Mum, dad and the kids? Not so much . . .

The way we look at the “picket fence” family life that underpins New Zealand’s social policies does not match the reality of many young people’s lives, new research shows.

Only a quarter of teenagers in an internationally respected study were living with their biological parents at age 15.

The University of Otago research is based on life histories of 209 15-year-olds taken between 2007 and 2012 who are children of members of the Dunedin Study.

The research found many young people had complex and dynamic whanau/family arrangements. The researchers found that most of the teenagers had experienced multiple changes in household composition, and just 26 per cent were living with both their biological parents at 15.

Participants experienced up to eight changes in care arrangements by that age. Fewer than 7 per cent had lived their whole lives in households made up of only their mother, father and siblings.

More than half the children, 63 per cent, had been cared for by two parents at birth. But by age 15, 59 per cent were either in sole parent or some form of multiple-resident care, including shared arrangements bet- ween parents in different households.

Next Generation Study manager Judith Sligo believed that support for young people and their families would be improved if there was more awareness that “there’s a big diversity in family arrangements”. It was sometimes assumed that only “certain types of people” had these “dynamic family arrangements”, but they were much more widespread, she said.

The level of complexity and change in family life shown by this research contrasted with the “simpler and more static view of household and care arrangements” that underpinned policy-making involving young people.

The Working for Families programme required the principal child carer to notify Work and Income New Zealand whenever they had a change in circumstances, she says.

The Otago findings suggested this was was “unrealistic and likely to cause many children to be excluded from this policy”. New Zealand’s social policies should be developed and delivered with the child at the centre, acknowledging cultural context and the dynamic nature of young people’s living and care arrangements, she said.

The research findings have been published in Kotuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences.