems In Australia, The United Kingdom, And The United States, Nina A. Stoddard-Bennett, Jordan Coburn, Mikaela J. Dufur, Jonathan A. Jarvis, Shana L. Pribesh

Educational Foundations & Leadership Faculty Publications

A large body of literature suggests that children living with two married, biological parents on average have fewer behavior problems than those who do not. What is less clear is why this occurs. Competing theories suggest that resource deficiencies and parental selectivity play a part. We suggest that examining different contexts can help adjudicate among different theoretical explanations as to how family structure relates to child behavior problems. In this paper, we use data from the Growing Up in Australia: Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), and the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) …