Growing Up With a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps

by Sarah McLanahan, Gary Sandefur

Nonwhite and white, rich and poor, born to an unwed mother or weathering divorce, over half of all children in the current generation will live in a single-parent family--and these children simply will not fare as well as their peers who live with both parents. This is the clear and urgent message of this powerful book. Based on four national surveys and drawing on more than a decade of research, Growing Up with a Single Parent sharply demonstrates the connection between family structure and a child's prospects for success.

What are the chances that the child of a single parent will graduate from high school, go on to college, find and keep a job? Will she become a teenage mother? Will he be out of school and out of work? These are the questions the authors pursue across the spectrum of race, gender, and class. Children whose parents live apart, the authors find, are twice as likely to drop out of high school as those in two-parent families, one and a half times as likely to be idle in young adulthood, twice as likely to become single parents themselves. This study shows how divorce--particularly an attendant drop in income, parental involvement, and access to community resources--diminishes children's chances for well-being.

The authors provide answers to other practical questions that many single parents may Does the gender of the child or the custodial parent affect these outcomes? Does having a stepparent, a grandmother, or a nonmarital partner in the household help or hurt? Do children who stay in the same community after divorce fare better? Their data reveal that some of the advantages often associated with being white are really a function of family structure, and that some of the advantages associated with having educated parents evaporate when those parents separate.

In a concluding chapter, McLanahan and Sandefur offer clear recommendations for rethinking our current policies. Single parents are here to stay, and their worsening situation is tearing at the fabric of our society. It is imperative, the authors show, that we shift more of the costs of raising children from mothers to fathers and from parents to society at large. Likewise, we must develop universal assistance programs that benefit low-income two-parent families as well as single mothers. Startling in its findings and trenchant in its analysis, Growing Up with a Single Parent will serve to inform both the personal decisions and governmental policies that affect our children's--and our nation's--future.

Genres: Sociology

208 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 1994

Reviews

[Morena Libre · Rating 2 out of 5]

I sought insight into single parenting and all I got were patriarchal family values that uphold two-parent household as an institution. I was raised by a single parent and within a multigenerational home. I have much to benefit from this scenario which was never discussed in the book. I give it two stars only because of the data presented. There is a need to help strengthen community-based learning within particular communities to support them, not to impose a monolithic view of what parenting should look like. This feels much like the science used to support 80’s and 90’s discourse around Christian-like family values.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you ever needed a book to convince you how important and good a two parent marriage is to families, this is definitely it. It is a really great macro-scale view and has judicious blocking of data to maintain its integrity. She places emphasis on early pregnancy, high school dropout rates, and male idleness as metrics.

It shows the benefit of fathers over non-biological secondary fathers, who only seem to hurt. The damage from new "fathers" is terrible and yet understandable. New fathers take a mother's time away from their children because they were seeking the mother first and not the child and despite what they say. I could share seeing this problem on a girl I mentored and her hardships and bitterness of her mother's liaisons. There is a a surprising ineffectiveness of grandmothers substituting for fathers over the long term in their data. They do note a study that has different results.

It talks about the effects of cheating vs abusive relationships the latter being damaging and that it is better to leave for children. Also it notes good child and father interactions and their correlation with child support.

The book notes adverse effects of poverty in single mothers having about 1/2 the damage. Mobility and constant moving encumbering children from going to college something I tried to personally counter when mentoring and it also speaks of the value of good community both in the influence of peers and the lack of being able to effectively exploit communal resources if you are constantly moving.

The benefit of mother and father families is they keep each other in check and balance warmth and firmness.
Single mothers read more to their kids and there's a benefit of educating your kids it has effects but they share less meals. "We have argued that besides economic security, children need parents who are willing to spend time with them reading, helping with homework or just listening to how their day went at school." (95)

Overall the book seemed enjoyable and reads like a grad paper. I can't help of think of the goodness of God's design as a Christian throughout it wasn't a conscious decision so much as one that I drew to a conclusion at the end. The author concludes with an advocacy of reformed child support and other government programs.

[Hayley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm sorry but I did not like this book at all. I didn't feel it made an adequate comparison between two parent families and single parent families. It left a lot to be desired.