Family Structure and First-Term College GPA: Do Resources, Selectivity, and Resilience Factors Explain Potential Differences Across Family Structures?

Research shows negative associations between living in single-parent or stepparent families and average academic outcomes. But some children from non-traditional family structures are successful, such as those who enroll in college. Such students may be well suited to handle transitions to college because of their experience handling family transitions. By contrast, characteristics of non-traditional family structures generally associated with lower academic performance may persist into the collegiate context. We use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1997 Cohort to compare first-term college GPA for students from two-biological-parent, single-parent, and stepparent families. We employ data from the NLSY97 Post-Secondary Transcript Data (NLSY97-PST) (N = 3346) and regression analyses to test the degree to which three competing theoretical perspectives––resources, family structure selectivity processes, or student resilience factors––might explain potential differences in college performance. Students from single-parent and stepparent families perform worse in their first collegiate semester than their peers from two-biological-parent families. Resources and selectivity factors explain differences for students from single-parent families, but explaining differences for students from stepparent families requires accounting for resilience factors as well. Highlights: We explore how child and adolescent family structure is related to first-term college GPA. We ask whether children who have experienced family structure transitions might develop resilience that would help facilitate the transition to college. Bivariate comparisons suggest students from two-biological-parent families have higher first-term GPAs than those from single-parent or stepparent families. Differences between youth from two-biological-parent families and single-parent families can be explained by differences in resources and selectivity factors. Differences between youth from two-biological-parent families and stepparent families can only be explained by including resilience factors along with differences in resources and selectivity factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]