Childhood in Sociodemographic Perspective

This article reviews the emerging sociodemographic literature on the relationships linking children and their families, by focusing on four topics: (a) the short-term implications for children of parents' family behavior, (b) the short-term implications for parents of the number and ages, or spacing, of their children, (c) the long-term implications of childhood family experiences for subsequent adult behavior, and (d) the probable family circumstances of children in the future.

Studies of how parents influence children found (a) that increases in illegitimate fertility and divorce led to a large rise in the proportion of children living in one-parent families, usually with the mother, and in stepfamilies, (b) that children in families maintained by mothers, but not in stepfamilies, experience numerous social, economic, and psychological disadvantages, (c) that, contrary to the popular stereotype, white children in families maintained by mothers are more likely than black children in such families either to be living with or to receive financial assistance from extended family members, and (d) declining fertility and birth cohort size may have led to reductions in the welfare of children compared to the welfare of the elderly during the last 20 years.

Studies of how children influence parents found that the presence of at least one child probably reduced marital satisfaction; the presence of a small number of children, especially preschool children, deters parental divorce; children reduce remarriage probabilities for young mothers, but increase them for older mothers; and at least the first and second child probably reduce family income and savings. Studies of how childhood experiences affect individuals in adulthood find that divorce of one's parents reduces one's own marriage probabilities and increases one's own divorce probabilities; childhood stepfamilies have little effect on adult circumstances; contrary to the popular stereotype, children without siblings are not disadvantaged compared to other children; an increasing number of siblings leads to reduced educational attainments, and increasing educational mobility among men with small or medium numbers of siblings accounts for the increase observed for all men during this century. Recent projections suggest that 50-75% of the 1980 birth cohort may live in a one-parent family during childhood, with a range of 40-70% for whites and a range of 85-95% for blacks.