Family Facts: Social Science Research on Family, Society & Religion

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This finding examines the relationship between household structure and children's behavior and academic performance.

Children in one-parent families exhibited more behavioral problems and scored lower on mathematics and reading tests than children in two-parent families. While the differences in behavioral problems and math scores between the two groups remained constant over time, the gap in reading scores widened as the children grew older.

Sample or Data Description
Data for the study came from the linked mother-child file of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), which consisted of 12,686 men and women who were 14–21 in 1979. The analytic sub-sample consisted of sibling pairs who lived either with two parents or with only their mother and who were no more than five years apart in age.

Source
"Sibling Resemblance in Behavioral and Cognitive Outcomes: The Role of Father Presence"
Teachman, Jay
Day, Randal, Paasch, Kathleen; Carver, Karen and Call, Vaughn
Journal of Marriage and the Family Vol. 60, Number . , 1998. Page(s) 835-848.

FindingID: 2631