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A Cross-National Comparison of Adolescent Substance Use in Stepfamilies, Single- and Two-Parent Families

Anja Steinbach1 & Sebastian Schnettler2

1 Dept. of Sociology, University of Duisburg Essen 2 Dept. of Sociology, University of Konstanz

Prepared for the CFR seminar

„New Family Forms Following Family Dissolution: Consequences in/on Postmodern Society” 12-14 September 2012 in Leuven, Belgium

Draft from September 3, 2012

(Please do not cite or circulate without authors' permission.) Contact: Prof. Dr. Anja Steinbach University of Duisburg-Essen Department of Sociology Lotharstraße 65 D-47057 Duisburg Germany Phone: +49 - 203 - 379 1344 Fax: +49 - 203 - 379 4350 e-mail: anja.steinbach@uni-due.de Abstract: We investigate adolescent risk behaviour regarding substance use in stepfamilies as compared to single- and two-parent families, using data from the “Health Behaviour in School-aged Children” study (HBSC), a World Health Organization (WHO) cross-national and cross-sectional survey administered to adolescents aged 11, 13, and 15 years. Given the possible long-term consequences of early risk behaviour for adolescents’ physical, mental, and social well-being over the life course, our goal is to identify differences in the prevalence of risk taking behaviour between these family types and to identify social resilience factors that moderate these differences. Such a detailed empirical analysis is possible because information on the extra-household family structure has been recorded in the HBSC study but also because pooling the data of 37 countries provides us with a very large dataset to distinguish even rare (step-)family constellations. Following our analysis, we first provide descriptive results on the prevalence of substance abuse in stepfamilies, single- and two-parent families across countries. Second, we present the results of a set of logistic regression models on substance use in adolescence, taking into account the unobserved within-country heterogeneity by conducting unconditional fixed effects models. Our results show that, after controlling for a range of relevant child and family characteristics and the relationship to parents and friends, adolescence in all family forms with complex constellations, including parent-child ties across households, show a higher level of substance use than adolescence in a two-biological-parent family. Children in single-biological-mother or single-biological-father households and without a second household, however, do not differ in their substance use from children who live with both of their biological parents.

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1 Introduction Adolescence is a sensitive period that involves a range of developmental tasks in a number of life domains (Hurrelmann & Richter, 2005). The demands associated with those developmental tasks and the repercussions of unsuccessful transitions may put the individual at a high level of stress that requires certain coping skills from the individual. In the short term, risk behaviours can be functional in providing (alternative) means to accomplish developmental tasks: for instance, substance use can make it easier to develop friendships and intimate relationship, and it helps regulating stress and emotions. In the long-term, however, engaging in these and other risk behaviours can lead to persisting, negative consequences for well-being, health and achievement (Hurrelmann & Richter, 2005). Furthermore, patterns of substance use often persist until later in life and, if substance use serves as a coping strategy, it may consistently do so throughout the life course with continued risks for health and well-being (Brown & Rinelli, 2010, p. 259). It is therefore essential to understand the risks and protective factors that are relevant during this developmental period. The social context plays an important role in mediating the life-course transition to adolescence: On the one hand, strong social relationships to parents and peers may help buffer against risks. But on the other hand, peer influences may themselves be a source for risk behaviour. And family ties may be dysfunctional as buffer against stress or even contribute to problems as an additional source for stress. Given a range of social and demographic changes in the latter of the 20th century that led to a complexity of family forms unseen during the golden age of marriage and the family in the 1950s and 60s (Bures, 2009), family sociology has for many decades been concerned with the potential consequences of growing up in these new family forms that are distinct from the heterosexual, married couple of biological parents (Brown, 2010). A vast amount of research, summarized in form of reviews and meta-analyses, shows that children from divorced parents fare worse in a number of domains of well-being and achievement, with persistent negative effects carrying on into adulthood (Amato, 1994, 2000, 2001; Amato & Keith, 1991a, 1991b). Against this background, the step family deserves special attention. Generally, the subjective assessments of biological parent-child ties are better than social parent-child ties, even when compared within the same families (Schnettler & Steinbach, 2011) and children with two biological parents fare better on a range of outcomes than children growing up in step families (Brown, 2010; Schnettler & Steinbach, 2011). As multiple partnerships and multiple partner fertility have become more frequent (Carlson & Furstenberg, 2006), family researchers have emphasized the new complexity of family forms (Brown, 2010): children often have ties not only to their co-resident biological and possibly social parent but also to their other biological parent living in another household and possibly the new partner of this parent. In addition, in both households there may be half- or step-siblings to the focal child that result from previous or subsequent relationships of the biological parents or their current partners. In total, this complexity of biological and social ties may create conflicts of interests between parts of the family and emotional ambivalences that may reduce the buffering function of parental ties against other stressors during adolescence or even constitute an additional stressor. Therefore, children growing up in certain stepfamily constellations may have a higher probability to engage in risk behaviours like substance use than children growing up in other constellations.

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The degree of complexity of biological and social ties across households is not reflected in many social surveys and therefore severely limits empirical analyses on the role of family ties in reducing or aggravating developmental stresses during adolescence. Even if included in a survey, due to the relatively small number of step-families of all families covered in a survey, case numbers may often be too low for detailed analyses of all variations of multiple household constellations (Schnettler & Steinbach, 2011, pp. 189–192). With a focus on substance use among adolescents, here we provide a detailed comparison of biological and social family constellations across the main and secondary household of adolescents based on data from two waves of the cross-national Word Health Organization Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) Survey. Pooling over waves and countries provides us with a sample large enough to conduct detailed subgroup analyses. Including country-level fixed effects further allows us to control for unobserved country-level heterogeneity.

2 Theory and Previous Research During adolescence, important hormonal, institutional and psychological transitions take place. This multitude of transitions may make individuals during this developmental phase particularly prone to engage in a variety of risky behaviours, e.g., substance abuse, bullying, and/or early sexual onset. This multitude of transitions further calls for an interdisciplinary approach, combining sociological, psychological, and evolutionary accounts on adolescence and risk behaviour. According to the organizational hypothesis in behavioural endocrinology, the transitions to middle childhood and adolescence, along with the pre- and neonatal periods, constitute sensitive periods during which long-lasting effects on brain and behaviour occur in response to environmental conditions and mediated through hormonal changes (Breedlove, 2010; Del Giudice, Angeleri, & Manera, 2009; Nelson, 2011). These hormonal changes can have long-lasting effects on later behaviour and the life course. Mediated through hormonal changes, growing up in an adverse, stress-full environment is thought to trigger more risky, short-term strategies in important life domains like mating, reproduction, and status achievement (see e.g., Davis & Werre, 2007). The life-course and life-span perspectives in sociology and psychology add to the evolutionary-endocrinological perspective by shifting the focus from the hormone-environment interplay to the impact of norms and institutions on individual personality and the individual life course. Adolescents have to master transitions in a number of life domains and are thereby exposed to cumulative stressors (Richter, 2010). The cumulative effect of a variety of adverse childhood experiences increases the risk for substance abuse (Anda et al., 2006) Together, the hormonal changes occurring during puberty, the institutional transitions during adolescence, and new normative expectations put the adolescent at a high level of stress. Adolescents have different copying styles and vary in their capabilities to manage these multiple developmental tasks. If the level of stress exceeds the coping abilities, the odds for engaging in risk behaviour increases. There is evidence that this is the case because risk behaviours can be instrumental in achieving developmental tasks, especially in building peer relationships and finding a romantic partner (Pinquart & Silbereisen, 2002; Silbereisen & Noack, 1988; Silbereisen & Reitzle, 1991). Substance use in particular can be seen as functional for a wide range of developmental tasks. As the overview in Table 2 shows, substance use can provide both an escape by reducing stress or be functional to achieve various developmental tasks. In a broad sense, this functional perspective on risk behaviour is consistent with an evolutionary perspective which states that risk-taking behaviour may be adaptive under certain environmental conditions.

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Given a possible negative long-term impact of risk behaviour and substance use in particular (McCambridge, McAlaney, & Rowe, 2011) on later health, well-being and achievement, it is important to not only understand the risk factors that lead adolescents to engage in risky behaviour but also the protective factors that can reduce their odds of doing so. A healthy and stable social context, both with regard to family and peer relations can function as a buffer against stressors and therefore reduce adolescents' proclivities to engage in risky behaviours (Richter, 2010). But what if the family context itself is subject to change and new, possibly complex constellations of biological and social ties across multiple households replace the two-biological-parent family? Although traditional and non-traditional family structures can provide a secure context for child and adolescent development (Patterson, 2001), instability and divorce can harm development in manifold ways and with persistent, adverse effects into adulthood (Amato, 1994, 2000, 2001; Amato & Keith, 1991a, 1991b; Patterson, 2001). Research comparing biological and social parent-child relations generally comes to the conclusion that biological ties are advantaged on a range of outcomes, including parental investment (e.g., time and money) and subjective relationship assessments (Anderson, Kaplan, Lam, & Lancaster, 1999; Anderson, Kaplan, & Lancaster, 1999; Hamilton, Cheng, & Powell, 2007). Whereas some of that difference can be attributed to differences in background characteristics of biological and step-parents (Berger, Carlson, Bzostek, & Osborne, 2008; Hofferth & Anderson, 2003), a considerable amount of that differences nevertheless persists even in within-family comparisons of biological and social parent-child ties (Delongis & Preece, 2002; Schnettler & Steinbach, 2011). Longitudinal evidence on the effect of a new biological child in step-families shows that parental attention shifts from older children to the newborn roughly to the same degree in two-biological-parent and step families after the birth of a new biological child, but also that mothers and fathers report more problems in parenting their stepchildren than their biological children after birth of the first biological child of the focal (step-)parents (Stewart, 2005). Specifically with regard to substance use, evidence suggests an increased risk for substance use in family types deviating from the two-parent-biological family: In one study, children living in step-father and single-mother households are more likely to engage in substance use than those living in two-biological-parent families (Musick & Meier, 2010). And another study finds that smoking and drinking is least prevalent among children living in two-biological-parent families, most likely among those living in cohabiting stepfamilies and in-between for those living in single-mother and married step families (Brown & Rinelli, 2010). Most of the above studies on the effects of growing up in step families focus on the constellation within the household of the focal child or adolescent. An exception is research on the role of non-resident fathers, which, due to the statistical norm that many children remain in the household of their biological mother upon divorce or separation of the two biological parents, generated much more research interest than the effect of non-residential mothers (Amato & Gilbreth, 1999; Amato & Rezac, 1994; Hawkins, Amato, & King, 2007). Therefore, existing research neglects the complex constellation of biological and social family ties across households, involving the two biological parents, possibly their new partners, and their children from previous and subsequent relationships. The impact of growing up in a step-family or with a single parent may depend on whether ties to another parent outside the main home are present and the quality of this relationship. Also, coresidence of half- and step-siblings may create conflicts of interest and emotional ambivalences that may affect parent-child relationship in certain step-family constellations negatively (Coleman, Ganong, & Fine, 2000; Schnettler & Steinbach, 2011). The conflicting interests of a parent between two (or more) families may create conflict in the parent-adolescent relationship or between the parents and thereby add to the

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stresses the child or adolescent has been exposed to through the preceding family change (divorce). Given an incomplete institutionalization of the stepfamily, role models and social norms are lacking that could help negotiate those conflicts in a constructive way (cf., Cherlin, 1978, 2004). Therefore for children living in step families, and particularly for those living in complex step families, the buffering role of social context may be diminished and the family context may acerbate existing stress through developmental tasks during adolescence. It can therefore be expected that adolescents living in complex step family constellations are more prone to engage in risk behaviour than children growing up in two-biological-parent families, single-parent households or even simple step families. On the other hand, positive effects of father involvement on reducing certain risk behaviours (Sarkadi, Kristiansson, Oberklaid, & Bremberg, 2008) warrants the questions as to how much residential social fathers can have similar effects through active engagement with their step child and how possibly contact to and engagement of a biological and social parent in two households may even constitute a better social buffer against risk behaviour than adolescents in two-biological-parent families have.

3 Data, Variables, and Descriptive Results Our investigation extends previous research by comparing the association of a wider range of (complex) step-family constellations across household and compares them with two-biological and single-biological-parent families. Analyses are based on the cross-national and cross-sectional “Health Behaviour in School-aged Children” (HBSC) study. The HBSC study has been conductedby an international multidisciplinary network of research teams with the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office or Europe every four years since 1982 (Currie, Saoirse Nic Gabhainn, & Godeau, 2009). The main aim of the study is to gain insight into young people's well-being, health behaviours and their social context across countries and regions in Europa and North America. Therefore, the survey includes valuable information on a range of risk behaviours of adolescents that are useful for investigation in the current study. HBSC data are collected through school-based surveys using a research protocol in all participating countries with mandatory and optional questions (Roberts et al., 2009). The survey was administered to adolescents aged 11, 13, and 15 years, because “these age groups represent the onset of adolescence, a time when young people face the challenges of physical and emotional changes and important life and career decisions are beginning to be made” (Richter, 2010, p. 47). For data collection, standardized questionnaires were administered in school classrooms according to the international protocol. Student selection took place by a clustered sampling design where the initial sampling unit is the school class (with some adaptation in sampling because of different school systems across countries). The response rate at the level of schools was generally high (majority of countries: 80%) (Richter, 2010, p. 48). Over the years, an increasing number of countries participated in the HBSC study, with a total of 43 countries and regions in the last wave of 2009/20101. Since December 2011, external researchers can apply for data access to all waves except the last one. Here, we use data from the last and second-last accessible waves of the HBSC study (2001/02 and 2005/06), given that from the 2001/02 wave on the survey captured information on biological mothers and fathers as well as stepmothers and stepfathers across the main home of the focal adolescent and, if existent, the second household. In addition to representative data on health and risk behaviours the survey

1 See http://www.hbsc.org/about/index.html and http://www.hbsc.org/data/index.html, last accessed on 31

August 2012.

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includes some information on social context, including family, school, and peers, as well as information on the socioeconomic environment in which young people grow up. For the two selected waves and due to some contractual limitations, we could include data from 37 countries across Europe and North America2. For the analyses we pooled the cross-sectional data of the two available waves across these 37 countries. Although in each country, particular (step-)family constellations apply only to a small to medium percentage of all families, pooling over countries and waves allows us to study the association of growing up in a variety of complex family constellations and substance use. Altogether the combined sample includes 342,849 adolescents (for an overview of included countries and number of cases in the respective waves see Table 1). Operationalization of the dependent variable: substance use

The HBSC data allows examining a range of risky behaviours, including substance use, sexual behaviour, and bullying. Here we focus exclusively on substance abuse, including indicators for alcohol and tobacco consumption. Early substance abuse has been found to be associated with a range of negative outcomes at later ages and therefore constitutes and important moderator in the association between family structure and later life outcomes. For both indicators on substance use, smoking and drinking, adolescents were asked to indicate how often they engage in these behaviours. For smoking, the scale went from 0 („I do not smoke“), over 1 („less than once a week“) and 2 („once a week“) to 3 („every day“). For drinking, the three separate scales for the consumption of beer, wine and spirits respectively included the following-five levels each: 0 („never“), 1 („rarely“), 2 („every month“), 3 („every week“) and 4 („every day“). From these source variables we created dummy variables, with all respondents who indicate to not drink and smoke at all to get a value of 0 and all respondents who smoke, drink or do both at least occasionally to get a value of 1 (see for the same procedure with Add Health data: Brown & Rinelli, 2010). That is, for the dummy variable we ignore both the types of alcohol consumed and the frequency of smoking and drinking. Thus, in the following we compare adolescents with occasional to regular experiences in substance use (54%) with adolescents who never smoke or drink (46%). Operationalization of family types and descriptive results In the HBSC data we have information on the household roster for the main household of the adolescent and, if applicable, on a second home if one biological parent lives outside the main home. Given a sample size of over 300,000 respondents, the data offer the possibility for detailed analyses of the full variety of (step-)family constellations across households and to examine the association between these constellation and adolescent substance use, controlling for a range of additional factors. With the information whether the child lives with a biological mother, biological father, stepmother and/or a stepfather in the main household and whether the child has

2 Included are (in alphabetical order): Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic,

Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Macedonia, United Kingdom (due to contractual limitations, exclusive of England), United States.

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a second home where any of these parents live, we can combine this to different family types. In total, we distinguish 13 family constellations ranging from the two-biological-parent family and single-biological-parent to simple and complex step families. See Table 3 for a full overview and distribution of all constellations. We ignore very rare family constellations, e.g., an adolescent living with a single stepfather or one living with foster parents in the main home and a biological mother in the second home. Dropping these rare constellations leaves us with 329,649 adolescents living in one of the 13 family constellations presented in Table 3. As can be seen in this table, the main family forms across countries are the two-biological-parent family (77,7%), single-biological-mother families with and without a second home (13%), and stepfather families, where the child lives with the biological mother and a stepfather in the main home (6,5%). These are much more frequent than variations of single-biological-father (1,8) or primary stepmother families (1%), that is, where the child lives with the biological father and a stepmother in the main home. This is because children stay with the mother in most of the cases after separation of the parents. For a first overview regarding substance use in different family constellations we will look now to the rate of substance use in the 13 different family constellations. As we can see in Figure 1, in all alternative family types (types 2-13) adolescents display higher rates of substance use than those living in two-biological-parent families (type 1). Operationalization of other independent variables Inclusion of other independent variables led to the further exclusion of cases, leaving a sample size of 257,326 cases: we had to exclude cases (1) where a biological parent does not exist anymore or there is no contact to this parent, because we included a variable regarding relationship quality to mothers and fathers, and (2) because of missing cases in the included variables. The quality of the relation to parents was measured by two variables indicating how easy or difficult it is for the adolescents to talk to their biological mother and to their biological father (1 „very difficult“, 2 „difficult“, 3 „easy“, 4 „very easy“). Because these questions could only be answered if the mother/father is still alive and the adolescent has any contact to this person, relatively many cases could not be used in the regression model, (2% had no contact to their mother and 6.5% had no contact to their father). Based on results of the same cross-national survey employed here, researchers have found a consistent gender difference in the prevalence of risk behaviour: across countries, boys are more likely to engage in risk behaviours than girls (Hurrelmann & Richter, 2005; Simons-Morton et al., 2009). Also, the effects of divorce on conduct behaviour have been found to be larger for boys than for girls (Amato, 2001). Furthermore, girls and boys differ in their coping styles and the types of risk behaviour they are most likely to engage in: boys are more likely to engage in externalizing and evasive risk behaviour (e.g. bullying, substance use), whereas girls are more likely to engage in internalizing risk behaviour (e.g., nutritional behaviour) (Hurrelmann & Richter, 2005; Richter, 2010). Risk behaviour increases with age and these age and sex patterns are similar across countries, but overall prevalence in risk behaviours varies considerably between countries (Hurrelmann & Richter, 2005; Richter, 2010) parental SES plays not a very big role in behaviours that start in adolescents (Richter, 2010). In order to account for these effects, we control for age and sex of the child as well as the socioeconomic status of parents. Age is operationalized as a categorical variable with the categories 11- (32%), 13- (34%), and 15-years of age (34%). The HBSC study included adolescents from 11 to 15 because this is the most

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important phase of adolescence. Gender of the child is coded 0 for males (48%) and 1 for females (52%). Socioeconomic status of the family was measured based on adolescents' ratings of how well off their family is (1 “not at all well off”, 2 “not very well off”, 3 “average”, 4 “quite well off”, 5 “very well off”; mean: 3.7, SD: .88). This is due to the fact that the more detailed measure of socioeconomic status has a rather large percentage of missing cases. Research shows that adolescents that engage in risky behaviour also have more peer relationships. This may partially be a consequence of the instrumentality of substance use in establishing peer relationships (Silbereisen & Noack, 1988; Silbereisen & Reitzle, 1991). But the causal arrow probably goes into both directions as research for adolescents and adults alike provides evidence for peer effects on smoking and drinking (Braun, Wilson, Pelesko, Buchanan, & Gleeson, 2006; Christakis & Fowler, 2008; Rosenquist, Murabito, Fowler, & Christakis, 2010; Slomkowski, Rende, Novak, Lloyd-Richardson, & Niaura, 2005; Steglich, Snijders, & West, 2006). Although we cannot disentangle this bidirectional causal interplay here, we control for friendship effects by including the following three variables: number of friends, frequency of contact with friends and how easy or difficult it is for the adolescents to talk to friends. The number of friends was computed as an additive index of the number of close male friends and the number of close female friends (mean: 4.8, SD: 1.5). The frequency of contact with friends was computed using three variables asking how often the adolescents meet their friends after school and in the evening and how often they communicate via media. The answer scale ranges from 0-4 (0 „rarely or never“, 1 „1 or 2 days a week“, 2 „3 or 4 days a week“, 3 „5 or 6 days a week“, and 4 „every day“; mean: 1.8, SD: 0.91). The degree of difficulty talking to friends was assessed on the following scale: 1 „very difficult“, 2 „difficult“, 3 „easy“, 4 „very easy“ (mean: 3.0, SD: .71).

4 Results of Multivariate Analysis Following, we investigate the association between family constellation and substance use, controlling for a range of other important influences on substance use as outlined above. To that purpose, we conduct a series of logistic regression models on the substance use dummy variable. To account for differences in levels of substance use between countries, we use unconditional fixed effects models3 robust standard errors that account for the clustering of individuals within countries. The first and baseline model includes family type as the only independent variable. In the second model, we also control for gender and age of the adolescent, and in the third model we include family socioeconomic status. In the fourth model, relationship quality to the biological mother and father is introduced. And in the fifth and last model we include variables indicating relationships with friends. An overview of the regression results can be found in Table 4. In the first model one can see that adolescents in all family constellations, except for those living with a single biological mother only (family type 2), have significantly higher odds of drinking or smoking than those living in two-biological-parent families (family type 1).

3 Hilbe (2009) notes that unconditional fixed effects models, unlike conditional fixed effects models that

condition out the fixed effects from the likelihood function, can be biased if the upper-level units are frequent but each upper-level unit has but a few cases of the lower unit. Following the author, this is not so much a problem if the upper level units each contain a large number of lower-level units as is the case in our analysis. Here, country serves as upper-level unit and individuals as lower-level units. Using country-level unconditional fixed effects has the advantage that the model yields an intercept for substance use for each country.

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In the second model, when gender and age of the adolescents are included, the differences between the family types roughly remain the same. But whereas all differences are statistically significant at the level of p<.001, the difference between adolescents living with either a single-biological-father (family type 3) or a biological father and a stepmother in the main home (family type 9) with those in two-biological-parent families is statistically significant at the p<.05 level only. The results further confirm previous research in showing that girls have lower odds to smoke or drink than boys and that the odds for substance use increase with age: the odds of 15-year-olds to engage in substance use are close to eight times higher than those for the reference group of 11-year-olds. The age and sex pattern decreases slightly as more factors are controlled for but remains consistent otherwise. In the third model, when family socioeconomic status is controlled for in addition, one can see that the economic situation of the family is negatively associated with substance use: a decrease of family wealth by one point is associated with an eight percent drop in the odds for engaging in substance use. The differences between the family types remain roughly the same. The fourth model takes also the quality of the relation to mother and father into account: The better the communication with both mother and father, the lower the odds that the adolescent smokes or drinks. In this model, adolescents with single biological mothers (family type 2) or fathers (family type 3) and those with a biological father and a stepmother in the main home (family type 9) do not statistically significantly differ in their odds of substance use as compared to those in two-biological-parent families. In the fifth model the last set of independent variables are included: the number of friends, frequency of contact with friends, and degree of difficulty talking to friends. Higher values on all three of these variables are associated with higher odds for substance use. This is consistent with both a functional perspective of substance use and a peer-influence perspective on substance use. Although in this model, the difference between children of single parents with a second home as compared to adolescents living in two-biological-parent families is smaller, they still have significantly higher odds for cigarette or alcohol consumption. The odds that adolescents who live in stepfamilies (either with or without a second home) smoke and drink on a regular basis are even higher: In comparison to adolescents who live in two-biological-parent families their odds to consume alcohol or cigarettes are 1.2 to 1.6 times higher, even under the control of several independent variables. And also adolescents who live with their biological father and have their biological mother in a second home have odds that are 1.4 times higher than those of adolescents in two biological-parent families. Overall, the goodness-of-fit for the model is quite satisfying given a Pseudo R2 of .19. But as one can see in Table 4, substance use is mainly explained by the gender and the age of the adolescents. We can summarize that living in a disrupted family has a strong negative impact on the odds to use substances: Except for adolescents who live with a single biological mother or a single biological father (in the latter case with or without a stepmother), which differ not significantly from adolescents in two-biological-parent families, adolescents who live in every other family constellation smoke and drink significantly more often than adolescents who grow up in a two-biological-parent family. This is especially true for the most complex family types that involve biological and step parent-child ties in both the main and the secondary home. Furthermore, it can be noted that adolescents living in different constellations where the biological father lives in the main household and the biological mother lives in the secondary home fare worse than adolescents living in constellations with the reverse pattern.

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5 Summary Since smoking behaviour is usually established during adolescence and early onset of smoking is heavy linked to the consumption of alcohol, it is a key public health objective to prevent or at least delay this kind of risk behaviour in adolescence. Early substance abuse (as consumption of tobacco and alcohol) has been found to be associated with a range of negative outcomes not only in adolescence but also at later ages and therefore constitutes an important moderator in the association between family structure and later life outcomes. Our investigation extended previous research on adolescent risk behaviour, namely substance use, by comparing the association of a wider range of (complex) step-family constellations across household and compares them with two-biological and single-biological-parent families. The results show that in most family constellations adolescents smoke and drink more often than adolescents who grow up in a two-biological-parent family. Under the control of several variables like gender and age of the adolescents or the quality of the relation to the parents the chance of substance use is still higher for more or less all of the family constellations except for adolescents with single biological mothers, single biological fathers, or re-partnered biological fathers in their main home. As expected, this difference is strongest for the more complex family constellations that involve biological and step parent-child ties in both the main and the secondary home. Furthermore, in those cases where household ties with both the biological father and the biological mother exist, it makes a differences whether it is the biological father or the biological mother that lives in the main home: generally, the odds for substance use are higher if it is the biological father who lives in the main home and the biological mother who lives in the secondary home than in the reverse case. In the current version of the analysis we don't investigate potential interaction effects between the family-constellation variables and other factors deemed important with regard to substance use. Given evidence for an advantage of gender-homogeneous parent-child relationships (Lye, 1996), it could be that the association between family constellation and substance use is mediated by the gender of the child. We plan to account for this in an extension of the current analysis. Furthermore, we want to examine the different role peer relations play for different family types: it can be imagined that the negative effect of peers is stronger for certain family constellations than for others. This should be accounted for by interacting variables on friendship and family constellation variables. Another limitation of the current model is that we focus solely on the degree of family complexity that is due to parent-child relationships. An important additional factor, however, is whether half- and/or stepchildren are present in the main or second home. Although the HBSC data don't allow specifying the type of child present in the household, we will extend the current analysis by including the number of children in the main and secondary home. Currently we only control for differences in the level of substance use between between-country differences, but we don't explicitly explain how these differences come about. It is planned as a next step to include random effects models that allow to estimate country-level explanatory variables. We expect that family policies that are targeted more specifically to individuals rather than to specific types of families (e.g., the traditional male-breadwinner, two-biological-parent family), moderate the association between living in non-traditional family constellations and risk behaviour as it reduces barriers to new and complex family types. In addition to limitations in the current data analysis, the HBSC study has several limitations that restrict the kinds of analyses we can do. For example, there is no information on several additional factors that are described as relevant for understanding substance use in the research literature. These include child characteristics like genetic factors that make children

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more prone to engage in substance use (Plomin, DeFries, Craig, & McGuffin, 2003, chap. 17), birth order which has also been found to be associated with substance use (Argys, Rees, Averett, & Witoonchart, 2006), or the school track the child is in. Furthermore, information is lacking on parental characteristics like their own substance use habits, their parenting styles (control, warmness), education, and the degree of institutionalization of their partnership (either with the other biological parent or new partner) (cf. Hofferth & Anderson, 2003). Also, in order to describe the complexity of family ties across household in more detail, it would be necessary to assess the quality of parent-child relationships (cf., Skopin, Newman, & McKenry, 1993) and to include information on the number of (step-)siblings in the main and the second home. These limitations notwithstanding, the data is informative for the analysis of adolescent risk behaviour, like substance use, because the potential of the data lies in the high number of cases and the detailed information on family constellations across households.

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6 ReferencesAmato, P. R. (1994). Life-Span Adjustment of Children to Their Parents’ Divorce. The Future of Children, 4(1), 143–

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Tables and Figures Table 1: Case number by wave and country Country* 2001/2002 2005/2006 Total Austria 4,472 4,848 9,320 Belgium 10,612 8,787 19,399 Bulgaria - 4,854 4,854 Canada 4,361 5,930 10,291 Croatia 4,397 4,968 9,365 Czech Republic 5,012 4,782 9,794 Denmark 4,672 5,741 10,413 Estonia 3,979 4,484 8,463 Finland 5,388 5,249 10,637 France 8,185 7,155 15,340 Germany 5,650 7,274 12,924 Greece 3,807 3,715 7,522 Greenland 891 1,366 2,257 Hungary 4,164 3,532 7,696 Iceland - 9,540 9,540 Ireland 2,875 4,894 7,769 Israel 5,661 5,686 11,347 Italy 4,386 3,951 8,337 Latvia 3,481 4,245 7,726 Lithuania 5,645 5,632 11,277 Luxembourg - 4,387 4,387 Malta 1,980 1,404 3,384 Netherlands 4,268 4,278 8,546 Norway 5,023 4,711 9,734 Poland 6,383 5,489 11,872 Portugal 2,940 3,919 6,859 Romania - 4,684 4,684 Russia 8,037 8,231 16,268 Slovakia - 3,882 3,882 Slovenia 3,956 5,130 9,086 Spain* 5,827 - 5,827 Sweden 3,926 4,415 8,341 Switzerland 4,679 4,621 9,300 Ukraine 4,090 5,069 9,159 Macedonia 4,161 5,281 9,442 United Kingdom* 8,291 10,599 18,890 USA 5,025 3,892 8,917 Total 156,224 186,625 342,849

* Turkey and Spain 2006 excluded due to lack of questions on substance use; England excluded from UK data due to contractual limitations for data access.

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Table 2: Developmental tasks and functions of substance use Developmental tasks Functions of substance use

Knowing who one is and what one wants; identity

- expression of personal style - search for limit-breaking, consciousness-

expanding experience and adventures

Development of friend-ships; establishment of intimate relationships

- easier access to peer groups - excessive/ritualized behavior - establishment of contacts with peers of the

opposite sex

Becoming independent / separation from parents

- demonstrating independence from parents - conscious violation of parental controls

Shaping / planning life - sharing in subculture lifestyles - having fun and enjoying

Developing one’s own system of values

- intentional violation of standards - expression of social protest

Developmental problems - surrogate goals - regulation of stress and emotions

Source: Fig. 2 in (Hurrelmann & Richter, 2005, p. 23)

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Table 3: Family constellations across main (HH1) and secondary home (HH2) (N = 329,649)

Constellation Description of family type [bio = biological, M = mother(s), F=father(s)]

% (n) HH1 HH2

M F M F

1 b b - - Two bio parents/no 2nd home: bio M & F live with child 77,7 (256 089)

2 b - - - Single bio M/no 2nd home: bio F died or no contact 8,2 (26 986)

3 - b - - Single bio F/no 2nd home: bio M died or no contact 1,1 (3 506)

4 b - - b Single bio M in 1st home/single bio F in 2nd home 3,0 (9 827)

5 - b b - Single bio F in 1st home/single bio M in 2nd home 0,5 (1 477)

6 b - s b Single bio M in 1st home/bio F with new partner in 2nd home (secondary stepmother family)

1,8 (5 770)

7 - b b s Single bio F in 1st home/bio M with new partner in 2nd home (secondary stepfather family)

0,2 (782)

8 b s - - Primary stepfather family/no 2nd home: bio M & new partner in 1st home, bio F father died or no contact to him

3,1 (10 242)

9 s b - - Primary stepmother family/no 2nd home: child lives with bio F & new partner in main home, bio M died or no contact to her

0,4 (1 420)

10 b s - b Primary stepfather family with single bio F in 2nd home 1,3 (4 275)

11 s b b - Primary stepmother family with single bio M in 2nd home 0,2 (677)

12 b s s b Primary stepfather family & secondary stepmother family: child lives with bio M & new partner in 1st home; bio F with new partner in 2nd home

2,3 (7 357)

13 s b b s Primary stepmother family & secondary stepfather family: child lives with bio F & new partner in 1st home; bio M with new partner in 2nd home

0,4 (1 241)

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Table 4: Results of logistic regression on substance use (odds ratios) Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5

Family Type 1* (bM bF | –- –-) Ref. Ref. Ref. Ref. Ref.

Family Type 2 (bM –- | –- –-) 1.06 1.05 1.03 1.00 0.95

Family Type 3 (-- bF | -- --) 1.21** 1.18* 1.17* 1.14 1.10

Family Type 4 (bM -- | –- bF) 1.19*** 1.26*** 1.23*** 1.21*** 1.15***

Family Type 5 (–- bF | bM --) 1.62*** 1.48*** 1.45*** 1.41*** 1.37***

Family Type 6 (bM –- | sM bF) 1.33*** 1.36*** 1.31*** 1.29*** 1.18***

Family Type 7 (-- bF | bM sF) 1.76*** 1.52*** 1.49*** 1.48*** 1.35***

Family Type 8 (bM sF | -- --) 1.33*** 1.34*** 1.33*** 1.29*** 1.21***

Family Type 9 (sM bF | –- --) 1.41** 1.35* 1.34* 1.27 1.23

Family Type 10 (bM sF | –- bF) 1.34*** 1.37*** 1.35*** 1.34*** 1.28***

Family Type 11 (sM bF | bM --) 2.11*** 1.83** 1.82*** 1.77*** 1.69***

Family Type 12 (bM sF | sM bF) 1.59*** 1.66*** 1.65*** 1.65*** 1.52***

Family Type 13 (sM bF | bM sF) 1.80*** 1.60*** 1.59*** 1.61*** 1.56***

Gender of the child: Female 0.66*** 0.66*** 0.62*** 0.59***

Age of the child: 11 years old Ref. Ref. Ref. Ref.

13 years old 2.51*** 2.47*** 2.34*** 2.05***

15 years old 7.80*** 7.61*** 6.95*** 5.72***

Family well off 0.92*** 0.96*** 0.92***

Talk to mother 0.84*** 0.83***

Talk to father 0.87*** 0.84***

Number of friends 1.06***

Contact frequency with friends 1.53***

Talk to friends 1.15***

Pseudo R2 .05 .15 .15 .16 .19

N 257,326

Note: Calculations are based on the 2001/02 and 2005/2006 waves of the HBSC data; controlled for country; significance levels: * (p < .05) ** (p <.01) *** (p <.001)

* The information in parenthesis indicates the parents that live in the main household (left side of the parenthesis) and in the secondary household (right side of the parenthesis). For instance, (bM sF | sM bF) indicates a family where the biological mother (bM) lives in the main household with a new partner, that is, the stepfather (sF) of the focal adolescent, and in the biological father (bF) lives with his new partner, the stepmother (sM), in the secondary household.

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Fig. 1: Family type and substance use