Associations between growing up in different family structures on adolescents’ mental health

Abstract

Non-intact families are consistently associated with poorer mental health outcomes for the child, compared to intact families. Data from the Dutch nationally-representative HBSC study is analysed, using ANOVA and multiple linear regressions, to investigate the differences between adolescents in intact families, one parent families and stepparent families in internalizing and externalizing problems. Different non-intact families were compared to intact families, with emotional and conduct problems as the outcome variables. Overall, adolescents from non-intact families reported poorer mental health than in intact families, except for the father and stepparent families. However, the amount of variance explained by the different non-intact families was relatively low. Moreover, gender differences were found, showing that the effects of non-intact families are stronger for girls’ internalizing problems, whereas in mother and stepparent families, effects on externalizing problems were stronger for boys. Family support partly explained the association between all non-intact families and mental health, except for father and stepparent families. Intervention should focus on family support, as lower levels of support was linked to poorer outcomes. This study revealed that there might be better explanations for the differences in mental health outcomes, suggesting that further research to underlying mechanisms should be performed.