Familial Sources of Children's Psychological Well-Being.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the structure of psychological well-being during early life. It develops three indices of psychological welfare and examines age and sex differences in the level and variability of psychological well-being during childhood and adolescence. The dissertation incorporates findings from these analyses in its investigation of the family structure and socioeconomic correlates of psychological well-being. Particular attention is paid to age and sex differences in the familial sources of children's psychological welfare. The research reported here combines data from two cross-sectional surveys of children and adolescents in the United States. The overlap in sampling frames allows the construction of a panel sample of children first interviewed between the ages of 8 and 12 years. Respondents were reexamined as adolescents from 12 to 16 years old. Because the sample is restricted to children available at both times, more highly mobile children are excluded from the sample, thus affecting our ability to generalize to that population. We do not find support for the hypothesis that the coincidence of physiological, psychological, and social role changes which occur at the transition from childhood to adolescence, around ages 11 to 13, results in increased strain and lower levels of psychological well-being. The analysis shows that the degree to which psychological well-being varies during early life is sensitive to the aspect of psychological welfare under examination and the child's sex. At younger ages boys have lower levels of psychological well-being than girls, but this differential does not vary by the age at which the child is observed. Among adolescents, girls are more likely to exhibit neurotic symptoms than boys, and this differential increases with age. Boys, on the other h and , show a greater tendency to have adjustment problems in school and to exhibit antisocial behavior as teenagers than do girls. The results of our investigation of familial sources of psychological well-being among children and adolescents suggest that interpersonal relationships and interaction patterns have a greater effect on psychological well-being than does access to material resources. In particular, coming from a single parent family has a strong negative impact on two aspects of children's psychological welfare. The negative effect of growing up in a family without both parents is more pronounced among boys 8 to 12 years old than among girls of the same age. Having a large number of siblings is beneficial for children's psychological well-being at younger ages and at older ages when psychological welfare is operationalized by a neurotic symptom index. Parents' education has a positive impact on psychological welfare throughout childhood and adolescence when antisocial and aggressive behavioral indices are used to measure well-being. Birth order, mother's labor force participation, and family income do not affect the three aspects of psychological well-being considered in this study.