Parents who exit and parents who enter. Family structure transitions, child psychological health, and early drinking

This paper seeks to extend prior research by exploring whether family structure transition is associated with an increase in early alcohol consumption and whether this association is mediated by children’s socio-emotional problems, providing information on whether the effects of the transition differ according to the number of changes, the family’s initial status, or the time of exposure. The data have been drawn from the UK Millennium Cohort Study to explore associations framed with a life-course approach. Our findings suggest that types of family transitions (such as distinguishing parental exits from and parental entrances to the family) are more important than the number of family changes during childhood. The results show that moving from a two-parent household to a single-parent household directly increased the probability of being a frequent alcohol consumer among early adolescent boys, whereas the indirect effect on girls was found via socio-emotional difficulties. Our findings also show an increase in socio-emotional and behavioural difficulties in boys due to the entrance of a step-parent only if the transition occurred in the earliest childhood. Indeed, a sensitivity analysis of the time to which the children were exposed to the transition to a new family structure showed stronger effects for those who experienced a family structure change in the early life course, consistent with the cumulative disadvantage process