Posted on 05/08/2004 8:11:02 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Mothers can be a positive influence in their children's lives, whether or not they are single parents. A new multiethnic study at Cornell University has found that being a single parent does not appear to have a negative effect on the behavior or educational performance of a mother's 12- and 13-year-old children.
What mattered most in this study, Cornell researcher Henry Ricciuti says, is a mother's education and ability level and, to a lesser extent, family income and quality of the home environment. He found consistent links between these maternal attributes and a child's school performance and behavior, whether the family was white, black or Hispanic.
"Over all, we find little or no evidence of systematic negative effects of single parenthood on children, regardless of how long they have lived with a single parent during the previous six years," says Ricciuti, who is professor emeritus of human development in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell.
"The findings suggest that in the presence of favorable maternal characteristics, such as education and positive child expectations, along with social resources supportive of parenting, single parenthood in and of itself need not to be a risk factor for a child's performance in mathematics, reading or vocabulary or for behavior problems," Ricciuti says.
The study is a follow-up of children who were assessed when they were 6 and 7 years old. The first study, published in 1999, found that single parenthood did not affect young children's school readiness or social or behavioral problems.
"In this follow-up study, we wanted to assess whether adverse effects of single parenthood emerged as children reached 12 and 13 years of age, and they did not," says Ricciuti, whose latest study is published in the April issue of the Journal of Educational Research (Vol. 97, No. 4).
Ricciuti's sample included almost 1,500 12 and 13-year-old children from white, black and Hispanic families in the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience of Youth. Single motherhood was defined as the mother having no partner or spouse living at home at the time of the survey. The average mother's age at birth of her child was 20 to 21.
Ricciuti cautions that many single mothers lack the social, economic or parenting resources that are known to promote good parenting. He stresses the need for making such parenting resources more readily available to single mothers, thus helping them to provide more supportive home and family environments for their children. "Potential risks to single-parent children could be greatly reduced or eliminated with increased parental access to adequate economic, social, educational and parenting supports," Ricciuti concludes.
Related World Wide Web sites: The following sites provide additional information on this news release. Some might not be part of the Cornell University community, and Cornell has no control over their content or availability.
For more information on Henry Ricciuti, see
http://www.human.cornell.edu/faculty/facultybio.cfm?netid=hnr1&facs=1
For information on the Journal of Educational Research , see
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/00313831.asp
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Ithaca is the City of Evil
I would be willing to bet that further studies would show that single mothers are more likely to be deficient in education, ability level, family income, and quality of the home environment.
In fact, studies have already shown that the majority of children living in poverty are living in single-parent homes.
I also notice that the average parent in this study gave birth at age 20 or 21. Many of the problem students I teach were born to single mothers when the mothers were 14-16 years old.
I tend to agree with you here. Generalizations, of course, but even at age 20 most have finished high school, maybe even some college, thusly are not only more educated, but have better grounding in themselves than those that may have quit school to be a mother at a young age.
Also, those that did finish school of some sort are more likely to be self-sufficient and not depend on government assistance. Those of the younger group are most likely the ones that are exsisting on welfare, have little self-worth, and have begun a vicious cycle of dependence.
There are the pros and cons of single parenting, ones better equipped for the job will obviously do it better. IMHO
Gosh, don't wait too much longer! Financial considerations aren't the only ones....
I had my children in my late 20s - early 30s, so they are almost grown now, but I can't imagine staying up all night with a sick baby or chasing toddlers at my age. (Those two things are also difficult, but obviously not impossible, without another parent as "backup".)
However with current societal standards in place, it's getting tough to acknowledge a child's deficient development since standards have devolved to the point that the likes of "Jack the Ripper" are seen as, in a worst case, borderline damaged.
I still think Barbara Defoe Whitehead's article from the Atlantic Monthly entitled "Dan Quayle was Right" is one of the best studies/articles I've seen on this subject.
Go to most any American city and look at the black community where the "Great Society" has wrought its most harm. Most of these so called families are run by women who have children the communal way, by several wandering fathers. These neighborhood are overrun with out of control young males who have no adult males to teach them responsible behavior. The result is most of America's violence comes from these neighborhoods. White males in the form of cops have to intervene when young blacks cross the line. Imagine if the government stopped subsidizing these neighborhoods and white cops didn't come into the neighborhood any more, the neigbhborood would either self-destruct or get "religion" and change its behavior. By themselves, women can't do it.
You're right --- there are many other factors --- certainly a child growing up with a 14 year old drug user who has a different boyfriend in the house every night is going to have less success than a more educated older woman who gets up and goes to work every day and avoids having a social life and spends some time going to church. I know one woman whose husband was dead set against ever having kids --- even though as a lawyer his income was good --- when she accidently became pregnant he demanded she get an abortion, she refused and he took off and did not pay child support. She was college educated, worked, sent her child to private schools, didn't date or remarry and her daughter is doing very well --- no problems. She knows who her father is, has met him but has no relationship with him and is probably better off not knowing or caring about him.
"Study Finds Single-Parent Children Can Tie Their Shoes As Well As Children In 'Traditional Families'"
An ability to add is not a judge of character.
This "study" was all about agenda.
I think everyone needs to clarify "the absence of a good father", not just any father. As one example above with the man that didn't want any kids. By far boys are much more well adjusted with a single loving mom vs. one that stays with the abusive father. This is one issue that gets left out of the mix. The boys that are subjected to a household containing negative-influencing fathers are way more likely to grow up to be criminals than those where the mother has taken the initiative to do it on her own than subject the children to a "father's" wrath. Likewise, the mothers that take on various different boyfriends in an attempt to find the perfect one. Doesn't do any good there, either.
So if the clarification would be "good father", I would agree, but that doesn't seem to come into the equation in these statements.
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