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The School Performance of Children From Single-Mother and Single-Father Families:

Economic or Interpersonal Deprivation?

Wichita State University

Very little is known about the academic performance of children from single-father families. How do they achieve in school relative to children from single-mother and two-parent families? Do the same processes posited to explain the school performance of children from single-mother households account for the educational performance of children in single-father homes? These questions are addressed using a nationally representative sample of 8th graders from the National Longitudinal Study of 1988. Eight different educational outcomes are compared for 409 children in single-father, 3,483 in single-mother, and 14,269 children in biological two-parent families. Children from single-father and single-mother families perform roughly the same in school, but both are outperformed by children from two-parent families. The intervening processes explaining school performance for children from single-father and single-mother families are somewhat different, however. Economic deprivation, or the lack of economic resources, is more useful for understanding the school difficulties of children from single-mother families, whereas interpersonal deprivation, or the lack of interpersonal parental resources, provide a more accurate description for why children from single-father families do poorly in school.

Journal of Family Issues, Vol. 15, No. 1, 129-147 (1994)
DOI: 10.1177/019251394015001006


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