Single-parent homes studied Afflictions later in life are seen for children

LONDON - Children growing up in single-parent families are twice as likely as their counterparts to develop serious psychiatric illnesses and addictions later in life, according to an important new study.

Researchers have for years debated whether children from such homes bounce back or whether they are more likely than those whose parents stay together to develop serious emotional problems.

Large scale study, homogeneous ethnic/racial sample, from what is probably the world's most lavish welfare state. Surprising that the Globe ran it.

Now get a load of this factoid. Quoting from the article:

The study used the Swedish national registries, which cover almost the entire population and contain extensive socio-economic and health information.
[...]
About 60,000 were living with their mother and about 5,500 with their father. There were 921,257 living with both parents. The children were aged between 6 and 18 at the start of the study, with half already in their teens.

Let's go straight to the numbers. Of all the children in Sweden aged 6-18, about 921,000 were living with both parents while about 66,000 were living with one parent (the mother about 90% of the time). In other words, at least 93 PERCENT of Swedish children are growing up in two-parent families. That absolutely stuns me, but after several readings of the relevant paragraphs I am left with no other interpretation.

Now, this is believable even if surprising. In Canada where I live, slightly over 80% of children under the age of twelve are living with their two biological parents, but you have to read government statistical reports carefully to figure this out. So, the Swedish figure isn't too good to be true, although it's still impressive, especially as it includes children all the way up to age 18. Don't expect these numbers to appear too often in your local newspaper.

at least 93 PERCENT of Swedish children are growing up in two-parent families.

Does anyone have any idea what the statistic is for American families? I'm sure it's nowhere near as good as for Canadian families much less for the Swedish ones.

I hate to say it but this raises an interesting question: what are the Swedes doing right in their marriages that they're able to stay married when Americans can't? And I was always given to understand that the Scandinavians in general were very casual about marriage and living together. Isn't that true?

I'm not sure that there's an exactly parallel statistic for American children. Presently about one-third of American babies are born to "single mothers" (I use quotation marks because of the oxymoronic nature of the term). This applies to about 25 percent of whites, 40 percent of Hispanics and about 70 percent of blacks. The rates have actually fallen a bit in the last five years, with most of the change within the black population. Some observers attribute the recent slight improvement to the 1996 changes in federal welfare laws.

Regarding the Swedish situation, I believe that even though people there are casual about sexual relations and living together, they are not so casual about responsibility for children. It may not be coincidental that Sweden probably has the lowest rate of drug use in Europe. BTW, I am not any fan of welfare states or "European" ways of doing things. I simply acknowledge that in this case they are getting a couple of important things right.

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