The Color, Class, and Context of Family Structure and Its Association with Children's Educational Performance

Abstract

Over the last several decades, the U.S. has undergone a major shift in its racial/ethnic landscape. Historically, American society has been majority white. However, higher fertility rates, increased immigration, and younger average ages among people of color have led to racial/ethnic minorities’ growth in the relative share of the population, and they are projected to constitute more than half the population by 2050. Accompanying this shift has been a growing recognition of the need for family-related research that reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of American society. Any such investigation would be incomplete, of course, without acknowledging the inextricable link between race and class in America and how it shapes family life. Unfortunately, however, research on family structure and child wellbeing frequently generalizes the experiences of white families to the broader population, without reference to how differences in social location, particularly race/ethnicity and social class may lead to distinct outcomes for youth. To address this limitation, this dissertation investigates racial/ethnic and class differences in family structure and their relationship to children’s educational performance. The first study examines the prevalence and predictors of an understudied but relatively common family structure, especially among minority and/or low-income populations—the extended family. The second study explores an important and unexplained finding: although children raised by both biological parents fare better academically than children raised in any other family structure, living apart from a biological parent is less negatively consequential for racial/ethnic minority children than white children. I test two hypotheses that have been posited to account for racial/ethnic differences in the association between family structure and children’s educational attainment: the socioeconomic stress and extended family embeddedness hypotheses. The third study explores intragroup diversity in family life. Specifically, I examine intraracial differences in family structure and family integration among Black Americans and their association with youths’ grades, grade repetition, and number of suspensions. Results from the first study indicate that contrary to popular and academic perceptions, extended family households are fairly common: 35% of youth experience this family structure during childhood. Black and Hispanic children are approximately 3 and 1.5 times more likely to live in an extended family than white children, respectively, and children whose parents have less education are substantially more likely to live in this arrangement. Additionally, the transition into an extended family is largely a response to social and economic needs. Findings from the second study show that that both socioeconomic stress and extended family embeddedness attenuate the effect of family structure on minority youths’ educational attainment, though the former to a much greater extent. These findings lend support for the socioeconomic stress hypothesis, which posits that the negative effect of familial disruption may be less independently impactful for groups facing many socioeconomic disadvantages to begin with. The third study demonstrates that there is significant within-group variation in family structure and integration among black families and that these factors have a more limited and inconsistent relationship with adolescents’ educational outcomes than implied by previous scholarship. Collectively, these findings advance a more diverse portrait of American families, which has been lacking in extant research. They also show that the consequences of family structure differ by race/ethnicity and social class. Thus, efforts aimed at promoting child wellbeing should consider this diversity in family arrangements and outcomes, and their implications for policy and practice.