Intergenerational transmission of placement in out-of-home care: Mediation and interaction by educational attainment

Abstract

Background: Persons with childhood experiences of out-of-home care (OHC) have elevated risks of having their own children taken into societal care. High educational attainment has been linked to favorable long-term outcomes in a host of previous studies on OHC alumni. This could be indicative of resilience, which may also have protective potential against intergenerational continuity of OHC placements.

Objective: The present study examined the processes of mediation and interaction by educational attainment, here conceptualized as having completed upper secondary school, regarding the intergenerational transmission of placement in OHC.

Participants and setting: Longitudinal data came from a Swedish cohort of parents (and their children) born in 1953 (n = 11,338).

Methods: Associations between parental experience of OHC and their children's placement in OHC were analyzed by means of binary logistic regression. Four-way decomposition was used to explore mediation and interaction by parental educational attainment.

Results: The odds of having at least one child being placed in OHC was more than six-fold (OR = 6.67, 95% CI = 5.28; 8.06) in the OHC group compared to majority population peers. Mediation and/or interaction by educational attainment accounted for a substantial proportion of the overall association (53%). Interaction effects appeared to be more important for the outcome than mediation.

Conclusions: Having completed upper secondary school seems to reflect processes of resilience with the potential to break the intergenerational transmission of placement in OHC. These findings suggest that the impact of enhanced educational attainment of OHC populations may have potential of extending into the fate of the next generation.

Keywords: Child Welfare; Education; Foster care; Intergenerational.