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Cause and Effect of Broken Family: Exploring the Impact on Individuals and Society

Table of contents, causes of broken families, effects on individuals, consequences for society, addressing the impact, conclusion: fostering resilience and support.

• Amato, P. R. (2000). The consequences of divorce for adults and children. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62(4), 1269-1287.
• McLanahan, S., & Sandefur, G. (1994). Growing up with a single parent: What hurts, what helps. Harvard University Press.
• Heath, A. F., & Killewald, A. (2013). The importance of nonresident fathers for children's well-being. Annual Review of Sociology, 39, 149-170.
• Braver, S. L., Wolchik, S. A., Sandler, I. N., Sheets, V., Fogas, B., & Bay, R. C. (1993). A longitudinal study of noncustodial parents: Parents without children. Journal of Family Psychology, 7(1), 9-23.
• Wallerstein, J. S., & Kelly, J. B. (1980). Surviving the breakup: How children and parents cope with divorce. Basic Books.

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Having a Broken Family: What It Means and How to Cope

Brittany is a health and lifestyle writer and former staffer at TODAY on NBC and CBS News. She's also contributed to dozens of magazines.

Ivy Kwong, LMFT, is a psychotherapist specializing in relationships, love and intimacy, trauma and codependency, and AAPI mental health.  

Jeffbergen / Getty Images

Even the most seemingly idyllic families face problems, and sometimes it can be hard to determine exactly how to go about navigating these issues. In the most extreme cases, certain problems can even lead to estrangement when relationships are severed for a prolonged period of time.

Often called broken families, there are many potential causes of estrangement between family members, and many of them come down to specific details surrounding the individuals and the situations involved. To find out more about what causes these relational rifts, as well as how to solve them, Verywell Mind tapped Frank Anderson, MD , a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, who specializes in the treatment of trauma.

"A broken family is one that includes unhealthy or severed relationships within the family unit," explains Anderson. "They are often associated with divorce but certainly can occur in an intact family where various members are in conflict with or estranged from each other." 

What Causes Estrangement Between Family Members?

While every relationship is unique, Anderson explained some common causes of estrangement among family members:

• Abuse: Anderson notes that this can include sexual, physical, or emotional abuse. While abuse is typically a result of some other factor (mental health problems, for example), it can cause relationship trauma and it's understandable if it complicates your ability to forgive.
• Mental health issues: If you or your family member faced mental health conditions or substance use issues that resulted in the estrangement, it's important to address those issues before moving forward with attempting to fix the relationship. If you were struggling with the issues, make sure you seek help from a therapist and then communicate to the family member that you have sought help and moved forward. If a family member was the one dealing with mental health issues, it's OK to ask them if they've addressed the issues by seeking out help.
• Financial abuse: Money can complicate any relationship, but this is especially true for loved ones. In a marriage, one person may be spending beyond the budget, or overly controlling with the money. Serious issues can arise when there is a death of a parent, and the children do not agree on how the assets are distributed among them. That said, many times these issues can be remedied by being open and honest about your concerns.
• Differing beliefs: This can come into play in a variety of ways—such as political or religious—and if it impacts your ability or your family member's ability to be kind and respectful, then it can become a major problem.
• Boundary crossings: This is perhaps especially true for immediate family members like parents or siblings. In these cases, it's especially important to make sure you've made the person aware of your boundaries so that they know exactly what it is that offends you. It's also important to listen to your family members if they are trying to explain their boundaries to you.
• Overly controlling parents or parental figures: While parents or parental figures often mean well , they can sometimes push too far when it comes to exerting their control. If this is carrying over into your personal life and impacting your relationships as an adult, it's important to make your parents aware of the ways they're affecting your life.
• Refusals to apologize: If you or a loved one are refusing to apologize , it's especially important to make sure you understand the other person's motives. If you feel that everyone's reasoning has been considered and there's still a refusal to apologize, this can cause a major rift.

How Do You Know When a Familial Relationship Is Worth Saving?

First off, it's important to be honest with yourself about the nature of the relationship you had with this family member before things went sour. Was it meaningful and positive or is the relationship's history lined with toxicity ? If you do find that it was meaningful and positive, it may be worth mending.

Broken families are repairable when the involved parties are willing to meet together, to listen to each other’s point of view, and to be able to freely discuss their differences with the intention of resolving the conflict and repairing the relationship.

How to Effectively Repair Relationships With Family Members

In order to effectively repair a relationship, Anderson emphasizes the importance of both parties' willingness to "forgo a defensive posture." By this, he means that each party should be willing to listen to the other, even if this means hearing things that are potentially hurtful. It also requires both parties to speak honestly and openly about their feelings.

"If at any time it becomes unsafe to anyone involved, each party should have the freedom to end the discussion, perhaps postpone it for another time or leave it without further follow-up if necessary," says Anderson.

If you want to speak with a family member, but you're worried that things will get too heated for either person, it may be helpful to enlist the help of a mediator.

"It is often helpful to have a third-party present to arbitrate the discussion," says Anderson. "The neutral party should be able to feel empowered to speak up when necessary and establish boundaries and guidelines for the ensuing discussion."

How to Accept That a Family Relationship Is Over

Sometimes, it is better to end the relationship completely. When a family member continues to be toxic, abusive, unapologetic, or unwilling to seek professional help, then you will not be able to successfully resolve conflict with this person and they will continue to hurt you.

It's important to note that you can forgive someone without reinstating a relationship with that person. In fact, it's better for your mental health if you forgive them because it can help you find peace.

"Forgiveness is something that is achieved internally," says Anderson. "It does not necessarily require the other person to be present in order for it to be meaningful, successful, and long-lasting."

Anderson emphasizes the importance of therapy when it comes to processing the end of any important relationship. While it may take some time, if you're open to mentally forgiving someone, you can move past it in a way that brings you internal peace.

"It is certainly possible, in the context of a supportive therapeutic setting, to work through, resolve, release, and forgive a family member who has hurt you, even if you don’t have contact with them," says Anderson.

A Word From Verywell

Relationships are complicated and even the most ideal family will have conflict at some point. Oftentimes, conflict can be resolved with effective communication, forgiveness, and sometimes the aid of professional help. Other times, the family unit is broken, conflict cannot be resolved, and you may find yourself estranged from certain family members.

It can be difficult to accept a relationship is broken, but maintaining healthy boundaries in your family relationships can prevent further pain.

Moving past hurtful things from the past is possible, and you will be better for it. Whether you need to forgive a family member for yourself or in order to mend a relationship, it's always best to make sure you do what's going to benefit your mental health.

By Brittany Loggins Brittany is a health and lifestyle writer and former staffer at TODAY on NBC and CBS News. She's also contributed to dozens of magazines.

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• How to cope with family breakdown

Family breakdowns are sometimes unavoidable when parents decide to separate, usually leaving children feeling sad, confused and helpless. Here are some ways to address your children’s common concerns and support them.

Q: If my parents argue a lot, does it mean they will break up?

No, it is normal for all families have arguments. However, there are cases where frequent arguments do lead to parents’ separation, and as such, many young people are forced to deal with the confusion and uncertainties caused by family breakdowns. These may include changes such as moving to a new environment or not seeing mum/dad frequently anymore. While the situation may be distressing, it is important to remind your children that it is not their fault that you are fighting with or separating from your partner.

Q: What if I am feeling sad and depressed about the entire situation?

The impact of conflict and separation is different on everyone. While some are able to cope effectively, others may struggle to adjust and experience high levels of anxiety, depression, insecurity and poor sleep quality. These reactions are perfectly normal; when a family breaks down, it is natural to feel a sense of loss.

It may also help to remind your children that while there are things they cannot control in life, they can control how they cope with difficulties they may face.

Q: How do I survive my parents’ separation?

• Remind them that the separation is not their fault
• Even though you and your partner may be separating, you are still, and will always, be their parents. Try and stay in contact with the children to reinforce this
• Tell them that it is normal to experience strong, negative emotions. Encourage them to seek support from their siblings and friends
• Encourage them to speak to you if you do or say something that upsets them. Avoid criticising your ex-partner in front of your children.

Coping with the aftermath of a family breakdown is often tough, but it is important to bear in mind that you will all get through it. The sadness and depression are merely temporary; moving on with your life may take time but it will happen.  In addition, it is important to express your feelings and find emotional support from close relatives or friends. If you find that you or your children are feeling too overwhelmed, seeking help from a counselor or psychologist may help you to cope better.

Call us to find out how to access high quality psychology services quickly and affordably in your local area. Appointments available usually within one week.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Love — My Experience Growing Up from Broken Family

My Experience Growing Up from Broken Family

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Words: 1295 |

Published: Jun 5, 2019

Words: 1295 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Works Cited

• Ahmadi, S., & Sadeghi, H. (2015). The relationship between family function and mental health in female students of high schools in Tehran. Iranian Journal of Psychiatric Nursing, 2(2), 1-6.
• Bernstein, D. P., & Fink, L. (1998). Childhood Trauma Questionnaire: A retrospective self-report manual. The Psychological Corporation.
• Brazelton, T. B. (1992). Touchpoints: Your child's emotional and behavioral development. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
• Chauhan, P., Gupta, R., & Parmar, R. (2018). A study on parent-child relationship and mental health of adolescents. International Journal of Indian Psychology, 6(3), 124-131.
• Gardner, T. W., & Ward, S. (2016). Life span developmental psychology: Introduction to research methods. Routledge.
• Goodman, R. (2001). Psychometric properties of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 40(11), 1337-1345.
• Hough, M. (2017). Marriage, divorce, remarriage. Open University Press.
• King, D. (2009). The impact of family breakdown on children's well-being: Evidence review. The Scottish Government.
• Lopez, F. G., Castro, N., & Rincón, P. (2013). Mexican-American men's and women's preferences for and attitudes toward counseling. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 60(2), 227-235.
• Santrock, J. W. (2017). Life-span development. McGraw-Hill Education.

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Causes of family breakdown and its effects on Children

Abstract The increase of family breakdown down rate in Juba City has been due to alcohol and drugs addiction, financial problems, death, plus psychological, sexual and emotional abuse, threatening diseases like HIV/AIDs and inability to resolve conflict among others. The objective of the study was to investigate the causes of family breakdown and its effects on the children in Juba City. The effects of family breakdown on children include difficulties in school, stress, early engagement in sexual activities, insecure and afraid of the future, depression and fear of being abandoned. The forms of family breakdown identified during the study include death, separation and divorce. The rate of the family breakage was indicating 78.3%, though the study was based in Juba city, it reflects the entire country since all of the ten states’ habitants were included in study. Some of the cultural practices were found of backing up the high rate of family breakdown and such practices include force marriage, polygamy marriage, inheritance of widowers and high bride wealth. The study proved communication skills, creation of family laws, supporting the children of the low families, marriage preparation and parenting new initiatives and information giving and mediation are the fundamental alternative solution to family breakdown. In conclusion, the study proved the family breakdown affects the children performance in schools in line with other effects such as; stress, depression, fear of being abandoned, insecure and afraid of the future and torn in two among others.

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Canadian Journal of Family and Youth / Le Journal Canadien de Famille et de la Jeunesse

Abdulrazaq Olayinka Oniye

Vince Formoso

When a family breaks up, it is usually difficult for everyone in the family to cope with the situation; however, children are often the worst victims of family breakup. There are powerful reasons to be alarmed about the impacts of family breakup on children. They feel insecure, depressed and helpless when they see their family break apart. The present study aims at identifying the effects of family breakup on children. The purposively chosen research site was the city of Khulna in Bangladesh. Using a survey method, data were collected from seventy children. After analyzing the data collected from the field survey, this report concludes that children of the broken families are particularly vulnerable and they need special care for their mental, psychological and physical development. After presenting the main findings in a descriptive fashion, the article provides a set of recommendations that will support children in the broken families.

Ken Gabriel

The broken family also called single parent family is not structurally intact for various reasons; death of a parent, divorce, separation, dissertation and illegitimacy, adoption, artificial insemination, surrogate motherhood, or extramarital pregnancy. According to Callister (2006), in a dual parent family, parents are mainly responsible for the educational and career development of their children. Children tend to behave better when both parents are present. However, with the present modernization, the economic instability and industrial revolutions, both parents engage in jobs that can provide more income to the family thereby living their children for a long period of hours at home or school, thus depriving the family of a more intimate parent-child relationship. These contribute to the reasons why some children’s behavior from dual parent families is morally and socially poor.

salau odunayo

Alonge Imole-Ayo

In Nigeria today as well as so many other countries of the world, Broken Homes as a result of divorce among so many contributing factors does not affect just the partners (husband and wife) but also the offspring from the relationship. Though Broken Homes which has resulted in the wild spread of single parents mostly mothers has not been given much attention to. This is because a lot of people now see it as a norm while others see it as being a soothing option for a relationship that can no longer hold ends. In fact, some countries have made it a social norm and even passed it into law for legalization. But the societies at large pay little or no attention to its adverse effect on the physical, psychological and social effects on the development of children especially those in the primary schools (Pupils). Since education has its scope extended to the physical, psychological, moral and social development and growth of a young mind, therefore, the researcher has deemed it fit to base this research work on the "Effect of Broken Homes on the Academic Performance of Primary School Pupils" using Bosso Local Government Area of Niger State as a case study. Questionnaires were administered to one hundred and twenty (120) respondents in the study area covering four (4) schools in Shango, Gidan Kwanu, Mekunkele and Bosso. The respondents were selected using simple random sampling technique. Conclusion and recommendation were made after the summary of the findings and other analysis.

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Essays on Family Breakdown

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The House I Live In Essay Examples

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• Parenting in America
• 1. The American family today

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• 2. Satisfaction, time and support
• 3. Parenting approaches and concerns
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For updated data, read our 2023 essay “The Modern American Family.”

Family life is changing. Two-parent households are on the decline in the United States as divorce, remarriage and cohabitation are on the rise. And families are smaller now, both due to the growth of single-parent households and the drop in fertility. Not only are Americans having fewer children, but the circumstances surrounding parenthood have changed. While in the early 1960s babies typically arrived within a marriage , today fully four-in-ten births occur to women who are single or living with a non-marital partner. At the same time that family structures have transformed, so has the role of mothers in the workplace – and in the home. As more moms have entered the labor force, more have become breadwinners – in many cases, primary breadwinners – in their families.

As a result of these changes, there is no longer one dominant family form in the U.S. Parents today are raising their children against a backdrop of increasingly diverse and, for many, constantly evolving family forms. By contrast, in 1960, the height of the post-World War II baby boom, there was one dominant family form. At that time 73% of all children were living in a family with two married parents in their first marriage. By 1980, 61% of children were living in this type of family, and today less than half (46%) are. The declining share of children living in what is often deemed a “traditional” family has been largely supplanted by the rising shares of children living with single or cohabiting parents.

Not only has the diversity in family living arrangements increased since the early 1960s, but so has the fluidity of the family. Non-marital cohabitation and divorce, along with the prevalence of remarriage and (non-marital) recoupling in the U.S., make for family structures that in many cases continue to evolve throughout a child’s life. While in the past a child born to a married couple – as most children were – was very likely to grow up in a home with those two parents, this is much less common today, as a child’s living arrangement changes with each adjustment in the relationship status of their parents. For example, one study found that over a three-year period, about three-in-ten (31%) children younger than 6 had experienced a major change in their family or household structure, in the form of parental divorce, separation, marriage, cohabitation or death.

The growing complexity and diversity of families

The share of children living in a two-parent household is at the lowest point in more than half a century: 69% are in this type of family arrangement today, compared with 73% in 2000 and 87% in 1960. And even children living with two parents are more likely to be experiencing a variety of family arrangements due to increases in divorce, remarriage and cohabitation. 3 Today, fully 62% of children live with two married parents – an all-time low. Some 15% are living with parents in a remarriage and 7% are living with parents who are cohabiting. 4 Conversely, the share of children living with one parent stands at 26%, up from 22% in 2000 and just 9% in 1960.

These changes have been driven in part by the fact that Americans today are exiting marriage at higher rates than in the past. Now, about two-thirds (67%) of people younger than 50 who had ever married are still in their first marriage. In comparison, that share was 83% in 1960. 5  And while among men about 76% of first marriages that began in the late 1980s were still intact 10 years later, fully 88% of marriages that began in the late 1950s lasted as long, according to analyses of Census Bureau data. 6

The rise of single-parent families, and changes in two-parent families

Despite the decline over the past half century in children residing with two parents, a majority of kids are still growing up in this type of living arrangement. 7 However, less than half—46%—are living with two parents who are both in their first marriage. This share is down from 61% in 1980 8 and 73% in 1960.

An additional 15% of children are living with two parents, at least one of whom has been married before. This share has remained relatively stable for decades.

In the remainder of two-parent families, the parents are cohabiting but are not married. Today 7% of children are living with cohabiting parents; however a far larger share will experience this kind of living arrangement at some point during their childhood. For instance, estimates suggest that about 39% of children will have had a mother in a cohabiting relationship by the time they turn 12; and by the time they turn 16, almost half (46%) will have experience with their mother cohabiting. In some cases, this will happen because a never-married mother enters into a cohabiting relationship; in other cases, a mother may enter into a cohabiting relationship after a marital breakup.

The decline in children living in two-parent families has been offset by an almost threefold increase in those living with just one parent—typically the mother. 9  Fully one-fourth (26%) of children younger than age 18 are now living with a single parent, up from just 9% in 1960 and 22% in 2000. The share of children living without either parent stands at 5%; most of these children are being raised by grandparents . 10

The majority of white, Hispanic and Asian children are living in two-parent households, while less than half of black children are living in this type of arrangement. Furthermore, at least half of Asian and white children are living with two parents both in their first marriage. The shares of Hispanic and black children living with two parents in their first marriage are much lower.

Asian children are the most likely to be living with both parents—fully 84% are, including 71% who are living with parents who are both in their first marriage. Some 13% of Asian kids are living in a single-parent household, while 11% are living with remarried parents, and just 3% are living with parents who are cohabiting.

Roughly eight-in-ten (78%) white children are living with two parents, including about half (52%) with parents who are both in their first marriage and 19% with two parents in a remarriage; 6% have parents who are cohabiting. About one-in-five (19%) white children are living with a single parent.

Among Hispanic children, two-thirds live with two parents. All told, 43% live with two parents in their first marriage, while 12% are living with parents in a remarriage, and 11% are living with parents who are cohabiting. Some 29% of Hispanic children live with a single parent.

The living arrangements of black children stand in stark contrast to the other major racial and ethnic groups. The majority – 54% – are living with a single parent. Just 38% are living with two parents, including 22% who are living with two parents who are both in their first marriage. Some 9% are living with remarried parents, and 7% are residing with parents who are cohabiting.

Children with at least one college-educated parent are far more likely to be living in a two-parent household, and to be living with two parents in a first marriage, than are kids whose parents are less educated. 11 Fully 88% of children who have at least one parent with a bachelor’s degree or more are living in a two-parent household, including 67% who are living with two parents in their first marriage.

In comparison, some 68% of children who have a parent with some college experience are living in a two-parent household, and just 40% are living with parents who are both in a first marriage. About six-in-ten (59%) children who have a parent with a high school diploma are in a two-parent household, including 33% who are living with parents in their first marriage. Meanwhile, just over half (54%) of children whose parents lack a high school diploma are living in a two-parent household, including 33% whose parents are in their first marriage.

Blended families

According to the most recent data, 16% of children are living in what the Census Bureau terms “blended families” – a household with a stepparent, stepsibling or half-sibling. This share has remained stable since the early 1990s, when reliable data first became available. At that time 15% of kids lived in blended family households. All told, about 8% are living with a stepparent, and 12% are living with stepsiblings or half-siblings. 12

Many, but not all, remarriages involve blended families. 13  According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, six-in-ten (63%) women in remarriages are in blended families, and about half of these remarriages involve stepchildren who live with the remarried couple.

Hispanic, black and white children are equally likely to live in a blended family. About 17% of Hispanic and black kids are living with a stepparent, stepsibling or a half-sibling, as are 15% of white kids. Among Asian children, however, 7% – a far smaller share – are living in blended families. This low share is consistent with the finding that Asian children are more likely than others to be living with two married parents, both of whom are in their first marriage.

The shrinking American family

Fertility in the U.S. has been on the decline since the end of the post-World War II baby boom, resulting in smaller families. In the mid-1970s, a 40% plurality of mothers who had reached the end of their childbearing years had given birth to four or more children. 14  Now, a similar share (41%) of mothers at the end of their childbearing years has had two children, and just 14% have had four or more children. 15

At the same time, the share of mothers ages 40 to 44 who have had only one child has doubled, from 11% in 1976 to 22% today. The share of mothers with three children has remained virtually unchanged at about a quarter.

Women’s increasing educational attainment and labor force participation, and improvements in contraception, not to mention the retreat from marriage, have all likely played a role in shrinking family size .

Family size varies markedly across races and ethnicities. Asian moms have the lowest fertility, and Hispanic mothers have the highest. About 27% of Asian mothers and one-third of white mothers near the end of their childbearing years have had three or more children. Among black mothers at the end of their childbearing years, four-in-ten have had three or more children, as have fully half (50%) of Hispanic mothers.

Similarly, a gap in fertility exists among women with different levels of educational attainment, despite recent increases in the fertility of highly educated women. For example, just 27% of mothers ages 40 to 44 with a post-graduate degree such as a master’s, professional or doctorate degree have borne three or more children, as have 32% of those with a bachelor’s degree. Among mothers in the same age group with a high school diploma or some college, 38% have had three or more kids, while among moms who lack a high school diploma, the majority – 55% – have had three or more children.

The rise of births to unmarried women and multi-partner fertility

Not only are women having fewer children today, but they are having them under different circumstances than in the past. While at one time virtually all births occurred within marriage, these two life events are now far less intertwined. And while people were much more likely to “mate for life” in the past, today a sizable share have children with more than one partner – sometimes within marriage, and sometimes outside of it.

Births to unmarried women

In 1960, just 5% of all births occurred outside of marriage. By 1970, this share had doubled to 11%, and by 2000 fully one-third of births occurred to unmarried women. Non-marital births continued to rise until the mid-2000s, when the share of births to unmarried women stabilized at around 40%. 16

Not all babies born outside of a marriage are necessarily living with just one parent, however. The majority of these births now occur to women who are living with a romantic partner, according to analyses of the National Survey of Family Growth. In fact, over the past 20 years, virtually all of the growth in births outside of marriage has been driven by increases in births to cohabiting women. 17

Researchers have found that, while marriages are less stable than they once were, they remain more stable than cohabiting unions. Past analysis indicates that about one-in-five children born within a marriage will experience the breakup of that marriage by age 9. In comparison, fully half of children born within a cohabiting union will experience the breakup of their parents by the same age. At the same time, children born into cohabiting unions are more likely than those born to single moms to someday live with two married parents. Estimates suggest that 66% will have done so by the time they are 12, compared with 45% of those who were born to unmarried non-cohabiting moms.

The share of births occurring outside of marriage varies markedly across racial and ethnic groups. Among black women, 71% of births are now non-marital, as are about half (53%) of births to Hispanic women. In contrast, 29% of births to white women occur outside of a marriage.

Racial differences in educational attainment explain some, but not all, of the differences in non-marital birth rates.

New mothers who are college-educated are far more likely than less educated moms to be married. In 2014 just 11% of women with a college degree or more who had a baby in the prior year were unmarried. In comparison, this share was about four times as high (43%) for new mothers with some college but no college degree. About half (54%) of those with only a high school diploma were unmarried when they gave birth, as were about six-in-ten (59%) new mothers who lacked a high school diploma.

Multi-partner fertility

Related to non-marital births is what researchers call “ multi-partner fertility .” This measure reflects the share of people who have had biological children with more than one partner, either within or outside of marriage. The increase in divorces, separations, remarriages and serial cohabitations has likely contributed to an increase in multi-partner fertility. Estimates vary, given data limitations, but analysis of longitudinal data indicates that almost 20% of women near the end of their childbearing years have had children by more than one partner, as have about three-in-ten (28%) of those with two or more children. Research indicates that multi-partner fertility is particularly common among blacks, Hispanics, and the less educated.

Parents today: older and better educated

While parents today are far less likely to be married than they were in the past, they are more likely to be older and to have more education.

In 1970, the average new mother was 21 years old. Since that time, that age has risen to 26 years . The rise in maternal age has been driven largely by declines in teen births. Today, 7% of all births occur to women under the age of 20; as recently as 1990 , the share was almost twice as high (13%).

While age at first birth has increased across all major race and ethnic groups, substantial variation persists across these groups. The average first-time mom among whites is now 27 years old. The average age at first birth among blacks and Hispanics is quite a bit younger – 24 years – driven in part by the prevalence of teen pregnancy in these groups. Just 5% of births to whites take place prior to age 20, while this share reaches 11% for non-Hispanic blacks and 10% for Hispanics. On the other end of the spectrum, fully 45% of births to whites are to women ages 30 or older, versus just 31% among blacks and 36% among Hispanics.

Mothers today are also far better educated than they were in the past. While in 1960 just 18% of mothers with infants at home had any college experience, today that share stands at 67%. This trend is driven in large part by dramatic increases in educational attainment for all women. While about half (49%) of women ages 15 to 44 in 1960 lacked a high school diploma, today the largest share of women (61%) has at least some college experience, and just 19% lack a high school diploma.

Mothers moving into the workforce

In addition to the changes in family structure that have occurred over the past several decades, family life has been greatly affected by the movement of more and more mothers into the workforce. This increase in labor force participation is a continuation of a century-long trend ; rates of labor force participation among married women, particularly married white women, have been on the rise since at least the turn of the 20th century. While the labor force participation rates of mothers have more or less leveled off since about 2000, they remain far higher than they were four decades ago.

In 1975, the first year for which data on the labor force participation of mothers are available, less than half of mothers (47%) with children younger than 18 were in the labor force, and about a third of those with children younger than 3 years old were working outside of the home. Those numbers changed rapidly, and, by 2000, 73% of moms were in the labor force. Labor force participation today stands at 70% among all mothers of children younger than 18, and 64% of moms with preschool-aged children. About three-fourths of all employed moms are working full time.

Among mothers with children younger than 18, blacks are the most likely to be in the labor force –about three-fourths are. In comparison, this share is 70% among white mothers. Some 64% of Asian mothers and 62% of Hispanic mother are in the workforce. The relatively high proportions of immigrants in these groups likely contribute to their lower labor force involvement – foreign-born moms are much less likely to be working than their U.S.-born counterparts.

The more education a mother has, the more likely she is to be in the labor force. While about half (49%) of moms who lack a high school diploma are working, this share jumps to 65% for those with a high school diploma. Fully 75% of mothers with some college are working, as are 79% of those with a college degree or more.

Along with their movement into the labor force, women, even more than men, have been attaining higher and higher levels of education. In fact, among married couples today, it is more common for the wife to have more education than the husband, a reversal of previous patterns. These changes, along with the increasing share of single-parent families, mean that more than ever, mothers are playing the role of breadwinner —often the primary breadwinner—within their families.

Today, 40% of families with children under 18 at home include mothers who earn the majority of the family income. 18 This share is up from 11% in 1960 and 34% in 2000. The bulk of these breadwinner moms—8.3 million—are either unmarried or are married and living apart from their spouse. 19 The remaining 4.9 million, who are married and living with their spouse, earn more than their husbands. While families with married breadwinner moms tend to have higher median incomes than married-parent families where the father earns more ($88,000 vs. $84,500), families headed by unmarried mothers have incomes far lower than unmarried father families. In 2014, the median annual income for unmarried mother families was just $24,000.

Breadwinner moms are particularly common in black families, spurred by very high rates of single motherhood. About three-fourths (74%) of black moms are breadwinner moms. Most are unmarried or living apart from their spouse (61%), and the remainder (13%) earn more than their spouse. Among Hispanic moms, 44% are the primary breadwinner; 31% are unmarried, while 12% are married and making more than their husbands. For white mothers, 38% are the primary breadwinners—20% are unmarried moms, and 18% are married and have income higher than that of their spouses. Asian families are less likely to have a woman as the main breadwinner in their families, presumably due to their extremely low rates of single motherhood. Just 11% of Asian moms are unmarried. The share who earn more than their husbands—20%— is somewhat higher than for the other racial and ethnic groups.

The flip side of the movement of mothers into the labor force has been a dramatic decline in the share of mothers who are now stay-at-home moms . Some 29% of all mothers living with children younger than 18 are at home with their children. This marks a modest increase since 1999, when 23% of moms were home with their children, but a long-term decline of about 20 percentage points since the late 1960s when about half of moms were at home.

While the image of “stay-at-home mom” may conjure images of “Leave It to Beaver” or the highly affluent “ opt-out mom ”, the reality of stay-at-home motherhood today is quite different for a large share of families. In roughly three-in-ten of stay-at-home-mom families, either the father is not working or the mother is single or cohabiting. As such, stay-at-home mothers are generally less well off than working mothers in terms of education and income. Some 49% of stay-at-home mothers have at most a high-school diploma compared with 30% among working mothers. And the median household income for families with a stay-at-home mom and a full-time working dad was $55,000 in 2014, roughly half the median income for families in which both parents work full-time ($102,400). 20

• “Parent” here is used to mean an adult parental figure. Except as noted, throughout this chapter a parent may be the biological or adoptive parent, or the spouse or partner of a biological or adoptive parent (i.e., a stepparent). The marital status of the parents alone doesn’t reveal definitively what their relationship is to their children. For instance, if a child is living with two parents, both of whom are in their first marriage: it may be the case that both of those parents are the biological parents of that child; or it may be the case that the mother is the biological parent of that child and that she later entered into her first marriage to the child’s (now) stepfather; or it may be the case that the father is the biological parent of that child and that he entered into his first marriage to the child’s (now) stepmother. ↩
• Any marriage in which at least one of the partners has been married previously is defined as a remarriage. ↩
• While the divorce rate has risen since 1960, the trend in divorce since 1980 is less clear. Stevenson and Wolfers maintain that divorce rates have declined since that time, while Kennedy and Ruggles find that the divorce rate has continued its rise. ↩
• Among women, 73% of marriages that began in the late 1980s lasted for at least 10 years, compared with 87% of those that began in the late 1950s. ↩
• For the purposes of this report, same-sex couples are grouped with other-sex couples. While same-sex parenting and marriage has become more prevalent, estimates suggest that less than 1% of couple households with children are headed by same-sex couples; and that, in total, fewer than 130,000 same-sex couples are currently raising children younger than 18. See here for more on the challenges of counting same-sex couples in the U.S. ↩
• Data on the share of parents in their first marriage are not available for 1990 or 2000. ↩
• In 2014, 83% of children living with only one parent were living with their mother, according to the American Community Survey. ↩
• The dramatic changes in kids’ living arrangements in the recent past are in sharp contrast to historical trends , which reveal remarkable stability. From 1880 to around 1970, the share of children living with two parents consistently hovered around 85%, while the share living with a single mother remained in the single digits. Even smaller shares were living with no parent, or with a father only. ↩
• Parental education is based on the highest educational attainment of coresident parents. So if a child lives with both parents, and the father has a bachelor’s degree, and the mother has a high school diploma, that child is classified as having a parent with a bachelor’s degree. A child living with a single parent is classified based on that parent’s education. The 5% of children who are not living with their parents are excluded from this analysis. ↩
• These data are based on self-reports. It may be the case that some families that began as stepfamilies may no longer identify as such, if the stepparent went on to adopt the children. And, of course, many families may be “blended” but may not include parents who are formally married; those families are likely not captured in this measure. ↩
• While blended families all involve remarriage, not all remarriages produce blended families. Remarriages involving spouses who have no children from prior relationships would not create blended families. ↩
• Women at the end of their childbearing years are often defined as those ages 40-44. While it is still possible to have children beyond this point, about 99.8% of babies are born to women younger than 45, and 97% are born to women younger than 40. Women who reached the end of their childbearing years in the mid-1970s came of age during the height of the post-World War II baby boom, a period typified by unusually high fertility. ↩
• While they are not included in this analysis due to data limitations, many women who do not bear children are indeed mothers—either adoptive mothers or stepmothers. ↩
• Preliminary 2014 data indicate that the share of non-marital births declined slightly for the first time in almost 20 years, due largely to changes in age composition among childbearing-aged women. ↩
• Given the limitations of data regarding the fertility of men , the focus here is on fertility of women. ↩
• Only families where the mother or father is the household head are included in the analysis of breadwinner moms. ↩
• For the remainder of this chapter, “unmarried mothers” refers to those who are not married, or who are married but living apart from their spouse. ↩
• The vast majority of stay-at-home parents are indeed mothers, but a growing share of fathers are joining the ranks, as well. In 2012, 16% of stay-at-home parents were dads, up from 10% in 1989. Like stay-at-home mothers, stay-at-home dads tend to be less well off than their working counterparts; they are far more likely to lack a high school diploma (22% vs. 10%), and far more likely to be living in poverty (47% vs. 8%). ↩

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The Causes and Effects of a Broken Family Essay Example

• Pages: 2 (503 words)
• Published: September 1, 2016
• Type: Research Paper

Family is the basic components of the society. A group of individuals living under one roof. We believe that the number one ingredients on youth’s happy life are their family that the parents are the most important source of youth’s behavior, which effect to their outlook in life.A family includes a householder and one or more people living in the same household who are related to the householder by birth, marriage, or adoption. All people in a household who are related to the householder are regarded as members of his or her family.

Marriage the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law. Marriage in the eyes of God: A. The couple is married in the

eyes of God when the physical union is consummated through sexual intercourse. B. The couple is married in the eyes of God when the couple is legally married. C. The couple is married in the eyes of God after they have participated in a formal religious wedding ceremony.

A broken family is one where the parents (mother and father) of a child or children have split up and no longer share a single family home as a family unit. This is also known as a broken home.

What do you want to find out?

We want to find out the cause of having a broken family and how does it affect the youth and how they will react/act on it and the emotions that the children have to deal with.Will it be a positive or negative impac

to the child/children?

Cause of Broken Family:

•  The spouses fall out of love with each other.
• Financial pressure.
• One spouse who is not capable of commitment.
• Psychological disorders such as major depression and the person will not go for help.
• If the husband works long hours or works out of town and the wife seldom sees her husband and has a heavy load of raising their children.
• Sometimes having an over-bearing mother or mother-in-law living with the couple.
• A male partner that is lethargic about finding work to support his family.
• Alcoholism; drugs; hanging out in a gang.

Effects to the parents:

Child Abuse When parents are unhappy in their parental roles or when a frictional relationship exists between them, some babies become the target of anger and excitement. The babies are either neglected or abused. This might lead to unhealthy parent-child relationships.

Over Protective Parents who are over protected and prevented their children from doing what they are capable of doing. This might lead to abnormal fear of members outside and excessive shyness in the presence of strangers.

Failure to Develop Attachment Behaviour Failure to establish attachment behaviour leads to feelings of insecurity.

It is not quiet clear if what is the percentage of broken family in the Philippines, but as per estimation it consist at least 5 to 15%.

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When Prison and Mental Illness Amount to a Death Sentence

The downward spiral of one inmate, Markus Johnson, shows the larger failures of the nation’s prisons to care for the mentally ill.

Supported by

By Glenn Thrush

Photographs by Carlos Javier Ortiz

Glenn Thrush spent more than a year reporting this article, interviewing close to 50 people and reviewing court-obtained body-camera footage and more than 1,500 pages of documents.

• Published May 5, 2024 Updated May 7, 2024

Markus Johnson slumped naked against the wall of his cell, skin flecked with pepper spray, his face a mask of puzzlement, exhaustion and resignation. Four men in black tactical gear pinned him, his face to the concrete, to cuff his hands behind his back.

He did not resist. He couldn’t. He was so gravely dehydrated he would be dead by their next shift change.

Listen to this article with reporter commentary

“I didn’t do anything,” Mr. Johnson moaned as they pressed a shield between his shoulders.

It was 1:19 p.m. on Sept. 6, 2019, in the Danville Correctional Center, a medium-security prison a few hours south of Chicago. Mr. Johnson, 21 and serving a short sentence for gun possession, was in the throes of a mental collapse that had gone largely untreated, but hardly unwatched.

He had entered in good health, with hopes of using the time to gain work skills. But for the previous three weeks, Mr. Johnson, who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, had refused to eat or take his medication. Most dangerous of all, he had stealthily stopped drinking water, hastening the physical collapse that often accompanies full-scale mental crises.

Mr. Johnson’s horrific downward spiral, which has not been previously reported, represents the larger failures of the nation’s prisons to care for the mentally ill. Many seriously ill people receive no treatment . For those who do, the outcome is often determined by the vigilance and commitment of individual supervisors and frontline staff, which vary greatly from system to system, prison to prison, and even shift to shift.

The country’s jails and prisons have become its largest provider of inpatient mental health treatment, with 10 times as many seriously mentally ill people now held behind bars as in hospitals. Estimating the population of incarcerated people with major psychological problems is difficult, but the number is likely 200,000 to 300,000, experts say.

Many of these institutions remain ill-equipped to handle such a task, and the burden often falls on prison staff and health care personnel who struggle with the dual roles of jailer and caregiver in a high-stress, dangerous, often dehumanizing environment.

In 2021, Joshua McLemore , a 29-year-old with schizophrenia held for weeks in an isolation cell in Jackson County, Ind., died of organ failure resulting from a “refusal to eat or drink,” according to an autopsy. In April, New York City agreed to pay $28 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of Nicholas Feliciano, a young man with a history of mental illness who suffered severe brain damage after attempting to hang himself on Rikers Island — as correctional officers stood by.

Mr. Johnson’s mother has filed a wrongful-death suit against the state and Wexford Health Sources, a for-profit health care contractor in Illinois prisons. The New York Times reviewed more than 1,500 pages of reports, along with depositions taken from those involved. Together, they reveal a cascade of missteps, missed opportunities, potential breaches of protocol and, at times, lapses in common sense.

Prison officials and Wexford staff took few steps to intervene even after it became clear that Mr. Johnson, who had been hospitalized repeatedly for similar episodes and recovered, had refused to take medication. Most notably, they did not transfer him to a state prison facility that provides more intensive mental health treatment than is available at regular prisons, records show.

The quality of medical care was also questionable, said Mr. Johnson’s lawyers, Sarah Grady and Howard Kaplan, a married legal team in Chicago. Mr. Johnson lost 50 to 60 pounds during three weeks in solitary confinement, but officials did not initiate interventions like intravenous feedings or transfer him to a non-prison hospital.

And they did not take the most basic step — dialing 911 — until it was too late.

There have been many attempts to improve the quality of mental health treatment in jails and prisons by putting care on par with punishment — including a major effort in Chicago . But improvements have proved difficult to enact and harder to sustain, hampered by funding and staffing shortages.

Lawyers representing the state corrections department, Wexford and staff members who worked at Danville declined to comment on Mr. Johnson’s death, citing the unresolved litigation. In their interviews with state police investigators, and in depositions, employees defended their professionalism and adherence to procedure, while citing problems with high staff turnover, difficult work conditions, limited resources and shortcomings of co-workers.

But some expressed a sense of resignation about the fate of Mr. Johnson and others like him.

Prisoners have “much better chances in a hospital, but that’s not their situation,” said a senior member of Wexford’s health care team in a deposition.

“I didn’t put them in prison,” he added. “They are in there for a reason.”

Markus Mison Johnson was born on March 1, 1998, to a mother who believed she was not capable of caring for him.

Days after his birth, he was taken in by Lisa Barker Johnson, a foster mother in her 30s who lived in Zion, Ill., a working-class city halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. Markus eventually became one of four children she adopted from different families.

The Johnson house is a lively split level, with nieces, nephews, grandchildren and neighbors’ children, family keepsakes, video screens and juice boxes. Ms. Johnson sits at its center on a kitchen chair, chin resting on her hand as children wander over to share their thoughts, or to tug on her T-shirt to ask her to be their bathroom buddy.

From the start, her bond with Markus was particularly powerful, in part because the two looked so much alike, with distinctive dimpled smiles. Many neighbors assumed he was her biological son. The middle name she chose for him was intended to convey that message.

“Mison is short for ‘my son,’” she said standing over his modest footstone grave last summer.

He was happy at home. School was different. His grades were good, but he was intensely shy and was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in elementary school.

That was around the time the bullying began. His sisters were fierce defenders, but they could only do so much. He did the best he could, developing a quick, taunting tongue.

These experiences filled him with a powerful yearning to fit in.

It was not to be.

When he was around 15, he called 911 in a panic, telling the dispatcher he saw two men standing near the small park next to his house threatening to abduct children playing there. The officers who responded found nothing out of the ordinary, and rang the Johnsons’ doorbell.

He later told his mother he had heard a voice telling him to “protect the kids.”

He was hospitalized for the first time at 16, and given medications that stabilized him for stretches of time. But the crises would strike every six months or so, often triggered by his decision to stop taking his medication.

His family became adept at reading signs he was “getting sick.” He would put on his tan Timberlands and a heavy winter coat, no matter the season, and perch on the edge of his bed as if bracing for battle. Sometimes, he would cook his own food, paranoid that someone might poison him.

He graduated six months early, on the dean’s list, but was rudderless, and hanging out with younger boys, often paying their way.

His mother pointed out the perils of buying friendship.

“I don’t care,” he said. “At least I’ll be popular for a minute.”

Zion’s inviting green grid of Bible-named streets belies the reality that it is a rough, unforgiving place to grow up. Family members say Markus wanted desperately to prove he was tough, and emulated his younger, reckless group of friends.

Like many of them, he obtained a pistol. He used it to hold up a convenience store clerk for $425 in January 2017, according to police records. He cut a plea deal for two years of probation, and never explained to his family what had made him do it.

But he kept getting into violent confrontations. In late July 2018, he was arrested in a neighbor’s garage with a handgun he later admitted was his. He was still on probation for the robbery, and his public defender negotiated a plea deal that would send him to state prison until January 2020.

An inpatient mental health system

Around 40 percent of the about 1.8 million people in local, state and federal jails and prison suffer from at least one mental illness, and many of these people have concurrent issues with substance abuse, according to recent Justice Department estimates.

Psychological problems, often exacerbated by drug use, often lead to significant medical problems resulting from a lack of hygiene or access to good health care.

“When you suffer depression in the outside world, it’s hard to concentrate, you have reduced energy, your sleep is disrupted, you have a very gloomy outlook, so you stop taking care of yourself,” said Robert L. Trestman , a Virginia Tech medical school professor who has worked on state prison mental health reforms.

The paradox is that prison is often the only place where sick people have access to even minimal care.

But the harsh work environment, remote location of many prisons, and low pay have led to severe shortages of corrections staff and the unwillingness of doctors, nurses and counselors to work with the incarcerated mentally ill.

In the early 2000s, prisoners’ rights lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against Illinois claiming “deliberate indifference” to the plight of about 5,000 mentally ill prisoners locked in segregated units and denied treatment and medication.

In 2014, the parties reached a settlement that included minimum staffing mandates, revamped screening protocols, restrictions on the use of solitary confinement and the allocation of about $100 million to double capacity in the system’s specialized mental health units.

Yet within six months of the deal, Pablo Stewart, an independent monitor chosen to oversee its enforcement, declared the system to be in a state of emergency.

Over the years, some significant improvements have been made. But Dr. Stewart’s final report , drafted in 2022, gave the system failing marks for its medication and staffing policies and reliance on solitary confinement “crisis watch” cells.

Ms. Grady, one of Mr. Johnson’s lawyers, cited an additional problem: a lack of coordination between corrections staff and Wexford’s professionals, beyond dutifully filling out dozens of mandated status reports.

“Markus Johnson was basically documented to death,” she said.

‘I’m just trying to keep my head up’

Mr. Johnson was not exactly looking forward to prison. But he saw it as an opportunity to learn a trade so he could start a family when he got out.

On Dec. 18, 2018, he arrived at a processing center in Joliet, where he sat for an intake interview. He was coherent and cooperative, well-groomed and maintained eye contact. He was taking his medication, not suicidal and had a hearty appetite. He was listed as 5 feet 6 inches tall and 256 pounds.

Mr. Johnson described his mood as “go with the flow.”

A few days later, after arriving in Danville, he offered a less settled assessment during a telehealth visit with a Wexford psychiatrist, Dr. Nitin Thapar. Mr. Johnson admitted to being plagued by feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness and “constant uncontrollable worrying” that affected his sleep.

He told Dr. Thapar he had heard voices in the past — but not now — telling him he was a failure, and warning that people were out to get him.

At the time he was incarcerated, the basic options for mentally ill people in Illinois prisons included placement in the general population or transfer to a special residential treatment program at the Dixon Correctional Center, west of Chicago. Mr. Johnson seemed out of immediate danger, so he was assigned to a standard two-man cell in the prison’s general population, with regular mental health counseling and medication.

Things started off well enough. “I’m just trying to keep my head up,” he wrote to his mother. “Every day I learn to be stronger & stronger.”

But his daily phone calls back home hinted at friction with other inmates. And there was not much for him to do after being turned down for a janitorial training program.

Then, in the spring of 2019, his grandmother died, sending him into a deep hole.

Dr. Thapar prescribed a new drug used to treat major depressive disorders. Its most common side effect is weight gain. Mr. Johnson stopped taking it.

On July 4, he told Dr. Thapar matter-of-factly during a telehealth check-in that he was no longer taking any of his medications. “I’ve been feeling normal, I guess,” he said. “I feel like I don’t need the medication anymore.”

Dr. Thapar said he thought that was a mistake, but accepted the decision and removed Mr. Johnson from his regular mental health caseload — instructing him to “reach out” if he needed help, records show.

The pace of calls back home slackened. Mr. Johnson spent more time in bed, and became more surly. At a group-therapy session, he sat stone silent, after showing up late.

By early August, he was telling guards he had stopped eating.

At some point, no one knows when, he had intermittently stopped drinking fluids.

‘I’m having a breakdown’

Then came the crash.

On Aug. 12, Mr. Johnson got into a fight with his older cellmate.

He was taken to a one-man disciplinary cell. A few hours later, Wexford’s on-site mental health counselor, Melanie Easton, was shocked by his disoriented condition. Mr. Johnson stared blankly, then burst into tears when asked if he had “suffered a loss in the previous six months.”

He was so unresponsive to her questions she could not finish the evaluation.

Ms. Easton ordered that he be moved to a 9-foot by 8-foot crisis cell — solitary confinement with enhanced monitoring. At this moment, a supervisor could have ticked the box for “residential treatment” on a form to transfer him to Dixon. That did not happen, according to records and depositions.

Around this time, he asked to be placed back on his medication but nothing seems to have come of it, records show.

By mid-August, he said he was visualizing “people that were not there,” according to case notes. At first, he was acting more aggressively, once flicking water at a guard through a hole in his cell door. But his energy ebbed, and he gradually migrated downward — from standing to bunk to floor.

“I’m having a breakdown,” he confided to a Wexford employee.

At the time, inmates in Illinois were required to declare an official hunger strike before prison officials would initiate protocols, including blood testing or forced feedings. But when a guard asked Mr. Johnson why he would not eat, he said he was “fasting,” as opposed to starving himself, and no action seems to have been taken.

‘Tell me this is OK!’

Lt. Matthew Morrison, one of the few people at Danville to take a personal interest in Mr. Johnson, reported seeing a white rind around his mouth in early September. He told other staff members the cell gave off “a death smell,” according to a deposition.

On Sept. 5, they moved Mr. Johnson to one of six cells adjacent to the prison’s small, bare-bones infirmary. Prison officials finally placed him on the official hunger strike protocol without his consent.

Mr. Morrison, in his deposition, said he was troubled by the inaction of the Wexford staff, and the lack of urgency exhibited by the medical director, Dr. Justin Young.

On Sept. 5, Mr. Morrison approached Dr. Young to express his concerns, and the doctor agreed to order blood and urine tests. But Dr. Young lived in Chicago, and was on site at the prison about four times a week, according to Mr. Kaplan. Friday, Sept. 6, 2019, was not one of those days.

Mr. Morrison arrived at work that morning, expecting to find Mr. Johnson’s testing underway. A Wexford nurse told him Dr. Young believed the tests could wait.

Mr. Morrison, stunned, asked her to call Dr. Young.

“He’s good till Monday,” Dr. Young responded, according to Mr. Morrison.

“Come on, come on, look at this guy! You tell me this is OK!” the officer responded.

Eventually, Justin Duprey, a licensed nurse practitioner and the most senior Wexford employee on duty that day, authorized the test himself.

Mr. Morrison, thinking he had averted a disaster, entered the cell and implored Mr. Johnson into taking the tests. He refused.

So prison officials obtained approval to remove him forcibly from his cell.

‘Oh, my God’

What happened next is documented in video taken from cameras held by officers on the extraction team and obtained by The Times through a court order.

Mr. Johnson is scarcely recognizable as the neatly groomed 21-year-old captured in a cellphone picture a few months earlier. His skin is ashen, eyes fixed on the middle distance. He might be 40. Or 60.

At first, he places his hands forward through the hole in his cell door to be cuffed. This is against procedure, the officers shout. His hands must be in back.

He will not, or cannot, comply. He wanders to the rear of his cell and falls hard. Two blasts of pepper spray barely elicit a reaction. The leader of the tactical team later said he found it unusual and unnerving.

The next video is in the medical unit. A shield is pressed to his chest. He is in agony, begging for them to stop, as two nurses attempt to insert a catheter.

Then they move him, half-conscious and limp, onto a wheelchair for the blood draw.

For the next 20 minutes, the Wexford nurse performing the procedure, Angelica Wachtor, jabs hands and arms to find a vessel that will hold shape. She winces with each puncture, tries to comfort him, and grows increasingly rattled.

“Oh, my God,” she mutters, and asks why help is not on the way.

She did not request assistance or discuss calling 911, records indicate.

“Can you please stop — it’s burning real bad,” Mr. Johnson said.

Soon after, a member of the tactical team reminds Ms. Wachtor to take Mr. Johnson’s vitals before taking him back to his cell. She would later tell Dr. Young she had been unable to able to obtain his blood pressure.

“You good?” one of the team members asks as they are preparing to leave.

“Yeah, I’ll have to be,” she replies in the recording.

Officers lifted him back onto his bunk, leaving him unconscious and naked except for a covering draped over his groin. His expressionless face is visible through the window on the cell door as it closes.

‘Cardiac arrest.’

Mr. Duprey, the nurse practitioner, had been sitting inside his office after corrections staff ordered him to shelter for his own protection, he said. When he emerged, he found Ms. Wachtor sobbing, and after a delay, he was let into the cell. Finding no pulse, Mr. Duprey asked a prison employee to call 911 so Mr. Johnson could be taken to a local emergency room.

The Wexford staff initiated CPR. It did not work.

At 3:38 p.m., the paramedics declared Markus Mison Johnson dead.

Afterward, a senior official at Danville called the Johnson family to say he had died of “cardiac arrest.”

Lisa Johnson pressed for more information, but none was initially forthcoming. She would soon receive a box hastily crammed with his possessions: uneaten snacks, notebooks, an inspirational memoir by a man who had served 20 years at Leavenworth.

Later, Shiping Bao, the coroner who examined his body, determined Mr. Johnson had died of severe dehydration. He told the state police it “was one of the driest bodies he had ever seen.”

For a long time, Ms. Johnson blamed herself. She says that her biggest mistake was assuming that the state, with all its resources, would provide a level of care comparable to what she had been able to provide her son.

She had stopped accepting foster care children while she was raising Markus and his siblings. But as the months dragged on, she decided her once-boisterous house had become oppressively still, and let local agencies know she was available again.

“It is good to have children around,” she said. “It was too quiet around here.”

Read by Glenn Thrush

Audio produced by Jack D’Isidoro .

Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice. He joined The Times in 2017 after working for Politico, Newsday, Bloomberg News, The New York Daily News, The Birmingham Post-Herald and City Limits. More about Glenn Thrush

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From meet-cute to marriage breakdown: Streep and Nicholson shine in Nora Ephron’s bittersweet Heartburn

This forerunner to the writer’s charming romcoms is real and relatable – the truest of her meditations on love

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“D isarm the audience with comedy,” Fleabag’s creator, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, once said, “then punch them in the gut with drama when they least expect it.” She wasn’t actually invoking Nora Ephron’s autobiographical novel Heartburn or its film adaptation when offering this advice but both encapsulate it to a T.

Ephron, who died in 2012, is mostly remembered for writing and directing romantic comedies. Her oeuvre is packed with witty banter and charming meet-cutes: you’re probably picturing Meg Ryan simulating orgasm in a coffee shop, or Meg Ryan dumping Bill Pullman for Tom Hanks, or Meg Ryan dumping Greg Kinnear for Tom Hanks. Ephron also possessed a wryly observational and frequently acerbic wit, reminiscent of Dorothy Parker and David Sedaris, and Heartburn is at times so acerbic it’s enough to induce actual heartburn. Its apparent dearth of charm is perhaps why it’s less universally beloved than When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993) or You’ve Got Mail (1998). After all, its basic plot – “man serially cheats on his heavily pregnant wife” – isn’t exactly conducive to Netflix and chilling.

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Heartburn is a fictionalised retelling of Ephron’s doomed second marriage to the political journalist Carl Bernstein, whom she learned was having an affair while she was pregnant with their second son. After filing for divorce she channelled her heartbreak into the story of a food writer, Rachel, whose journalist husband, Mark, has an affair … while she is pregnant with their second son. The parallels are transparent and Bernstein threatened to sue. He never did.

Ephron’s 1986 film adaptation, directed by Mike Nichols, stars Meryl Streep as Rachel and Jack Nicholson as Mark (Mandy Patinkin was the original Mark but apparently there wasn’t enough chemistry between them). It also features Jeff Daniels, Stockard Channing and Catherine O’Hara; Kevin Spacey and a young Natasha Lyonne make their film debuts. But the star-studded cast could not save it from being fairly well panned.

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It’s not the acting: Streep is movingly vulnerable and Nicholson is suitably slimy. It’s rumoured that he repeatedly flirted with Streep during filming while in a long-term relationship with Anjelica Huston and while Streep was pregnant. In scenes depicting the couple when they are (at least ostensibly) happy, there’s chemistry as well as moments of genuine sweetness. Any feeling that we are being kept at arm’s length reflects how Rachel keeps Mark at a distance, as well as the facade she projects to prevent herself from falling apart. It shows the devastating banality of marital crises; how even in the depths of despair, people have to press on.

To my mind, critics have historically focused too much on the film’s caustic burn and entirely missed its beating heart. The late Roger Ebert condemned Heartburn for lacking Ephron’s usual “loin-churning passion” and said her lack of objectivity made it “bitter” and “sour”. I like to imagine Ephron responding with a recipe for lemon loaf or a whiskey sour, as befitting her character Rachel’s occupation as a food writer. The film’s characters, Ebert scathingly concluded, were “‘only marginally interesting”’. In some ways he might have been right. But I would argue that the very elements he criticised are what make it real and relatable, and therefore the truest of Ephron’s meditations on love.

Is Heartburn a perfect movie? No. Is it a date night pick? Probably not, unless you’re planning on dumping your date that night. But is it as cold and charmless as critics have claimed? I think not. I would go so far as to say it’s inherently hopeful. As Rachel finally decides whether to forgive Mark, we feel hopeful she will find love again: even if it’s for herself.

As for Ephron, she was married three times and the third one stuck: she stayed with the Goodfellas and Casino screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi for more than 20 years. In her final essay collection she wrote a list of what she would miss when she died. It was funny and frank, and consisted of the banalities that make up the tapestry of a life well lived. At the top of the list were her children and husband. She knew a thing or two about real love.

Heartburn is available to stream on Prime Video in Australia, UK and US. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here

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Drake, Kendrick Lamar diss tracks escalate with 'Meet the Grahams' and 'Family Matters'

Drake and Kendrick Lamar are taking their feud up a notch to be all in the family.

The rappers released dueling diss tracks Friday night, trading barbs about gossip and Ozempic , while also levying serious allegations of abuse, addiction and another hidden child.

Drake took aim at Lamar's back-to-back diss tracks "Euphoria" and "6:16 in LA" with "Family Matters" and its corresponding lyric video and interlude just before midnight Friday. About 37 minutes later, Lamar had his response: "Meet the Grahams."

Drake alleges Lamar physically abused his fiancée, that Lamar's child might not be his and that the California rapper is living a double life full of infidelity. Lamar claims Drake has a secret daughter, gambling and drug addictions, and that he has predators on his label's payroll and should be in a "cell" with Harvey Weinstein .

'Meet the Grahams' lyrics: Kendrick Lamar speaks directly to Adonis, Drake's mom Sandra

The more than 6-minute response sees Lamar talking to Drake's family: his 6-year-old son, Adonis; mom Sandra Graham; dad Dennis Graham; and an alleged daughter, whom Drake has not claimed publicly.

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To Adonis, Lamar raps: "I'm sorry that that man is your father, let me be honest / It takes a man to be a man, your dad is not responsive," claiming Drake takes Ozempic and hires escorts, and alluding to the rapper getting a Brazilian butt lift (otherwise known as a BBL ).

To Drake's parents, Lamar tells his mother that Drake "got some habits" and tells his father "you gave birth to a master manipulator."

"I'm blamin' you for all his gamblin' addictions / Psychopath intuition, the man that like to play victim," Lamar raps . "Him and Weinstein should" be "in a cell for the rest they life," Lamar says, adding: "He hates Black women, hypersexualizes 'em with kinks of a nympho fetish / Grew facial hair because he understood bein' a beard just fit him better / He got sex offenders" on record label OVO "that he keep on a monthly allowance."

Lamar's final dagger: that Drake allegedly has an 11-year-old daughter. "Dear baby girl / I'm sorry that your father not active inside your world," Lamar raps, later adding, "Should be teachin' you time tables or watchin' 'Frozen' with you / Or at your 11th birthday, singin' poems with you / Instead, he be in Turks, payin' for sex and poppin' Percs."

Drake rebutted on his Instagram story Saturday: "Hold on can someone find my hidden daughter pls and send her to me...these guys are in shambles," with laughing emojis.

On "Euphoria," Lamar invoked the Toronto-born rapper's 2019 feud with Pusha T , who revealed Drake had a child, unbeknownst to the public at the time.

Lamar ends "Meet the Grahams" with a litany of things he says Drake "lied" about: "You lied about your son, you lied about your daughter, huh / You lied about them other kids that's out there hopin' that you come."

Listen to 'Meet the Grahams'

Listen to Lamar's "Meet the Grahams" on YouTube .

Drake alleges Kendrick Lamar abuse, takes aim at A$AP Rocky and Rick Ross in 'Family Matters': Lyrics

Broken into three sections, "Family Matters" clocks in at 7 minutes and 37 seconds. "I've emptied the clip over friendlier jabs / You mentioned my seed, now deal with his dad / I gotta go bad, I gotta go bad," Drake raps at the top of the track, which picks up where his earlier diss track "Push Ups" left off.

Drake questions Lamar's street cred ("But you civilian gang, in real life, you PC") and invokes J. Cole's involvement in the beef : "Cole losin' sleep on this, it ain't me."

"Always rappin' like you 'bout to get the slaves freed / You just actin' like an activist, it's make believe," Drake raps. "Don't even go back to your hood and plant no money trees," alluding to Lamar's song "Money Trees."

The lyric video also shows the van from the cover art of Lamar's "good kid, m.A.A.d city" album (which featured Drake on "Poetic Justice") being crushed in a compactor, and features Drake eating at the Toronto restaurant New Ho King, which Lamar rapped about in "Euphoria."

"You the Black messiah wifin' up a mixed queen / And hit vanilla cream to help out with your self-esteem," Drake alleges. "We could've left the kids out of this, don't blame me / You a dog and you know it, you just play sweet / Your baby mama captions always screamin', 'Save me.'"

Drake more explicitly claims Lamar physically abuses fiancée Whitney Alford. "When you put your hands on your girl, is it self-defense 'cause she bigger than you?"

"Why did you move to New York? Is it 'cause you livin' that bachelor life? / Proposed in 2015, but don't wanna make her your actual wife," Drake raps, later adding, "They hired a crisis management team to clean up the fact that you beat on your queen."

He also questions whether one of Lamar's children is actually fathered by Dave Free, the former president of Lamar's record label, Top Dog Entertainment. "I heard that one of them little kids might be Dave Free," Drake raps. "Don't make it Dave Free's / 'Cause if your GM is your BM secret BD / Then this is all makin' plenty (expletive) sense to me."

Drake also has smoke for A$AP Rocky, who is currently dating and has two children with Rihanna , Drake's ex .

"Gassed 'cause you hit my BM first," Drake raps, asking "do the math, who I was hittin' then? / I ain't even know you rapped still 'cause they only talkin' 'bout your 'fit again / Probably gotta have a kid again 'fore you think of droppin' any (expletive) again / Even when you do drop, they gon' say you should've modeled 'cause it's mid again," adding he's "smokin' Fenty 'bout it."

More Ozempic claims are sent at Rick Ross, as Drake raps "Ozempic got a side effect of jealousy" and points to Ross' past as a correctional officer: "Rick readin' my Miranda rights."

USA TODAY has reached out to Drake and Lamar's reps for comment on the allegations.

Listen to 'Family Matters'

Listen to Drake's "Family Matters" on YouTube and stream on Spotify .

Kendrick Lamar and Drake feud, explained

Lamar and Drake's feud  goes back more than  a decade to 2013, when Lamar rapped on the Big Sean song "Control" about how he wanted to "murder" Drake and other prominent rappers.

Earlier this year, Lamar appeared on Future and Metro Boomin's "Like That" and rejected the idea of there being a "big three" in rap, declaring on the track, "It's just big me." The lyric was a response to  J. Cole  referring to himself, Drake and Lamar as the "big three" on Drake's 2023 track "First Person Shooter."

J. Cole  responded to Lamar  on the song "7 Minute Drill" in April, rapping, "He still doing shows but fell off like 'The Simpsons." He also rapped that Lamar is past his "prime." But shortly after releasing the song, Cole apologized and said it was "lame" and "goofy" of him to do so.

"I ain't gonna lie to y'all the past two days felt terrible," he told the audience at the Dreamville Festival days later, going on to call Lamar as "one of the greatest."

Drake subsequently fired back with two diss tracks directed at Lamar, "Push Ups" and "Taylor Made Freestyle," the latter which was pulled from streaming services after Shakur's estate threated to sue. (On "Family Matters," Drake claims Lamar "called the Tupac estate and begged 'em to sue me.")

Lamar references this on his follow-up "Euphoria" by rapping that Shakur is turning "in his grave."

Lamar continues on "Euphoria": "How many more fairytale stories about your life 'til we've had enough? How many more Black features 'til you finally feel that you're Black enough?"

In "Euphoria," Lamar compliments Drake's track " Back To Back " saying he "liked that record." The 2015 single was a diss track aimed at rapper  Meek Mill , and was Drake's follow-up to his first diss, "Charged Up."

Then, Lamar released a back-to-back of his own with "6:16 in LA." Lamar took a shot at Drake's label and team, rapping, "Have you ever thought OVO is working for me?" before calling Drake a "fake bully." He continues: "I hate bullies / You must be a terrible person / Everyone inside your team whispering that you deserve it."

The title had fans going down a rabbit hole to collect all the Easter eggs about the Lamar's Canadian adversary. The song title is an obvious reference to a  timestamp song  format Drake has popularized, but also could refer to June 16, which marks Father's Day, Tupac Shakur's birthday, the date of HBO's "Euphoria" series premiere and a Lamar concert in Drake's hometown of Toronto .

Contributing: Taijuan Moorman, Naledi Ushe, Brendan Morrow, KiMi Robinson

Family Dynamics and Child Outcomes: An Overview of Research and Open Questions

• Published: 22 March 2017
• Volume 33 , pages 163–184, ( 2017 )

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• Juho Härkönen 1 ,
• Fabrizio Bernardi 2 &
• Diederik Boertien 3  

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Previous research has documented that children who do not live with both biological parents fare somewhat worse on a variety of outcomes than those who do. In this article, which is the introduction to the Special Issue on “Family dynamics and children’s well-being and life chances in Europe,” we refine this picture by identifying variation in this conclusion depending on the family transitions and subpopulations studied. We start by discussing the general evidence accumulated for parental separation and ask whether the same picture emerges from research on other family transitions and structures. Subsequently, we review studies that have aimed to deal with endogeneity and discuss whether issues of causality challenge the general picture of family transitions lowering child well-being. Finally, we discuss whether previous evidence finds effects of family transitions on child outcomes to differ between children from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, and across countries and time-periods studied. Each of the subsequent articles in this Special Issue contributes to these issues. Two articles provide evidence on how several less often studied family forms relate to child outcomes in the European context. Two other articles in this Special Issue contribute by resolving several key questions in research on variation in the consequences of parental separation by socioeconomic and immigrant background, two areas of research that have produced conflicting results so far.

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1 Introduction

The recent decades of family change—including the increases in divorce and separation rates, single parenthood, cohabitation, and step family formation—led to an explosion in popular and academic interest in the consequences of family dynamics for children’s well-being and life chances (cf. Amato 2000 , 2010 ; Amato and James 2010 ; Ribar 2004 ; Sweeney 2010 ; McLanahan et al. 2013 ). Most notably, previous studies have found that children who do not live with both biological parents fare somewhat worse than those who do in terms of psychological well-being, health, schooling, and later labor market attainment, and differ with respect to their own family lives in adulthood. Scholars have interpreted these findings through a relatively small group of factors that include parental and children’s stress associated with family transitions, family conflict, changes in economic resources, and parenting styles. Beyond these established findings, however, several questions remain imperfectly answered.

This Special Issue on “Family Dynamics and Children’s Well-Being and Life Chances in Europe” consists of this introductory article and four empirical studies that address some of these open questions. In general, they give more nuance to the overall association between growing up with both biological parents and child outcomes. More precisely, do these associations differ according to the type of family structure studied? Are these differences in child outcomes due to causal effects of family structures and transitions, or do they reflect preexisting disadvantages between families? And finally, are all children equally affected by family structures and transitions?

In this introduction, we first introduce the theme of family dynamics and children’s outcomes by giving an overview of the findings of parental separation and child outcomes (Sect.  2 ). Parental separation has been the family transition that has attracted most attention among social scientists, and many of our examples later in the article consider this research too. In addition to summarizing the evidence on the relationship between parental separation and psychological well-being, education, social relationships, and own family lives, we discuss how parental separations have been conceptualized, an issue we return to in the subsequent sections.

Parental separation is, however, just one of the family transitions children can experience during their childhoods. The first open question that in our view requires more attention regards the effects of these other family transitions and forms, namely the number of transitions, stepfamilies, and joint residential custody after parental separation (Sect.  3 ). Two of the articles in this Special Issue contribute to this stream of research. Mariani et al. ( 2017 ) present the first European analysis of the effects of family trajectories on children born to lone mothers. Radl et al. ( 2017 ) investigate, in addition to parental separation effects, whether co-residing with siblings or grandparents is related to child outcomes and whether the latter condition the former effects.

The second open question concerns the causal status of the estimated effects (Sect.  4 ): Do family structures and their changes really affect child outcomes, or do the associations reflect some unmeasured underlying factors? This question has attracted deserved attention (e.g., Amato 2000 ; Ribar 2004 ; McLanahan et al. 2013 ), and we review some commonly used methods, using the effects of parental separation as our example. We pay attention to what effects the methods can estimate, in addition to assessing which unobserved variables the different methods adjust for. This discussion highlights the importance of thinking about methodological choices and interpretations of the results in light of the underlying theoretical model of parental separation. The article in this Special Issue by Bernardi and Boertien ( 2017 ) provides also an empirical contribution to this field.

Finally, the last question refers to the heterogeneity in the effects of family dynamics: Are the consequences of parental separation and other family transitions similar for all children? Existing evidence suggests that the answer is no (Amato 2000 ; Demo and Fine 2010 ), but the conclusions about who suffers and who does not remain imperfect, as discussed in Sect.  5 . Three of the articles of this Special Issue analyze these questions, one from a cross-national perspective (Radl et al. 2017 ), one by comparing parental separation effects by socioeconomic background (Bernardi and Boertien 2017 ), and one by immigrant background (Erman and Härkönen 2017 ).

In the final section of this introduction (Sect.  6 ), we discuss some ways forward for future research on family dynamics and children’s outcomes. Two articles in this Special Issue fulfill part of this research agenda by providing evidence on how several less often studied family forms relate to child outcomes in the European context (Mariani et al. 2017 ; Radl et al. 2017 ). The two other articles in this Special Issue (Bernardi and Boertien 2017 ; Erman and Härkönen 2017 ) contribute to the research on heterogeneous consequences of parental separation by clarifying some open questions regarding variation in these consequences by socioeconomic and immigrant background.

2 Parental Separation and Children’s Outcomes

In the 2000s, the share of children who experienced their parents’ separation before age 15 ranged from 10 to 12% in countries such as Bulgaria, Georgia, Italy, and Spain to 35–42% in France, Estonia, Lithuania, and Russia (Andersson et al., forthcoming). In the late 1980s/early 1990s, the corresponding figures ranged from 7 to 30% (Italy and Sweden, respectively, Andersson and Philipov 2002 ).

Parental separation changes children’s lives in many ways. Many scholars conceptualize separations as processes, which often begin way before and last well beyond the actual separation (e.g., Amato 2000 ; Demo and Fine 2010 ; Härkönen 2014 ), even if these starting and ending points can be hard to define. The pre-separation process often involves increasing estrangement and conflict between the parents. These can themselves have negative effects on children’s well-being, and parental separation might therefore already start leaving its traces even before the parents have formally broken up. Not all separations follow such a trajectory. Some families may have had long-lasting conflicts, and other separations might have ended relatively well-functioning partnerships with at least moderate levels of satisfaction (Amato and Hohmann-Marriott 2007 ). The parental separation can in such cases come as an unexpected event for children.

As a result of the separation, children cease to live full-time with both parents, which requires adjustment to the new situation and can start, intensify, or end exposure to parental conflict (Amato 2010 ; Cherlin 1999 ; Pryor and Rodgers 2001 ). Even if joint residential custody of the child post-separation (i.e., children’s alternate living with each parent) is becoming increasingly common, up to one-third and above in Sweden (Bergström et al. 2015 ), the child often receives less involved parenting from the nonresident parent (usually the father), whereas the resident parent’s (usually the mother’s) parenting styles can be affected by increasing time demands (Amato 2000 , 2010 ; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994 ; Seltzer 2000 ). Besides changes in family relationships, a breakup of a household can lead to a drop in economic resources (e.g., Uunk 2004 ). Depending on the country, separated parents may need to adjust their labor supply to meet their new time and economic demands (Kalmijn et al. 2007 ; Uunk 2004 ). Many children also need to move after their parents’ separation, which requires adjustment to a new home environment and possibly a new neighborhood and school. A separation can be followed by further changes in the family structure, such as parental re-partnering, entry of step-siblings, and sometimes, another family dissolution.

Several studies have documented that on average, the lives of children whose parents separated differ from children who lived with both of their parents throughout childhood (Amato 2000 , 2010 ; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994 ; McLanahan et al. 2013 ; Härkönen 2014 ). In the next paragraphs, we provide an overview of the associations of parental separation with some of the most commonly studied child outcomes: psychological well-being and behavioral problems, education, social relationships, and own family lives. In the subsequent sections, we will refine this basic picture by concentrating on other family forms, causality, and heterogeneity in effects.

2.1 Psychological Well-Being and Behavioral Problems

Children of divorce have lower psychological well-being and more behavioral problems than children who grew up in intact families (Amato 2001 ; Amato and James 2010 ; Gähler and Palmtag 2015 ; Kiernan and Mensah 2009 ; Mandemakers and Kalmijn 2014 ). In general, parental separation is more strongly related to externalizing than internalizing problems (Amato 2001 ), and these associations can persist, and even become stronger, into adulthood (Chase-Lansdale et al. 1995 ; Cherlin et al. 1991 ; Lansford 2009 ).

Growing up in a conflict-ridden but stable family can have more negative effects on children’s psychological well-being than parental separation (e.g., Amato et al. 1995 ; Dronkers 1999 ; Hanson 1999 ; Demo and Fine 2010 ). Kiernan and Mensah ( 2009 ) found a role for both maternal depression and economic resources when explaining the lower emotional well-being of children from separated families, whereas Turunen ( 2013 ) found that parental involvement explained part of the lower emotional well-being of children with separated parents, but economic resources did not.

2.2 Education

Children of divorce have lower school grades and test scores (Dronkers 1992 ; Mandemakers and Kalmijn 2014 ; Grätz 2015 ), have lower school engagement (Havermans et al. 2014 ), differ in the kind of track entered in high school (Dronkers 1992 ; Jonsson and Gähler 1997 ; Grätz 2015 ), and have lower final educational attainment (Bernardi and Radl 2014 ; Bernardi and Boertien 2016a ; Gähler and Palmtag 2015 ).

Lower school grades and cognitive performance explain part, but not all of the effect of parental separation on completed education (Dronkers 1992 ). A recent study found that British children of divorce were less likely to continue to full-time upper secondary education even though the parental separation did not affect their school grades (Bernardi and Boertien 2016a ). Parental separation can therefore affect the children’s educational decisions irrespective of their school performance.

Changes in parental resources are an important explanation for the lower educational performance of the children of divorce (Bernardi and Boertien 2016a ; Jonsson and Gähler 1997 ; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994 ; Thomson et al. 1994 ). Studies that have looked into the role of parenting have found differing results, some reporting that parenting partly mediates the effect of separation on educational attainment, while others found parenting to not influence the relationship between parental divorce and school outcomes (Dronkers 1992 ).

2.3 Social Relationships

Despite the increase in shared residential custody (Bjarnason and Arnarsson 2011 ), parental separation generally reduces the child’s contact frequency and relationship quality with the nonresident parent (usually the father), with grandparents and, sometimes, the mother (e.g., Kalmijn 2012 ; Kalmijn and Dronkers 2015 ; Lansford 2009 ). These effects can last into adulthood (Albertini and Garriga 2011 ; Kalmijn 2012 ). Joint residential custody, good inter-parental relations, and good early child-father relations can improve post-separation contact with the father (Kalmijn 2015 ; Kalmijn and Dronkers 2015 ). On the other hand, parental separation can improve the relationships between siblings due to mutual support (Geser 2001 ), but does not seem to trigger more support from friends and other kin (Kalmijn and Dronkers 2015 ).

Good parent–child relationships are desirable by themselves and can also improve other child outcomes (Bastaits et al. 2012 ; Swiss and Le Bourdais 2009 ). For example, having a close relationship with the nonresident parent who engages in authoritative parenting has been found to foster children’s well-being and academic success (Amato and Gilbreth 1999 ). At the same time, contact frequency alone is less important and in some cases, the nonresident parent’s involvement may have negative effects if it increases instability and stress for the child (Laumann-Billings and Emery 2000 ), for example due to continued parental conflict (Kalil et al. 2011 ).

2.4 Own Family Lives

Children of divorce tend to start dating and have their sexual initiation earlier (Wolfinger 2005 ) and many move out of the parental home at a younger age (e.g., Ní Bhrolcháin et al. 2000 ; Ongaro and Mazzuco 2009 ), often because of conflict with parents and their potential new partners (Wolfinger 2005 ). Some studies have also found that children of divorce start cohabiting earlier, are more likely to cohabit than to marry, and have partners of lower socioeconomic status (Erola et al. 2012 ; Reneflot 2009 ; but see also Ní Bhrolcháin et al. 2000 ).

The most consistent family demographic finding is that children whose parents divorced are more likely to divorce themselves as adults (e.g., Diekmann and Engelhardt 1999 ; Dronkers and Härkönen 2008 ; Kiernan and Cherlin 1999 ; Lyngstad and Engelhardt 2009 ; Wolfinger 2005 ). Differences in the life course trajectories before forming the union explain part of this association (Diekmann and Engelhardt 1999 ; Kiernan and Cherlin 1999 ). Other studies have pointed out that parental separation can lead to poorer interpersonal skills and set an example of a feasible solution to relationship problems (Wolfinger 2005 ).

3 What About Other Family Forms?

We have so far focused on parental separation and its relation to child outcomes. Parental separation is not the only family transition children can experience. Between <5% (much of Europe) and up to 15% (Czech Republic, Russia, UK, and USA) of children are born to lone mothers (Andersson et al., forthcoming; Mariani et al. 2017 , this Special Issue). Furthermore, between 14% (Italy and Georgia) and 60% (Belgium) of European children whose parents separate end up living with a stepparent within 6 years (Andersson et al., forthcoming) and often, with step-siblings (Halpern-Meekin and Tach 2008 ). Children’s residence arrangements likewise vary, with some residing primarily with one parent (usually the mother), whereas others alternate between parents (joint residential custody). Extending the focus of research beyond parental separation is necessary to form a more comprehensive view of the effects of the changing family landscape on children’s lives (King 2009 ; Sweeney 2010 ). Footnote 1

One argument puts forward that family stability rather than family structure matters for children’s well-being (cf. Fomby and Cherlin 2007 ; Waldfogel et al. 2010 ). From this perspective, children born to lone mothers who do not experience any family transitions during their childhood (such as the entrance of a stepparent) should do better than children who were born in a two-parent family but experienced a family transition (such as parental separation). Others claim that specific family forms and movements between them do matter beyond general family instability (Magnuson and Berger 2009 ; Lee and McLanahan 2015 ). The findings of Mariani et al. ( 2017 , this Special Issue) are among those that speak against the general instability thesis and show that the types of family transitions experienced by children born to lone mothers matter for their well-being.

Stepfamilies have gained the attention of many scholars. Children in stepfamilies tend to have poorer outcomes compared to those from intact families and display patterns of well-being closer to single-parent families (Amato 1994 , 2001 ; Gennetian 2005 ; Jonsson and Gähler 1997 ; Thomson et al. 1994 ). Indeed, children in stepfamilies can even have lower psychological well-being and educational achievement than children living with a single mother (Amato 1994 ; Biblarz and Raftery 1999 ; Thomson et al. 1994 ).

Reasons for the poorer performance of children with stepparents include the added complexity in family relationships that is often introduced by the presence of a stepparent. This can lead to ambiguity in roles and to conflict in the family (Thomson et al. 1994 ; Sweeney 2010 ), which is among the reasons why having a stepparent often leads to an earlier move from the parental home, especially among girls (Ní Bhrolcháin et al. 2000 ; Reneflot 2009 ). Another explanation points to the presence of step-siblings as stepparents may put less time and effort into their stepchildren than their biological ones (Biblarz and Raftery 1999 ; Evenhouse and Reilly 2004 ). However, having a stepparent can also have positive effects as (s)he can provide financial resources or help in monitoring the children (Thomson et al. 1994 ; King 2006 ; Sweeney 2010 ). Erola and Jalovaara ( 2016 ) showed how a stepparent’s SES was more predictive on adulthood SES than the nonresident father’s SES, and as predictive as the biological father’s SES in intact families. All in all, the effects of step-parenthood are complex and can differ between children who experienced a parental separation and those who never lived with their biological father (Sweeney 2010 ).

The increase in joint residential custody after parental separation has raised interest in its consequences for children. Many studies have reported that children in joint residential custody fare better than children who reside with only one of the parents (usually the mother) on outcomes such as health and psychological well-being, and contact and relationships with their parents and grandparents (Bjarnason and Arnarsson 2011 ; Turunen 2016 ; Westphal et al. 2015 ). However, questions of causality remain unresolved and parents who opt for joint custody might have been particularly selected from those with higher socioeconomic status and lower levels of post-separation conflict. Indeed, many studies find that joint custody may have negative consequences for children in case of high parental conflict (e.g., Vanassche et al. 2014 ; also, Kalil et al. 2011 ). This suggests that policy changes toward joint custody as a default solution may produce unwanted consequences.

4 But What About Causality?

There is a long-standing debate that concerns whether associations between family types and child outcomes reflect causal effects, or whether they are confounded by unmeasured variables. For example, parents who separate can have different (unmeasured) personality traits from those who do not. Other examples include parental unemployment, mental health, or a developing substance abuse problem, which may not only lead to separation, but also affect the parent’s children.

Researchers have used increasingly sophisticated methods to control for different unmeasured sources of bias (for reviews, Amato 2000 , 2010 ; Ribar 2004 ; McLanahan et al. 2013 ). In this section, we discuss some of these methods. We focus on studies that have estimated the effects of parental separation, which serves to illustrate some of the questions involved.

Like most similar reviews, we discuss which (un)measured confounders can be controlled for by the different methods and provide examples of studies that have used them. We also discuss some of the limitations to causal inference in these methods, particularly in light of the underlying theoretical model of parental separation that is assumed. Above, we discussed how parental separations are often theorized as processes that can follow quite different trajectories for different families (Amato 2000 ; Demo and Fine 2010 ; Härkönen 2014 ). Some separations are characterized by a downward spiral of increasing conflict, which can leave its mark on children already before the parents physically separate. Other separations end relatively well-functioning families and can come as a surprise to the children, whereas in some cases the families had high conflict levels for a long time. In this section, we discuss causal inference in light of these underlying models. In the next section, we discuss how these different types of parental separations can have different effects on children.

In addition, we engage in a related but much smaller discussion of what causal questions the different methods can be used to answer (cf., Manski et al. 1992 ; Ní Bhrolcháin 2001 ; Sigle-Rushton et al. 2014 ). A major issue in this regard concerns the counterfactual scenario assumed by different methods. In most studies, the estimated effects are interpreted as telling about how the parents’ physical separation (the separation event) affected the children compared to the counterfactual case in which the parents did not separate. This is, however, not the only possible effect that can be estimated, nor is this interpretation necessarily the correct one in each case.

First, knowing about the effects of the parental separation event is obviously important, but scholars, parents, counselors, and policy makers could likewise benefit from knowing about the “total” effects of parental separation that include the effects of the preceding separation process as well. Second, instead of asking what the effect of the parental separation (compared to them staying together) is, one can ask what the effect is of the parents separating at a specific point in time (the effect of postponing separation) (cf. Furstenberg and Kiernan 2001 ). Our discussion below points to these issues and suggests how some methods can be more appropriate for answering certain questions than others. Rather than providing a comprehensive discussion on this relatively uncovered topic, we wish to stimulate closer consideration of these issues in future research.

4.1 Regression Models

Before discussing methods that adjust for unmeasured confounding factors, we briefly discuss estimation of parental separation effects with linear and logistic (or similar) regression models, which are by far the most common methods used. With these methods, one compares the outcomes of children who experienced parental separation to the outcomes of children from intact families, adjusting for observed confounding variables. Because the possibilities for controlling for all factors that may bias the results are limited, the estimates from regression models cannot usually be interpreted as causal effects (e.g., McLanahan et al. 2013 ; Ribar 2004 ).

Pre-separation parental conflict is often pointed out as an omitted variable that can threaten causal claims. Controlling for pre-separation conflict generally leads to a substantial reduction in the effect of parental separation (e.g., Hanson 1999 ; Gähler and Garriga 2013 ), suggesting that exposure to the parental conflict rather than the parental separation event is largely responsible for the poorer performance of the children of divorce. This example can be used to think about the correspondence between the specified regression model and the underlying theoretical model of parental separation. Controlling for the level of pre-separation parental conflict (or related measures of the family environment) is most appropriate if it is reasonable to assume that families’ conflict levels remain stable; comparing children from separated and intact families at similar levels of earlier conflict can then inform about how the children of divorce would have fared had the parents remained together. However, this is not obvious if the separation followed an increase in parental conflict, because the family environment may have continued to worsen had the parents not separated.

If the above and other conditions for making causal claims are met, which effects do they inform us about? A regression model that controls for pre-separation parental conflict or other related measures is best seen as telling about the effects of the parental separation event. However, an increase in parental conflict is often an inherent part of the parental separation process, and controlling for levels of parental conflict close to the parental separation would not be warranted if one is interested in understanding how exposure to the parental separation process, in addition to the separation event, affects children’s outcomes (cf. Amato 2000 ). The choice of control variables should thus be done with a consideration to the underlying model of parental separation and the effect one wants to estimate.

4.2 Sibling Fixed Effects

Sibling fixed effects (SFE) models compare siblings from the same family who differ in their experience of parental separation before a certain age or life stage, or in the amount of time spent in a specific family type (cf. McLanahan et al. 2013 ; Sigle-Rushton et al. 2014 ). SFE controls for factors and experiences that are shared by the siblings, such as parental SES and many neighborhood and school characteristics. This has made SFE a popular method, not least in Europe. Some SFE studies found no effects of parental separation or other family forms on educational outcomes (Björklund and Sundström 2006 ). Others have found a weak to moderate negative effect on various outcomes even in an SFE design (e.g., Ermisch et al. 2004 ; Sandefur and Wells 1999 ; Sigle-Rushton et al. 2014 ; Grätz 2015 ).

Comparison of siblings from the same family is a core aspect of the SFE design. This affects the data requirements and the interpretation of the results. To fix ideas, we can use an example of the effects of parental separation on children’s school grades at age 15. For an SFE analysis, one needs data on multiple siblings, some of whom experienced the parental separation before age 15 whereas others did not. This requirement reduces the effective sample size. The sibling who did not experience the parental separation is always the older one, and her grades are used to infer about the counterfactual grades of her younger sibling, had she not experienced the parental separation. SFE controls for everything shared by the siblings, but additional controls are needed to adjust for differences between them. Some of these—such as birth order and birth cohort and/or parental age (Sigle-Rushton et al. 2014 )—are available in many datasets, but remaining unobserved differences (as well as measurement error) can cause important bias to the estimates (Ermisch et al. 2004 ; Frisell et al. 2012 ).

SFE models are most informative of the effects of parental separation if it is reasonable to assume that the family environment (including levels of parental conflict) would remain stable in the absence of the parental separation (Sigle-Rushton et al. 2014 ). In such a case, it is most likely that the younger sibling would have experienced a similar family environment as the older sibling, had the parents not separated. The interpretation of SFE results becomes more problematic if the parental separation is the culmination of a deterioration of the family environment (such as increased parental conflict). It is likely that the family environment would have continued to deteriorate had the parents not separated, and the younger sibling would have been taking her grades in a more conflictual family (than her older sibling experienced). Without additional measures, SFE models thus generally rely on the assumption of the stability of the family environment (cf. Sigle-Rushton et al. 2014 ).

SFE models estimate the effect of the event of the parental separation rather than the separation process. Because SFE models are estimated from a subsample of families that dissolved, the estimates are difficult to generalize without making additional assumptions. Also, because the estimates tell about differences between siblings who experienced parental separation but at different ages, or experienced a different amount of time in a separated family, the estimates are best interpreted as effects of the timing of the separation, as argued in detail by Sigle-Rushton and colleagues (2014).

4.3 Longitudinal Designs

Research with longitudinal data has been more applied  in the USA than in Europe (McLanahan et al. 2013 ), possibly because of data access issues. Such data can be analyzed using many methods, but unlike with SFE, these methods can only be used to analyze outcomes that are measured more than once. Similar to SFE models, longitudinal studies generally report weaker effects on child outcomes of parental separation and other family transitions than found in cross-sectional analyses.

4.3.1 Lagged Dependent Variables

In lagged dependent variable (LDV) analyses, one controls for the dependent variable at an earlier measurement point (before parental separation) (Johnson 2005 ; McLanahan et al. 2013 ). The idea is to adjust for initial differences in outcomes between children from separated and intact families. LDV is mostly used in cohort and other studies with just two or few measurement points. Early examples include studies in Britain, which found that although children of divorce had lower psychological well-being already pre-divorce, parental divorce had negative long-term effects (Cherlin et al. 1991 ; Chase-Lansdale et al. 1995 ). Limitations of LDV models include that the estimates are sensitive to omitted variables that affect both the separation and the pre-separation outcome, as well as measurement error in the latter (Johnson 2005 ).

The pre-separation measurement point can correspond poorly to the stages of the parental separation process, especially in cohort studies in which measurements are often done several years apart. LDV models are therefore most appropriate if the differences in the outcome between children who experienced parental separation and those who did not can be assumed to be stable. If one assumes that the child’s well-being deteriorated prior to the separation, the lagged dependent variable can capture part of the effect of the separation process. However, if the measurements are taken several years apart, it is even more difficult than usual to tell whether the outcome was measured before or during the pre-separation deterioration in well-being and consequently, how the estimated coefficient should be interpreted.

4.3.2 Individual Fixed Effects

Individual fixed effects (IFE) models are based on comparing individuals before and after the parental separation and in effect, use individuals as their own control groups to control for time-constant unobserved factors. In an early British IFE study, Cherlin et al. ( 1998 ) concluded that experience of parental separation had weak to moderate negative effects on adulthood psychological well-being, and Amato and Anthony ( 2014 ) reported similar effects on educational, psychological, and health outcomes in the USA. Other American studies have used IFE designs to analyze the effects of the number of transitions (e.g., Fomby and Cherlin 2007 ), of different family transitions (e.g., Lee and McLanahan 2015 ), or combined SFE and IFE approaches (Gennetian 2005 ).

IFE methods estimate the effect of parental separation if it is reasonable to assume that the child whose parents separated would have experienced similar (age-specific) outcomes in the absence of separation as observed before the separation (Aughinbaugh et al. 2005 ). Again, this is most feasible if the child’s level of well-being can be assumed to have remained stable. This is less likely if the child’s well-being began to deteriorate already before the separation, because this deterioration could have continued had the parents not separated. Two US studies attempted to address this issue by tracing behavioral problems and academic achievement before and after the parental separation (Aughinbaugh et al. 2005 ) and by using a triple-difference approach, which compares trends (and not just levels) in the outcome between children from separated and intact families (Sanz-de-Galdeano and Vuri 2007 ). Neither study found the event of parental separation to have appreciable effects.

Furthermore, as in SFE models, IFE effects are estimated only from those children who actually experienced the separation. This generally means a reduction in sample size. For the same reason, IFE results generalize primarily to that group.

4.3.3 Placebo Tests and Growth-Curve Models

Longitudinal data can also be used to conduct “placebo tests,” that is, to analyze whether future separation (e.g., t  + 1) predicts earlier outcomes ( t , or earlier). Bernardi and Boertien (in this Special Issue) found with British data that although children who experienced parental separation before age 16 had a lower probability of transitioning to post-compulsory secondary education, this was not the case for children whose parents separated between ages 17 and 19 (i.e., after the educational transition age). This supports the view that the separation, and not the family environment that preceded it, had an effect on educational decisions.

Finally, longitudinal data have been analyzed with growth-curve models (GCM) to track trajectories in children’s outcomes. Cherlin et al. ( 1998 ) reported that the effects of parental separation on psychological problems increased through adolescence and young adulthood. Even though growth-curve models enable analysis of how effects develop, they are not immune to confounding from unmeasured variables that can affect both the initial level of well-being and its development over time (McLanahan et al. 2013 ). To address this, Kim ( 2011 ) combined matching methods with GCM and found that cognitive skills and non-cognitive traits developed negatively already through the separation period and the effects were amplified by the separation event.

4.4 Interpreting Causal Effects

Controlling for measured and unmeasured confounders practically always leads to reduced effect sizes, which means that children who experienced parental separation would have fared differently to children from intact families regardless. Some studies have found no effects, but the prevailing conclusion is that parental separation can have weak to moderate negative effects (Amato 2000 , 2010 ; McLanahan et al. 2013 ; Ribar 2004 ).

Increasing adoption of advanced methods to control for unmeasured variables improves our understanding of the consequences of family change. None of the methods are, however, completely immune to confounding by unobserved variables. Relatedly, they also correspond differently to underlying theoretical models of parental separation, which affects their interpretation.

We repeatedly mentioned how the methods are most robust if it is reasonable to assume that the family environment, and the children’s well-being, remained stable before the separation and would have remained stable in its absence. Such a scenario characterizes some separations but provides a poorer description of many others where separation was a culmination of a deteriorating family environment (Amato 2000 ; Demo and Fine 2010 ; Härkönen 2014 ). In some cases, additional (time-varying) control variables (e.g., Ermisch et al. 2004 ; Lee and McLanahan 2015 ) or more complex research designs (e.g., Sanz-de-Galdeano and Vuri 2007 ) can be used to alleviate these problems. When choosing the appropriate variables or designs, one should decide whether one is interested in the effects of the separation event or the exposure to the whole separation process. Both are relevant, and their analysis each carries specific challenges. We also discussed how some estimates might be better interpreted as indicators of the influence of the timing of parental separation (cf. Furstenberg and Kiernan 2001 ), another relevant yet different question. All in all, scholars should pay attention to which effects their methods estimate and think of this in light of the underlying theoretical model of parental separation or other family dynamics they are interested in (cf. Manski et al. 1992 ; Ní Bhrolcháin 2001 ).

5 For Whom, When, and Where are Family Transitions Most Consequential?

Most studies reviewed above analyzed what happens on average . Whereas the finding that children growing up in non-traditional families have different outcomes is very consistent, this result hides a large variation in effects at the individual level. A minority of children suffer from a parental separation, but a somewhat smaller minority shows improvements in well-being and performance, and even if parental separation can be a taxing experience associated with sadness and feelings of loss, a large minority or even a majority of children do “just fine” without robust effects in either direction (Amato 2000 , 2010 ; Amato and Anthony 2014 ; Amato and James 2010 ; Demo and Fine 2010 ). Next, we discuss how this heterogeneity in effects is related to pre-separation parental conflict and children’s and parents’ socio-demographic attributes. After that, we review what is known about variation in the effects over time and cross-nationally.

5.1 For Whom Does It Matter?

Which children are more likely to suffer from parental separation than others? Studies both from the USA (Amato et al. 1995 ; Hanson 1999 ; Booth and Amato 2001 ) and Europe (Dronkers 1999 ) have found that pre-separation parental conflict moderates the effects of the separation. Parental separation can be beneficial for children from high-conflict families, but is more likely to have negative effects when parental conflict was low and the separation came as a relative surprise.

Other studies have analyzed variation in the effects of parental separation by demographic characteristics. Although some studies have found gender-specific effects, most have not, leading Amato and James ( 2010 ) to conclude that the gender differences in effects are modest at most. Similar variation in findings characterizes research on effects of stepfamilies (Sweeney 2010 ).

Child’s age at parental separation has been another moderator of interest. Breakups occurring while children are adults have no or the smallest effects (Cherlin et al. 1998 ; Kiernan and Cherlin 1999 ; Furstenberg and Kiernan 2001 ; Lyngstad and Engelhardt 2009 ). Studies on educational outcomes often find the effects to be most pronounced when parents divorced close to important educational decision points (Jonsson and Gähler 1997 ; Lyngstad and Engelhardt 2009 ; Sigle-Rushton et al. 2014 ). Otherwise, findings differ in their conclusions about the childhood stages most sensitive to family disruption, and the specific pattern of heterogeneity is likely to depend on the outcome studied.

Recently, scholars have become increasingly interested in whether effects of parental separation differ by parental socioeconomic status (Augustine 2014 ; Grätz 2015 ; Mandemakers and Kalmijn 2014 ). Although having resources can help families to deal with family transitions, children from resourceful families could also lose more from parental separation (Bernardi and Radl 2014 ; Bernardi and Boertien 2016a ). In line with these contrasting predictions, empirical results are mixed, with some findings pointing to stronger negative effects in families with high (Augustine 2014 ; Grätz 2015 ; Mandemakers and Kalmijn 2014 ) or low socioeconomic status (Bernardi and Boertien 2016a ; Bernardi and Radl 2014 ; Biblarz and Raftery 1999 ; Martin 2012 ; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994 ). Bernardi and Boertien ( 2017 , this Special Issue) address this inconsistency. They show that methodological choices underlie part of this variation in results, but their substantive conclusion is that the negative effect of parental separation on educational choices is stronger for children whose high-socioeconomic status father moves out. The greater financial losses are an important part of the explanation, which also suggests that the results might be different for outcomes that are less responsive to financial resources.

Other studies have compared the effects of parental separation and single parenthood between ethnic, racial, and migrant groups. Many US studies have found that Black children are less affected by growing up in a non-intact family than White children (Fomby and Cherlin 2007 ; McLanahan and Bumpass 1988 ; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994 ; Sun and Li 2007 ). Some European studies have found variation in family structure effects by ethnic and immigrant background (Kalmijn 2010 , forthcoming; Erman and Härkönen, this ‘Special Issue’). In general, the family structure effects are weaker in groups in which parental separation and single motherhood are more common, which has been explained by less stigma, better ways of handling father absence, a broadly disadvantaged position with less to lose, or differential selection by unobserved factors, as argued by Erman and Härkönen in this Special Issue.

Instead of analyzing different predictors of separation separately, Amato and Anthony ( 2014 ) used several of these predictors together to, first, predict the children’s propensity to experience parental separation, and second, analyze whether parental divorce effects vary by this propensity. They found that the effects were the strongest for children with the highest risk of experiencing parental divorce, a result seemingly at odds with the above-mentioned findings of weaker effects in groups with higher separation rates.

5.2 Stability Over Time

It is straightforward to expect that the effects of family transitions on child outcomes should have waned over time. As non-traditional family forms have become more common, the social stigma attached to them should decrease (Lansford 2009 ). Children of divorce are also increasingly likely to retain close contact with both of their parents (e.g., Amato and Gilbreth 1999 ; Gähler and Palmtag 2015 ) and families and societies may have in general become better in handling the consequences of family change. Yet, several studies have reported remarkable stability in the negative associations between parental separation and educational attainment, psychological well-being, and own family dissolution risk (Albertini and Garriga 2011 ; Biblarz and Raftery 1999 ; Dronkers and Härkönen 2008 ; Sigle-Rushton et al. 2005 ; Li and Wu 2008 ; Gähler and Palmtag 2015 ). Some studies have found changing effects, but in opposite directions: a waning intergenerational transmission of divorce (Wolfinger 2005 ; Engelhardt et al. 2002 ), but a strengthening effect of parental separation on educational attainment (Kreidl et al. 2017 ).

Why this general stability? One possibility is that although some factors associated with parental separation, such as stigma, have become less common, other proximate consequences—including shock, grief, and anger over the separation of the parents (Pryor and Rodgers 2001 )—have remained stable. Another potential explanation refers to changing selection into separation. Parental separation has become increasingly associated with low levels of maternal education (Härkönen and Dronkers 2006 ). The motives for divorce have also changed over time. Fewer parental separations are today preceded by severe conflict and violence, whereas more are characterized by psychological motives and disagreements upon the division of labor (De Graaf and Kalmijn 2006 ; Gähler and Palmtag 2015 ). In general, changing selectivity of parental separation can have offset any weakening trend in its effects. The data requirements to disentangle these explanations are high, but those studies which have appropriate variables support the conclusion of a generally stable effect (Sigle-Rushton et al. 2005 ; Gähler and Palmtag 2015 ).

5.3 Cross-National Variation

Associations between family structure and child outcomes are robust in the sense that they are generally found in each country (cf. Amato and James 2010 ) and are often more similar than one might expect (Härkönen 2015 ). However, many studies have reported cross-national variation in the strength of associations (e.g., Brolin Låftman 2010 ; Radl et al. 2017 , this Special Issue). A series of studies found that countries with policies aimed at equalizing the living conditions between different types of families had smaller family structure gaps in educational achievement (Pong et al. 2003 ; Hampden-Thompson 2013 ; however, see Brolin Låftman 2010 ). Larger family structure differences have also been reported in economically more developed societies, where the nuclear family plays a more important role (Amato and Boyd 2014 ).

Dronkers and Härkönen ( 2008 ) found that the intergenerational transmission of divorce was weaker in countries where parental divorce was more common. This fits the intuition of weaker penalties when certain family behaviors are more common. However, other studies have found the opposite (Pong et al. 2003 ; Kreidl et al. 2017 ). An explanation is that in societies in which separation is uncommon, it is more often a solution to ending very troubled relationships and therefore more likely to be beneficial for the children.

6 Discussion and Recommendations for Future Research

We set the stage for future research in four directions. First, understanding the effects of heterogeneous family forms and transitions will be a research priority in the future as well (Amato 2010 ). Most of the research reviewed in this introduction has focused on the effects of parental separation, but scholars have been increasingly aware of and interested in the complexity of family forms in today’s societies. Some of this research was addressed in this article, and the analyses by Mariani, Özcan, and Goisis, and Radl, Salazar, and Cebolla-Boado in this Special Issue are further contributions to this topic: the former being the first to look at the outcomes of children born in lone mother families within one European country (the UK), and the latter providing a cross-national overview of the effects of various types of family structures. Future research, particularly in Europe, should continue addressing questions such as the effects of experiencing multiple family transitions and of complex family life course trajectories during childhood. Family complexity can also mean that the boundaries between family forms become blurred. An example is the increasing popularity of joint residential custody, which questions earlier divisions into single-parent and two-parent families. Understanding the effects of family forms under family complexity thus also means an update in conceptual thinking.

Second, children react to (changes in) family circumstances in remarkably different ways (e.g., Amato and Anthony 2014 ), which is hidden under the average effects reported in most studies. Three of the papers in this Special Issue address these questions and identify subgroups for which effects appear to be more limited compared to other groups such as low SES families and children from ethnic minorities. Better understanding the sources of vulnerability and resilience in the face of family change will continue to be a priority for research, and in this task, future research will benefit from combining theoretical and methodological approaches from sociology, demography, psychology, and genetics (cf. Amato 2010 ; Demo and Fine 2010 ).

Another related task for future research will be to systematize the research on variation in family structure effects across individuals and families, groups, and societal contexts. As reviewed in this article, the findings often point to confusingly different directions. Many studies, including the ones by Erman and Härkönen and Bernardi and Boertien in this Special Issue, have found that parental separation effects on educational outcomes are weaker in socioeconomic and ethnic groups where it is more frequent, but Amato and Anthony ( 2014 ) reported that the effects are more negative for children who had the highest risk of experiencing parental separation. Yet another group of studies have reported that the effects of parental separation are more negative when the parents had lower levels of conflict—and presumably, low likelihood of separating—before the separation (Amato et al. 1995 ; Dronkers 1999 ; Hanson 1999 ; Demo and Fine 2010 ). Many cross-national studies have concluded that these effects are stronger in societies in which parental separation is more common (Pong et al. 2003 ; Kreidl et al. 2017 ). At the same time, most studies continue to find that parental separation effects have remained stable even though more children have been experiencing it. Understanding these seemingly contradictory results will need theoretical development and appropriate data and designs to test them. Bernardi’s and Boertien’s study in this Special Issue provides a good example of such research.

Third, future research will undoubtedly continue employing sophisticated methods to analyze whether family structures and transitions have causal effects on children’s lives. Yet as discussed above, conceptual thought of what effects can be estimated with different methods and what effects are of most theoretical interest has not necessarily kept up with the methodological advances (for exceptions: Manski et al. 1992 ; Ní Bhrolcháin 2001 ; Sigle-Rushton et al. 2014 ). Using parental separation as our example, we distinguished between the effects of separations as events and separations as processes, as well as between the experience of separation and its timing. Researchers should pay more attention to these differences in the conceptualization of effects, which essentially boils down to the consideration of the underlying theoretical model of parental separation. Better recognition of these differences can contribute to theory-building and methodological advancement and help in formulating advice to parents, family counselors, and policy makers.

Last, these issues have implications for understanding social inequality in a time of family change. The “diverging destinies” thesis (McLanahan and Percheski 2008 ) holds that socioeconomically uneven family change, in which the retreat from stable two-parent families is happening particularly among those with low levels of education, can reduce social mobility. Yet whether this is the case depends not only on differences in family structures by socioeconomic background, but also on the strength of the effects of these family structures on the outcomes in question; if the effects are nil or weak, it does not matter who lives in which kind of family. The inequality-amplifying effects of socioeconomic differences in family structures can furthermore be shaped by heterogeneity in family structure effects (Bernardi and Boertien 2016b ). Bernardi’s and Boertien’s (2017, this Special Issue) findings, that the negative effects of parental separation are weaker for children whose parents have low levels of education, imply that the socioeconomic differences in family instability are less important in affecting intergenerational inequality than often thought. Erman’s and Härkönen’s ( 2017 , this Special Issue) results show that parental separation effects are weaker among ancestry groups where parental separation is more common suggest the same for ethnic inequalities. Together, these findings refine arguments stating that divergence in family structures will lead to an increase in inequality. Instead, the results imply that whether this happens or not is contingent on the strength of these effects and on whether they are similar across groups.

This quest will likely continue in the future; Ultee ( 2016 ) anticipated that in 2096, the book awarded for preservation of European sociological research will be called “Growing Up With Four Parents”.

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Acknowledgements

This Special Issue features research done within work package 5 (Family Transitions and Children’s Life Chances) of FamiliesAndSocieties ( www.familiesandsocieties.eu ). We thank the members of the consortium and our work package for productive collaborations and fruitful discussions during the project. We also thank the editorial team of European Journal of Population for the opportunity to publish this Special Issue and their feedback on earlier drafts. In addition, we are grateful to the reviewers for constructive comments to earlier versions to each of the articles in this Special Issue. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under Grant Agreement No. 320116 for the research project FamiliesAndSocieties and from the Strategic Research Council of the Academy of Finland (Decision Number: 293103) for the research consortium Tackling Inequality in Time of Austerity (TITA).

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Härkönen, J., Bernardi, F. & Boertien, D. Family Dynamics and Child Outcomes: An Overview of Research and Open Questions. Eur J Population 33 , 163–184 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10680-017-9424-6

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Breaking Down Everything Kendrick Said About Drake on “Meet the Grahams”

There’s a lot to unpack in Kendrick Lamar’s “Meet the Grahams.” Here’s a thorough analysis.

So much is happening right now. Mere minutes after Drake dropped his “Family Matters” diss song, Kendrick Lamar responded with “Meet the Grahams,” and the battlefield is now decimated.

In his nuclear response, Kendrick goes after Drake by addressing each of his immediate family members in a 6-minute song, where he accuses the Toronto rapper of having a daughter that he’s been hiding from the world, a substance addiction, a gambling addiction, engaging in various sex crimes, and several other dark revelations. The title of the song references the way Dot structures each verse, speaking directly to members of Drake’s family, and it could be a double entendre about how he possibly exposes another child of the Toronto rapper. 

“Meet the Grahams” arrived very shortly after Drake accused Dot of domestic violence and infidelity in “Family Matters” on Friday night. The similarity in the subject matter (and titles) of the two songs suggests that Dot might have already known “Family Matters” was going to come out, so he prepared “Meet the Grahams” in advance.

None of the allegations on either side have been verified with concrete evidence or receipts, but before another diss track drops, here’s a full breakdown of everything Kendrick Lamar said about Drake while addressing each of his immediate family members on “Meet The Grahams.”

The cover art

The artwork for “Meet the Grahams” is a zoomed-out photo of the cover art for “6:16 in LA,” which now reveals even more items laid out next to each other, including a bottle of Ozempic prescribed to Drake, a business card for celebrity jeweler Nadine Ghosn (who has worked with Drake), a receipt for Popular Jewelry in New York City (a store that Drake has been seen shopping at), black leather Maybach gloves from the “6:16: in LA” cover, and a shirt. 

According to DJ Akademiks , the items came from Dennis Graham's suitcase, and Kendrick somehow got a hold of it. Kendrick raps about each of these items in different ways throughout the song, saying Drake has substance and spending problems, before doubling down on claims that he uses Ozempic. 

The jewelry receipts could also be a direct response to rumors that the ring featured in Drake’s “Family Matters” video was his fiancé’s engagement ring. This might be Kendrick’s way of suggesting that Drake simply bought a copy from one of his go-to jewelers, instead of getting his hands on the real thing. Alternatively, it could also connect back to Kendrick’s line on “6:16 in LA” when he rapped, “Find the jewels like Kash Doll, I just need you to think.”

The Adonis Graham Verse

Kendrick dedicates the first verse of the song to directly addressing Drake’s son Adonis, as a way to speak to the rapper.

“ Sometimes our parents make mistakes that affect us until we grown/ And you a good kid that need good leadership/ Let me be your mentor, since your daddy don't teach you shit/ Never let a man piss on your leg, son ”

After offering to be the father figure that Adonis does not have, Kendrick makes references to an alleged incident in 2015 where T.I. said that his late friend urinated on Drake in the club.

“ Never fall in the escort business, that's bad religion/ Please remember, you could be a bitch even if you got bitches/ Never code switch, whether right or wrong, you a Black man/ Even if it don’t benefit your goals, do some push-ups

This is where Kendrick starts to throw around heavy accusations that Drake is involved in the escort business, while continuing to take jabs at the rapper’s biracial ethnicity. Dot is satirically saying that Adonis will grow up to be a “Black man,” so he should embrace it, unlike his father, who Kendrick is insinuating only wants to be Black when it’s convenient. 

“ Get some discipline, don’t cut them corners like your daddy did/ Fuck what Ozempic did/ Don't pay to play with them Brazilians, get a gym membership/ Understand, no throwin' rocks and hidin' hands, that's law/ Don't be ashamed 'bout who you wit,' that's how he treat your moms/ Don't have a kid to hide a kid to hide again, be sure/ Five percent will comprehend but ninety-five is lost ”

First, Dot implies that Drake has had cosmetic surgery and uses the weight loss drug Ozempic. Then he advises Adonis not to “have a kid to hide a kid to hide again,” which is his way of alluding to later allegations that Drake has been hiding his first-born child this entire time. The five percent bar is a double entendre that references the Five-Percent Nation as a way to say that only five percent of listeners will fully understand the truth of his previous bar about Drake hiding another child.

The Sandra & Dennis Graham Verse

Kendrick addresses both of Drake’s parents together in the second verse, which might be a jab in itself because the two have been separated since the rapper’s youth. Kendrick uses them as vessels to dive deeper into more serious allegations he has against Drake, including his relationships with underaged women and how he operates in the celebrity world.

“ I think niggas like him should die/ Him and Weinstein should get fucked up in a cell for the rest they life/ He hates black women, hypersexualizes them, with kinks of a nympho fetish / Grew facial hair 'cause he understood bein' a beard just fit him better/ He got sex offenders on OVO that he keep on a monthly allowance”

Kendrick makes the severe implication that Drake is similar to Harvey Weinstein, a man who has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women, saying the Toronto rapper deserves the same fate in jail. Kendrick adds that Drake “hates Black women,” which is a sentiment that’s been thrown his way many times in recent years for several reasons, including the unfavorable way he’s spoken about women like Megan Thee Stallion and Rihanna in his music for seemingly no reason. 

The “sex offenders on OVO” that Kendrick is referring to could possibly be Baka Not Nice who was arrested and charged with prostituting a 22-year-old woman in 2014 (and plead guilty to assaulting her in 2015) but there’s no way to be certain.

“ I been in this industry twelve years, I'ma tell y'all one lil' secret/ It's some weird shit goin' on and some of these artists be here to police it/ They be streamlinin' victims all inside of they home and callin' em Tinder/ Then leak videos of themselves to further push their agendas ”

The music industry has been filled with stories of sexual misconduct, grooming, and other heinous crimes for decades, and Kendrick Lamar is implying that Drake has used his home for something deeply nefarious (like a sex trafficking ring), insinuating that the rapper’s leaked nude from February was being used as bait. These allegations come shortly after Diddy’s home was raided by the Department of Homeland Security while being investigated for sex trafficking. 

“ Katt Williams said, ‘Get you the truths,’ so I'ma get mines / The embassy 'bout to get raided, too, it's only a matter of time/ Ayy, LeBron, keep the family away, hey, Curry, keep the family away/ To anybody that embody the love for they kids, keep the family away”

Dot references Kat Williams’ viral episode on Club Shay Shay where the comedian suggested that he knew about some of the inner workings of the entertainment industry, which is Kendrick’s way of saying that he’s now going to peel back the curtain on Drake as well. Kendrick believes that Drake’s home, dubbed “The Embassy,” is going to get investigated and raided, similar to what’s happening to Diddy right now. Then Dot warns celebrities like LeBron James and Stephen Curry (who both have daughters) not to bring their children around Drake.

The Hidden Daughter Verse

In one of the most salacious parts of the song, Kendrick accuses Drake of having an 11-year-old daughter that he has been hiding from the world (a claim that Drake immediately refuted on Instagram ). Kendrick also uses the verse to discuss Drake’s drug addiction and double down on calling him a deadbeat dad, similar to what Pusha-T did on “Story of Adidon.”

“ Should be teachin' you time tables or watchin' Frozen with you/ Or at your eleventh birthday, singin' poems with you/Instead, he be in Turks, payin' for sex and poppin' Percs ”

Kendrick reveals how old Drake’s alleged daughter is, making her five years older than Adonis. If the math is accurate, she would have been born right around the time Frozen came out, since the film was released in Nov. 2013. Then Kendrick says that Drake is busy going on vacations to Turks and Caicos (a destination he often raps about on songs like “Jumbotron Shit Poppin” ) and doing drugs, instead of being a present father. 

“ His father prolly didn't claim him neither / History do repeats itself, sometimes it don't need a reason/ But I would like to say it's not your fault he's hidin' another child/ Give 'em grace, this the reason I made Mr. Morale/ So our babies like you can cope later ”

Once again, Kendrick suggests that Drake is an absentee dad because his own father wasn’t in his life as a child, using the same verbiage of “hiding a child” that Pusha-T did on his infamous “The Story of Adidon” diss track. Kendrick maintains his position as a therapist figure as he references his last album Mr. Morale, where he has songs like “Father Time” that directly address his own troubled upbringing with his father and how he learned to overcome his “daddy issues.”

“ I'll tell you who your father is, just play this song when it rains / Yes, he's a hitmaker, songwriter, superstar, right / And a fuckin' deadbeat that should never say ‘More life’ ”

The closing bars of this verse might be an allusion to J. Cole’s track “4 Your Eyez Only,” where he leaves a message to the daughter of his slain friend. Kendrick mirrors those sentiments to Drake’s alleged child by telling her that her father is a “hitmaker, songwriter, [and] superstar.” But this is a deeply personal diss record, so Dot closes the verse by also reminding her (and him) that he’s a deadbeat, turning Drake’s album title More Life into a double entendre against him, saying that he should never use it as a catchphrase or create any more children.

The Aubrey Verse

Kendrick saves The Boy for last, addressing his adversary directly as he explains that all of this could have been avoided if Drake never brought up his family throughout their beef.

“ Dear Aubrey, I know you probably thinkin' I wanted to crash your party / But truthfully, I don't have a hatin' bone in my body / This supposed to be a good exhibition within the game / But you fucked up the moment you called out my family's name ”

Kendrick opens the track by acknowledging that he stomped on Drake’s diss track “Family Matters” by dropping his response immediately, but clarifies that he didn’t have any real animosity towards him until Drake brought up his wife’s name on “Push Ups” when he rapped, “I be with some bodyguards like Whitney.” That bar sparked rumors that Kendrick’s wife had an affair with his bodyguard, in the same way that Whitney Houston did in The Bodyguard . Dot confirms that once his family was brought up, it stopped being a friendly match between the two. 

“ You got gamblin' problems, drinkin' problems/ Pill-poppin' and spendin' problems, bad with money, whorehouse/ Solicitin' women problems, therapy's a lovely start ”

Kendrick succinctly summarizes all of his implications from earlier in the song, calling Drake a drug addict who solicits sex from women and needs therapy. Drake’s “gambling problems” have been discussed by others before, in part because of how often he works with the betting app Stake. The jewelry receipts and pill bottles on the cover artwork also feed into Kendrick’s narrative that Drake has a spending and substance problem.

“ You a body shamer, you gon' hide them baby mommas, ain't ya? You embarrassed of 'em, that's not right, that ain't how momma raised us / Take that mask off, I wanna see what's under them achievements / Why believe you? You never gave us nothin' to believe in”

On “When To Say When,” Drake rapped , “Baby mama fluke, but I love her for who she is,” and now Kendrick is implying that Drake has even more children with women that he’s ashamed to be around in public. Dot challenges Drake’s integrity and questions the persona he’s built up around himself, thanks to all of his awards and achievements. Then he goes into all of the things he believes Drake has lied about, including his religious beliefs, referring to Drake putting out a massive hit “God’s Plan” before more recently questioning his faith on “Wick Man.”

“ You lied about your son, you lied about your daughter, huh/ You lied about them other kids that's out there hopin' that you come/ You lied about the only artist that can offer you some help/ Fuck a rap battle, this a long life battle with yourself ”

Kendrick closes the track by planting even more seeds about Drake being a liar and having children that the public doesn’t know about. Then he brings the song full circle by saying that Drake lied about him and his family throughout their back-and-forth, which is what forced Dot’s hand to get extremely personal and say “fuck a rap battle.”

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