Article Analysis

Article Analysis

The article “Family Structure Histories and High School Completion: Evidence from a Population-based Registry” is written by Lisa Strohschein, Noralou Roos and Marni Brownell (2009). This article discusses the life course approach to examine the relationship between family structure histories and high school completion.

Using the methodology data sample of a population-based data registry for the 1984 Manitoba birth cohort, the author selected a sample of 9, 403 children born or adopted at birth into a married two-parent household and found out the family structure histories for each child to the age of 18.

Marital disruption occurred for 1,834 children (19.5%), with 337 children (3.6% of the total sample) facing multiple changes in family structure. Logistic regression models showed that children who experienced marital dissolution before the age of 18 were considerably less likely to complete high school than children in intact households, and that children who were younger at the time of a first transition were more vulnerable than children who were older when their parents' marriage ended.

The author findings of the article state that at any given time, growing up in a non-intact family clearly has a negative effect on child educational attainment. However, the analysis showed that the effect is somewhat more diverse than previously recognized. For the most part, at higher levels of educational attainment there were no significant differences in the effects of family structure over time. The predicted rates for college attendance and college graduation showed little variation over time. However, significant racial differences in the effects of family structure over time for two educational outcomes do exist. If the dependent variable is the number of years of schooling completed, time is a factor to be considered. For whites the comparative advantage of growing up in an intact family remains the same over time. For children this advantage declines with each cohort.

With respect to high school completion, the analysis reveals significant changes in the effect of family structure on rates of high school graduation for whites. In contrast, there appear to be no significant changes in the influence of family structure on high school completion for children.

A perspective that has some relevance in examining changes in family structure is that of the functionalists. Talcott Parson's (1971) concept of institutional differentiation caused by modernization argues that functions that were formerly performed by the family, for example, the education of children, the care of the sick, and economic production, have now been taken over by other institutions in society. Thus, the family has new functions and the central responsibilities of the family has changed. However, the authors Lisa et al. (2009) have objected to the view that the taking over of the family's functions by commercial agencies and state organizations has eroded the family's role as an institution. Instead, Fletcher argues that the multifunctional pre-industrial family is a myth. His view is that in the first place, the harsh realities of life in pre- and early industrial period meant that the family performed minimally ...