Income, Relationship Quality, and Parenting: Associations With Child Development in Two-Parent Families

Prior research suggests considerable heterogeneity in the advantages of living in a 2-parent family. Specifically, children living with married biological parents exhibit more favorable outcomes than children living with cohabiting biological parents and with married and cohabiting stepparents. To explain these differences, researchers have focused almost exclusively on differences in the levels of factors such as income, parental relationship quality, and parenting quality across family types. In this study the authors examined whether differences in the benefits associated with these factors might also account for some of the variation in children's cognition and social-emotional development. Focusing on children at the time they enter kindergarten, they found only weak evidence of differences in benefits across family types. Instead, they found that children living in stepfather families experienced above-average levels of parental relationship quality and parenting quality, which in turn played a protective role vis-a-vis their cognitive and social-emotional development.