FREE ESSAY ON SOCIOLOGY: FAMILY

SOCIOLOGY: FAMILY

Stable, healthy, two-parent families still appear to do the best job of raising kids. But
when income and job status are taken into account, children raised by single mothers are
nearly as likely to succeed in adulthood, and, interestingly enough, they are even more
likely to succeed than children raised in homes headed by a stepfather or a single
father. 
Kids from male-headed households, single dads, do worse socioeconomically than kids from
mother-headed homes and also two-parent stepfamilies, said USC sociologist Timothy
Biblarz, the study's lead author. 
The study analyzed a survey of 22,761 men ranging in age from 25 to 64. They had been
asked to report the occupation of the head of the household in which they grew up and to
list their own occupations. All occupations were ranked on a 100-point scale, with 100
requiring the most education and returning the most income. 
Men from traditional families averaged 42 on the scale, while men in mother-headed
households averaged 40, no matter whether the mothers had been divorced, widowed or never
married. Children from other types of nontraditional families ranked 35. 
Previous studies from the mid-'60s on have presumed that children did poorly in
single-mother homes because the structure itself was pathological. Even researchers
skeptical about the effects of family structure on children's development have pushed for
policies to bring a man into a divorced home because of his paycheck. 
They assume if there's a divorce, you've got to have policies to encourage remarriage to
get a man back into the household because of added income, Biblarz said. Our findings
challenge that to some extent. 
Most negative effects were due to the greater likelihood that single mothers would be
unemployed, Biblarz said. When you compare two-parent households where fathers were
managerial / professional with kids whose single mothers were managerial / professional,
there's not a lot of difference between the socioeconomic outcomes as they get into
adulthood. 
The researchers suspected a stepparent's extra income may be offset by other issues and
problems that can arise, such as a greater emotional distance or uncertainty and more
conflict. Bringing a man into the home doesn't mean kids will get a high level of
investment from that stepparent, Biblarz said. 
The analysis suggests that, if you want your kid to maintain the same status or class
you're in, having Mom around and plugged into the family is more important than Dad, said
Jeffery Evans, health science administrator for the National Institute of Child Health
and Human Development. Until recently, however, much more was known about mothers than
fathers and the evidence is far from clear yet about which gender parent is more
important, and for what at which age, he said. 
The real question is, to what extent is father involvement good? 
It now appears that fathers contribute by helping kids develop street smarts and that
they take on a more significant role in the later years of a child's development, he
said. It is also clear that after a divorce, joint custody makes a difference in
promoting father involvement--and it is as beneficial to the fathers as it is to the
children. 
After a divorce, he said, You'd hate to see moms cut out, and you'd hate to see dads cut
out. 
The net effect of these studies indicate there's a price to be paid for deleting one of
the traditional pairs, and the old-fashioned notion that it's good to have a mom and a
dad is still a pretty good idea. 
* 
Lynn Smith's column appears on Sundays. Readers may write to her at the Los Angeles
Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053 or via e-mail at
lynn.smith@latimes.com. Please include a telephone number. 
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