Peer-reviewed article
Marital quality over the life course and child well-being from childhood to early adolescence
Spencer L. James, David A. Nelson, McKell A Jorgensen-Wells, Danielle Calder ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This longitudinal study examines how parental marital quality over time affects children's well-being from ages 5 to 14 using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Children whose parents had consistently poor marital quality showed more behavioral problems, worse health, lower-quality home environments, and lower academic performance than children with parents in higher-quality marriages. The differences in health, home quality, and vocabulary remained stable over time, though behavioral problems evolved differently by gender, with boys catching up to girls by mid-adolescence.
Key points
- Children with consistently poor parental marital quality showed more internalizing and externalizing problems, poorer health, lower-quality home environments, and lower math and vocabulary scores
- Group differences remained stable over time for child health, home environment, and vocabulary scores
- Internalizing problem differences between groups declined over time, while externalizing problems and math score differences increased
- Initial advantages for females across well-being indicators tended to shrink over time, with boys often moving ahead by mid-adolescence
- Marital quality should be understood through multiple dimensions (happiness, communication, conflict) and trajectories rather than as a single construct
Limitations
The study uses US-based data and may not generalize to other cultural or geographic contexts. The research is observational and cannot establish causation, only associations between marital quality and child outcomes.
Abstract
Research on marital quality and child well-being is currently limited by its common use of geographically constrained, homogenous, and often cross-sectional (or at least temporally limited) samples. We build upon previous work showing multiple trajectories of marital quality and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 (NLSY79) regarding mothers and their children (inclusive of ages 5-14). We examine how indicators of child well-being are linked to parental trajectories of marital quality (happiness, communication, and conflict). Results showed children whose parents had consistently poor marital quality over the life course exhibited more internalizing and externalizing problems, poorer health, lower quality home environments, and lower math and vocabulary scores than children of parents in consistently higher-quality marriages. Group differences remained stable over time for child health, home environment, and vocabulary scores. Group differences for internalizing problems declined over time, whereas group differences increased for externalizing problems and math scores. Initial advantages for females across nearly all indicators of child well-being tended to shrink over time, with boys often moving slightly ahead by mid adolescence. We discuss the implications of these findings in regard to children's development and well-being and suggest treating marriage as a monolithic construct betrays important variation within marriage itself.