Dissolution, Conflict and Children’s Developmental Outcomes
An enormous body of research documents that children whose parents dissolve their relationships fare worse, on average, on many social, economic and behavioural dimensions than children whose parents stay together. Parental conflict has been hypothesized to be both a partial explanation and a moderator for these associations, with several influential studies in the U.S. indicating that children’s developmental outcomes are better if parents in highly conflicted relationships divorce. Using data from the 1st through 5th waves of the birth and kindergarten cohorts of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC), we compare how children’s intellectual and behavioural outcomes differ conditional on whether their biological parents dissolved their relationships in high- and low-conflict circumstances. Consistent with research conducted in the U.S. and other countries, we find that parental dissolution and conflict are associated with worse outcomes for Australian children, especially among the younger children in the LSAC birth cohort. However, unlike several previous studies, we also find that dissolution compounds the negative associations for conflict.