Rethinking children’s family complexity: a multi-conceptual approach with dynamic sequence analysis and fixed effects models

Objective: The association between a wide range of family complexity indicators and children’s educational outcomes was assessed. Background: Previous research documented a negative impact of disadvantageous family transitions and family instability on children’s educational outcomes. However, there is a theoretical and empirical debate surrounding the most appropriate measure of family complexity during childhood. Method: Numerous theoretically conceptualized sequence-based complexity measures are applied to parents’ life history data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, which were linked to children’s test scores in the National Pupils Dataset. Average within-child change in boys’ and girls’ math and English tests scores following change in mothers’ and fathers’ family complexity were estimated with fixed-effects regressions. Results: Family complexity measures were largely found to be negatively associated with children’s academic performance, however with differences across indicators. The number of transitions as well as the uncertainty and sum of disadvantage indicators were most tightly associated with children’s test scores. In addition, results varied by parents’ and children’s gender. For example, family complexity for fathers was often positively associated with children’s educational outcomes and associations were often stronger for boys compared to girls. Conclusion: Findings highlight the importance of theoretically derived measures of family complexity. In this study, measures associated with family instability and parental absence were shown to be most strongly linked with children’s educational outcomes.