1-122 - Educational and Family Contexts of Residentially Mobile Children: Potential Pathways for Improving Child Outcomes

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Disruption associated with high residential mobility and housing instability may cause or compound disadvantages children and adolescents face in educational (e.g., low quality schooling) and family contexts (e.g., parental stress, low income), potentially compromising well-being during various points in development (Holupka & Newman, 2014). A better understanding of how residential mobility interacts with family and school contexts to affect development, and the specific pathways by which those effects operate, can inform growing policy efforts to reduce housing instability and to mitigate its effects on child and adolescent development (NRC/IOM, 2010; Garboden et al., 2017).
This symposium presents findings from longitudinal and randomized intervention studies examining: 1) relationships between residential mobility and child and adolescent development and 2) the extent to which family and educational contexts moderate or mediate these relations. Findings from papers in this forum will help identify effective family, housing, and educational policies for meeting the needs of highly mobile children.
Paper 1 uses data from Fragile Families to understand the extent to which a positive parenting relationship may mitigate the likely negative role of residential mobility (especially high mobility) in adolescent’s socioemotional development.
Paper 2 uses data from the Family Options Study, a large randomized study of housing interventions for families experiencing homelessness, to examine how interventions to stabilize families’ housing affect child and adolescent functioning.
Paper 3 uses data from the Head Start Impact Study to explore the contexts in which Head Start mitigates the negative effects of high residential mobility on low-income children’s development.

Sub Unit

• Family Context & Processes

Chair

• Robert Julius Anastasio, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development, Tufts University

Discussant

• Rebekah Levine Coley, Boston College

Individual Presentations

• Residential Mobility, Externalizing Behaviors, and the Moderating Role of the Parent-Adolescent Relationship - Presenting Author: Sloane B Glover, West Virginia University; Non-Presenting Author: Sara Anderson, West Virginia University

• How do Interventions to Stabilize Families’ Housing Affect Child and Adolescent Functioning? - Presenting Author: Scott Brown, Vanderbilt University; Non-Presenting Author: Marybeth Shinn, Vanderbilt University

• Head Start and Residentially Mobile Young Children's Development - Presenting Author: Robert Julius Anastasio, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development, Tufts University; Non-Presenting Author: Tama Leventhal, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development, Tufts University; Non-Presenting Author: Sara Anderson, West Virginia University