Children whose
parents have happy relationships with each other do better in life, irrespective of social 
class or race,
according to a new US study.
The figures also showed that children in married families where parents were in a happy relationship tended to do better than those raised in alternative family structures.
The study, carried
out by US think-tank Child Trends, looked at data from the 2007 US National
Survey of Children’s Health.
The survey provided
information from over 64,000 respondents whose children were between the ages of
six and 17.
The study showed that
good parental relationships was consistently and positively associated with a
series of child and family outcomes, including: child behavior problems
(externalizing), child social competence, child school engagement, child
internalising (depression), parent-child communication, and parental feelings of
aggravation.
While a range of
earlier studies had found links between the quality of the parents’ relationship
and positive outcomes for children and families, the researchers wanted to
established whether this held across various population subgroups, especially
among disadvantaged groups.
They found that that
good parental relationships improved outcomes for children irrespective of race,
income, gender, and educational level.
In addition, the
association holds in all but one comparison when social and economic differences
are taken into account.
They also found that, while
the association between good parental relationships and positive outcomes for
children held constant whether couples were married or cohabiting, children raised in married families tended to have fewer behavioural problems compared with those raised by cohabiting parents, where one of the parents is not a biological parent.
The figures showed that, when the parents’ relationship was reported as “completely happy,” four out of every thousand childrem raised by the child’s married, biological parents had behaviour problems.
By comparison, nine out of every thousand children being raised by married step parents had such problems, while 11 out of every thousand children being raised by cohabiting step parents had behavioural problems.
The researchers
analysed reported parental relationship happiness across six child and family
outcomes measures to establish whether the association between parental
relationship quality for child outcomes held across subsets of the population.
The levels of
parental relationships were measured under four levels of happiness; “completely
happy,” “very happy,” fairly happy,” or “not very happy”.
The results clearly
showed that child outcomes are better when the reported happiness of their
parents’ relationship is higher.
The report says:
“Almost without exception, the lowest levels of positive child outcomes are
found among children in families where the parent reports that their
relationship is ‘not too happy.’
“In contrast, the
best child outcomes are found almost without exception among children whose
parents report that their relationship is ‘completely happy’.”
According to the
report, positive child outcomes for children whose parents report a “very happy”
relationship are generally second highest, and children whose parents have a
“fairly happy” relationship fall next.
This pattern holds
across various subgroups of child gender, child age, family type, race and
ethnicity, immigrant status, parent education, and family income, the study
says.
According to the
study “the quality of parents’ relationships matters for children in every
sub-population, almost without exception”.
For example, the
study points out that “children who come from socio–economically disadvantaged homes are less likely
to be described as socially competent”.
However, it says
that, within each income category in relation to the national poverty level,
children with happier parents are more likely to be socially competent than
their peers with parents in unhappy relationships.
(Here are two blogs analysing the Child Trends report further.)
