A television blaring at full volume battles against music from the stereo upstairs. Mum and dad squash on the sofa while their children tumble around the cramped living room with no idea when it might be time for bed. Friends and family come and go, snacking on the way in and out.

These are some of the ingredients of "household chaos," a combination of non-specific background factors such as ambient noise, crowding, ‘traffic’, and lack of routine which provides the stage for ordinary family life.  

The version of household chaos varies a great deal from family to family. It is not necessarily linked with socio-economic status; all the same, it does have an impact on children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development. Poor cognitive performance, academic setbacks and behavior issues are all implicated. 

This connection with children’s outcomes has tended to be clouded by concerns that everyday disorder is an indicator of other shortcomings in the home environment. Might chaos simply be a symptom of low parental intelligence, poor housing or stress, for example?

A new study of families with twins led by Kirby Deater-Deckard, a psychologist at Virginia Tech University, has come to the conclusion that household chaos affects children’s IQ and behavior, independent of many of their parents’ traits. 

The team spoke to over 300 Ohio families identified from the Western Reserve Reading Project longitudinal study who had twin children of the same sex. A pair of researchers spent over two hours in their homes annually over three years, observing interactions between family members and administering questionnaires. 

True to expectation, parents in the more chaotic households generally had lower IQs. They provided their children with a poorer environment for learning and showed less warmth and more negativity. They also experienced more stress and lived in worse housing. 

Nevertheless, even after controlling for other aspects of the home environment known to be linked to children’s intelligence and behavior, household chaos still had an impact. 

The effect on children’s IQ and behavior was only small, but as the research reported in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry suggests, a permanent backdrop of disorderliness may aggravate other issues such as poverty, poor parenting and family conflict. 

The researchers also looked at their data longitudinally, assessing the effect of changing levels of household chaos on children’s outcomes. They found that fluctuating chaos was associated with changes in children’s behavior, but not with their IQ. Whether chaos induced poor behavior or poor behavior made it difficult to maintain order in the home was unclear. More detailed research into causes and effects is needed, say the authors. 

Should it prove to be the case that chaos is a cause of worsening behavior, the potential for intervention is clear. Establishing routines in a household is generally simpler than addressing deeper-seated issues such as poverty and housing.

“Those who work with distressed families and children would do well to assist parents with the establishment and maintenance of household routines in quiet and calm settings, through education and instrumental support,” the authors advise.

See: Deater-Deckard K, Mullineaux P Y, Beekman C, Petrill S A, Schatschneider C and Thompson L A (2009), “Conduct problems, IQ, and household chaos: a longitudinal multi-informant study,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 50,10, pp.1301-1308

Matheny A P, Wachs T D, Ludwig J L and Phillips K (2009), “Bringing order out of chaos: psychometric characteristics of confusion, hubbub and order scale,”’ Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 16, pp.429-444