Children in Single-Parent and Two-Parent Families

Children raised by one parent obviously have different life experiences than those raised by a traditional parent pair. Many social scientists have debated whether or not there are any lasting harmful effects from not being brought up in a “traditional” home. However, the negative effects or lack thereof of single parenting have not been proved, for reasons explained below.

The most fundamental problem is the difficulty of gathering reliable empirical evidence. There is no (at least, no ethical) way to devise an experiment: we can’t go back in time, add or subtract a parent, and see if a child would have turned out differently. We also can’t validly compare populations in terms of life outcomes: even if we were, say, to discover that prison populations in the U.S. contain a disproportionate number of children of single parents, that would prove nothing except perhaps a weak correlation—certainly not causation. Any condition—personal wealth, racial makeup, urban vs. suburban/rural, etc.—in a given population that was found to correlate with single parenthood would have to be examined to see if it produced inferior life outcomes for single parents’ children compared to those of two parents. In addition to that difficulty, there would have to be some agreed-upon definition of what constitutes a superior or inferior life outcome! Earning power, education, criminality, etc. are all possible measures, but life outcomes would have to be measured in toto. Even a study that found out that two otherwise identical populations, one single-parent and one two-parent, had different earning power or lower educational levels would prove very little.

Those caveats in mind, a brief review of some of the existing literature follows. Stephen Sugarman pointed out that many women who should by any definition of the term be considered successful were single mothers: Jackie Kennedy, Princess Diana, and Susan Sarandon (14). While implying that these women’s successes produced superior outcomes for their children, he did mention that they were atypical individuals. He also mentioned that single-parent families are “dominated” (14) by single mothers. Hanson and Sporakowski highlighted a difficulty in definitions: “single-parent family” doesn’t necessarily mean that the parenting duties are done solely by one person: many parenting duties are done by a person, such as a separated or divorced spouse, who is not part of the household as defined (3). In an empirical study, Krein and Beller did find a connection between “the reduction in parental resources for human capital investment” (3) and negative educational attainment. While the authors’ methodology may have been irreproachable, it is difficult to find identical populations to compare that differ only in the one characteristic of number of parents in the family; thus, the study can only suggest a correlation, however strong. Manning and Lamb noted worse life outcomes for adolescent children of single-parent families but cautioned that “Most of these differences are explained by socioeconomic circumstances” (3). In other words, those worse outcomes could easily have as their causal factor the socioeconomic conditions attendant with single parenthood more than single parenthood per se. Furthermore, Ryan, in outlining the parenting strategies needed when one of two parents is lost, emphasized that single parents can raise happy, healthy children that experience love and believe in oneself (1).

In this author’s opinion, therefore, a causal link between single parenthood and worse life outcomes for children has not been proved. Two major components of the uncertainty thereof are the problem of definitions and the difficulty of constructing a reliable experiment or study that would show causation.

Works Cited

Hanson, Shirley MH, and Michael J. Sporakowski. "Single parent families." Family Relations. 1986. 3-8.

Krein, Sheila Fitzgerald, and Andrea H. Beller. "Educational attainment of children from single-parent families: Differences by exposure, gender, and race." Demography 25.2 .1988. 221-234.

Manning, Wendy D., and Kathleen A. Lamb. "Adolescent Well‐Being in Cohabiting, Married, and Single‐Parent Families." Journal of Marriage and Family 65.4 (2003): 876-893.

Ryan, Patricia. "Single Parent Families.".1981.

Sugarman, Stephen D. "Single-parent families." All our families: New policies for a new century. 1998. 13-38.