adolescent risk behaviors. Fourth, family structure was measured at one point in time and thus does not capture family instability. Although adolescents who reside with two biological parents presumably have been in this same family form throughout their lives, nearly all adolescents in other family forms have experienced family transitions, which are often negatively associated with well-being (DeLeire & Kalil, 2002). Indeed, children in cohabiting stepfamilies experience greater family instability, on average, than children in two biological married parent families, married stepfamilies, or single-mother families (Brown, 2006; Raley & Wildsmith, 2004). Hence, it is likely that the family structure variation in risk behaviors found here partially reflects underlying patterns of family instability (i.e., controls for prior family transitions would reduce the magnitudes of the family structure coefficients), but unfortunately we cannot test this assertion.
