In 1994, Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur published, Growing Up With A Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. The growth of children living with only their mothers was — then as now — a matter of concern not only for children’s well-being, but for intergenerational mobility. One of their empirical conclusions was this:
For children living with a single parent and no stepparent, income is the single most important factor in accounting for their lower well-being as compared with children living with both parents. It accounts for as much as half of their disadvantage. Low parental involvement, supervision, and aspirations and greater residential mobility account for the rest.
The biggest problem, in other words, is economic. The other factors — involvement, supervision, aspirations, mobility — are related to social class and the time poverty that economically-poor parents experience.
Examples
Here are some bivariate illustrations — that is, head-to-head comparisons…
View original post 557 more words
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments