Child Family and Peer Relationships

From Wikiprogress.org

About

The dimension of family and peer relationships in the assessment of a child well-being is difficult to measure. A child's environment is however cricital to a child's development, well-being and self-esteem.

Children have Children have smaller worlds and fewer more intense relationships^[1]. These relationships with family and friends matter for children in their daily life and are also important to long-term emotional and psychological development. The measurement of the quality of relationship is obviously a challenge but their importance for a child's current and future well-being suggests including them as an essential dimension of child well-being. Both objective indicators and measures of subjective well-being and child subjective well-being can be used to asses the quality of relationships.

The importance of relationships and the attachment figures may vary and change with gender and age.

Family and well-being

Evidence from the US and the UK suggests that, statistically, growing up in a single-parent family or a step family is associated with greater risk to well-being such as greater risk of dropping out of school, of leaving home early, of poorer health, of low skills, and of low paw. These risks persistent even when the substantial effect of generally higher Poverty levels in single-parent and step families have been taken into account.

It is however not the family structure as such, an objective indicator, which determines the quality of relationships. The final outcome, the quality of the relationship, is what matters to children. Interaction such as conversation are very important for children. The OECD's Programme of International Student Assessment PISA and the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HSBC) have such data available.^[2]

The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) tries to improve knowledge about the capacities of fragile families and their impact on children's well-being. The FFCWS is a longitudinal birth cohort study of American children in urban areas. It is run by Princeton University and Columbia University. Baseline data was collected in 1998-2000.  The aim of the study is to address four questions: (1) What are the conditions and capabilities of unmarried parents, especially fathers?; (2) What is the nature of the relationships between unmarried parents?; (3) How do children born into these families fare?; and (4) How do policies and environmental conditions affect families and children?

Friends and well-being

With increased age, relationships outside the family become more important. Having friends can be considered essential to young people's health and development.^[3]

Indicators of Family and Peer Relationships

UNICEF Child-Wellbeing measure

• Family structure
  • Children living in single-parents families
  • Children living in step families
• Family relationships
  • Eating the main meal of the day with parent
  • Child-reported time parents spend talking to child
• Peer relationships
  • Child-reported assessment of their peers being "kind and helpful"

This list is not extensive and the use of these indicators may be limited by data availability and quality.

References

1. ↑ Thomas, Jennifer (2009), “Working Paper: Current Measures and the Challenges of Measuring Children’s Wellbeing”, Household, Labour Market and Social Wellbeing, Office for National Statistics, Newport.p.6 Available at:http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_social/Measuring-childrens-wellbeing.pdf
2. ↑ UNICEF 7th Innocenti Report Card: "Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries"
   
3. ↑ UNICEF 7th Innocenti Report Card: "Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries"
   

See also

Child well-being
Child Material well-being
Child Health and safety
Child Educational well-being
Child Behaviour and risks
Child Subjective well-being
UNICEF Child-Wellbeing measure