Associations between Gendered Family Structures and Adolescent Stress, Loneliness, and Sadness in South Korea

Abstract

While a large literature connects family environments characterized by access to two married biological parents to better child mental health outcomes, we know less about the mechanisms linking family structure to mental health outcomes for children living in other family structures. While essentialist theory suggests that access to both male and female parents will be an important determinant of child mental health, some research directly comparing single-mother and single-father families found no difference in child outcomes by parent gender, suggesting evidence for more structural theories of gender. However, most of this research uses data from Western countries and seldom extends to examining mental health outcomes. In this paper, we used data from a large, generalizable survey of Korean adolescents (the 2021 Korea Youth Risk Behavior Survey) to compare the mental health of children living in families with two married biological parents, single mothers, and single fathers. Our findings underscore the importance of examining family environments in different contexts.