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It pays to be single

It pays to be single single mothers have been stereotyped, politicised and vilified. Some people blame them for a host of ills we find around us. In a society that is rapidly transforming with the steady growth of single parents, such impressions can play havoc with the upbringing of children as also the societal image of such families. In developed societies, the number of single parent families is one in three in the us, while it is one in five in uk. India also appears to be catching up with this trend.

Is the popular belief that children raised by lone parents are not as good as the others true? Especially as the parent needs to single-handedly shoulder the burden of raising the kids besides running the household. But how about their education - do such kids fare as well as the others raised by two parent families - the so-called normal happy family.This is especially important, as besides the time needed to be devoted, there are issues of discipline, trust, comforting and commitment needed to excel in a highly competitive environment in schooling.

Such single parents can relax. A new study from the Cornell University, Ithaca, New York reports that children from single parent homes often get off to a good start in life. And if they don't, it is not due to the parent being alone but because the level of education of the mother is either too low or she is not literate. The comforting news is that, by itself, single parenthood seems to have no effect on how a child does in school. Equally important is the fact that single mothers did not report any more behavioural problems in their youngsters than mothers living with a partner did. (Journal of Family Psychology , Vol 13, No 3).

In this us -based multi-ethnic study, a team of researchers led by Henry Ricciuti, a developmental psychologist, tested 1,700, six and seven year-olds in vocabulary, reading, mathematics and behavioural problems. They then correlated those scores with several characteristics, including family structure, family income and parents' educational level and general abilities as measured by a standardised test. Analysis showed no relationship between children's scores and whether they came from a single parent or a two parent family. The parent's ability and educational background were the most reliable predictors of scores, and single and two parent families did not significantly differ in their levels of ability and education, despite the generally lower incomes of one parent families.

Ricciuti admits that most single parents do not come by the social and economic resources needed for good parenting as readily as two parent families do, and that adverse effects of growing up in a single parent family may show up later in a child's life. But he proposes that a crucial time to offer support to single parents is when their children are still young and seem to be relatively unaffected by living with just one parent. When the research team looked at the single parent families more closely, they noticed that essentially two factors predicted how well the youngsters did at school: the education of the mothers and their 'general ability' based on a standard measure of problem-solving skills.

The mothers analysed in the study were nearly uniform - they were in the early twenties and had given birth when they were about 20 years old. The single parent families, however, had one important difference as compared to the two parents ones. Over half of the single mothers were below poverty line - twice the rate of two-parent families. On this count alone this study is very significant. Several studies have so far concluded that kids from poorer families do worse on their educational attainments. What is more, many of the behavioural problems were attributed to their economic status and absence of a second parent.

The Cornell study has won applause from many developmental psychologists. Marsha Weinraub from the Temple University, Philadelphia, usa , lauds the study as it breaks many myths surrounding single mother families. "They're important because they fly in the face of our stereotypes and easy explanations," she says. Weinraub has done smaller studies and had obtained similar results. "At least when they enter school, these kids don't seem to be different from children in two parent families."

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