Family Structure and Child Health: Does the Sex Composition of Parents Matter?

Corinne Reczek · Russell Spiker · Robert L. Crosnoe

47 citations0/0 files storedDemography

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Family Dynamics and Relationships Child Welfare and Adoption Social Policies and Family

Abstract

The children of different-sex married couples appear to be advantaged on a range of outcomes relative to the children of different-sex cohabiting couples. Despite the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States, whether and how this general pattern extends to the children of same-sex married and cohabiting couples is unknown. This study examines this question with nationally representative data from the 2004-2013 pooled National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Results reveal that children in cohabiting households have poorer health outcomes than children in married households regardless of the sex composition of their parents. Children in same-sex and different-sex married households are relatively similar to each other on health outcomes, as are children in same-sex and different-sex cohabiting households. These patterns are not fully explained by socioeconomic differences among the four different types of families. This evidence can inform general debates about family structure and child health as well as policy interventions aiming to reduce child health disparities.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 47 citations exist upstream.

References

2003Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence.1995Social Conditions As Fundamental Causes of Disease 2002Socioeconomic Status and Child Development 1995Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Disease 1994Economic Deprivation and Early Childhood Development 2004The deinstitutionalization of American marriage 2004Diverging destinies: How children are faring under the second demographic transition 2001Can parents rate their child's health-related quality of life? Results of a systematic review

Cited by

2017LGBTI in OECD Countries 2021Academic Achievement of Children in Same- and Different-Sex-Parented Families: A Population-Level Analysis of Linked Administrative Data From the Netherlands 2017Family Diversity and Child Health: Where Do Same‐Sex Couple Families Fit?2019Same-Sex Parents and Children’s School Progress: An Association That Disappeared Over Time 2017The Promise and Perils of Population Research on Same-Sex Families

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.