Family Integration and Children's Self-Esteem

In this article, we introduce the concept of family integration to describe the way in which family social organization affects individuals. We hypothesize that when parents are integrated into the family, it benefits their children's development of self. Using panel data, we test three mechanisms of parental family integration-activities within the home, family social networks, and family support networks. The results show that parental family integration early in a child's life has positive effects on the child's self-esteem in early adulthood, 23 years later. These findings provide important new insights into both the social processes affecting self-esteem and the long-term consequences of various dimensions of family integration.