Mothers, Fathers, Families, and Circumstances: Factors Affecting Children's Adjustment

The burgeoning empirical literature exploring the factors accounting for individual differences in psychological adjustment is reviewed. Many studies have shown that adjustment is largely affected by differences in the quality of parenting and parent-child relationships, the quality of the relationships between the parents, and the richness of the economic and social resources available to the family; more recent research signals the importance of congenital differences as well. Dimensions of family structure-including such factors as divorce, single parenthood, and the parents' sexual orientation-and biological relatedness between parents and children are of little or no predictive importance once the process variables are taken into account, because the same factors explain child adjustment regardless of family structure. These findings have important social and legal implications, especially in relation to decisions regarding foster care and adoption, as well as those concerning children's well-being following family dissolution.