Book Chapter
Family instability throughout childhood: building a more detailed picture
Publication details
Summary
Research has persistently shown that children’s family circumstance can provide a key explanation for how social inequalities perpetuate across generations. Children born to well-educated mothers are likely to spend much of their childhood with both their birth parents, and children born to less educated mothers are likely to spend more time living in a lone parent family or with step-parents. The experience of these different family situations affects both family income – as lone parents are typically less well-off than couple families – and parental contact time – as children will typically spend less time with (usually) their father after parental separation.