"Most of the research linking single-parenthood to children's school performance has been done with single nations," says Dr. Suet-ling Pong, associate professor of education and sociology and demography. "We do not know much about the impact of single parenthood across cultures and countries."
The assumption in the United States is that single parents have lower economic resources than two parent homes and that single parents also have less available time to spend on getting involved with their children's educations. Pong, working with Gillian Hampden-Thompson, graduate student in educational policy studies at Penn State and Dr. Jaap Dronkers, professor of sociology, European University Institute, Firenze Ferrovia, Italy, suggested that children of single-parent households living in countries with stronger family policies would fare better than those in countries with weak family policies because the financial and support benefits of strong family policies would compensate both for money and time.
The researchers looked at 9-year-old third and fourth graders who participated in the Third International Math and Science Study from 25 countries. From the total group, they then chose 10 industrialized countries with similar cultural traditions to the U.S. for comparison. These countries were Canada, Norway, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Austria, Scotland, England and Ireland.
"For both academic subjects – math and science – the largest performance gap between children from single-parent homes and those from two-parent families is found in the U.S.," Pong and Hampden-Thompson told attendees at the American Sociological Association meeting today (Aug 21) in Anaheim. "In other words, the U.S. ranks bottom among the 11 developed countries in terms of the equality of school performance between children from these two types of families."
Data from all 25 countries suggest that two-parent households predominate, but the percentages of two-parent homes are highest in Southeast Asia and lowest in the North America and the Pacific Rim countries of Australia and New Zealand. Over half the countries have negative associations with single-parent families and math and science achievement, but the U.S. and New Zealand show by far the greatest effect. Even after adjusting for family resources and other variables, the U.S. single-parent students are still worse off than Australian, Icelandic and Dutch students in math and than Austrian, Australian, Icelandic, Irish, Dutch and Norwegian students in science.
The researchers found that in the 10 countries compared with the U.S., children of single-parents in countries with strong family policies are less negatively affected in their math and science studies than children in countries with weak policies. Strong family policies include financial benefits, child or family allowances, childcare costs and paid maternity leave.
"The U.S. is clearly behind the other industrialized countries in providing financial and child care assistance to poor and single-parent households," says Pong. "At the same time, the U.S. also ranks last on academic resilience of children from single-parent homes."
Public discussions of the U.S. welfare system, especially by politicians, often suggest that family or welfare policies may reinforce undesirable behaviors and create non-traditional families.
The researchers believe that their data do not lend support to this argument. Iceland, the Netherlands and Australia, for example, have more generous welfare systems than the U.S. and these countries have lower poverty rates. They also have lower teenage fertility rates and a lower percentage of single-parent families than do other countries.
"The U.S., by contrast, has the least generous welfare system, and hardly any family policies, yet its teenage fertility rates are high, and single-parent families are more prevalent than in any of the countries we studied," says the Penn State researcher. "The U.S. also ranks first in terms of poverty rates."