While society has increasingly embraced alternative families like single-parent homes and stepfamilies, a new Institute for Family Studies research brief suggests students who live with their married biological parents perform better in school.
The brief, written by Nicholas Zill, a research psychologist and IFS senior fellow, and Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and a fellow at The Future of Freedom at IFS, was based on data from the 1996 and 2019 National Household Education Surveys.
These surveys were completed by parents whose children were enrolled in elementary and secondary schools nationwide. The 1996 survey covered 17,535 students in kindergarten through the 12th grade, while the 2019 survey covered 15,990 students in the same age range.
In their analysis, Zill and Wilcox looked at the frequency of teacher and school interventions for students from both non-traditional and traditional families. They examined whether or not the child repeated one or more grades, if the child was suspended or expelled, the frequency with which schools contacted parents about their child’s schoolwork and how often parents were contacted about the child’s behavior.
The researchers found that the overall frequency of school interventions fell from 1996 to 2019.
In 1996, parents of 21.9% of students were contacted about their child’s schoolwork. By 2019, this share fell to 17.4%. Over the same period, the percentage of parents contacted about their child’s behavior dropped from 27% in 1996 to 21.6% in 2019. The share of children who repeated a grade fell from 12.9% in 1996 to 6% in 2019. The share of children suspended or expelled also decreased from 18.8% to 9.4%.
Despite the overall decrease in the frequency of school interventions from 1996 to 2019, the odds of school interventions increased for students in non-traditional families on all measures. However, the increased risk was only considered statistically significant for suspensions and parental contact about student behavior.
“It is only for suspension and parental contact about behavioral problems that the increases were statistically significant,” the researchers wrote. “But it is striking that the odds ratio increased for all four outcomes in the last quarter-century. Our results are consistent with the theory that marriage matters more than ever for today’s children.”
Assuming this is true, why do you think it’s so?
A stable, normal home does make a difference……..one with both a mom and dad.
I get that, but why can’t nontraditional homes be stable too? I mean, actually, I know some that are, and their kids do great with school and life in general. So I guess it’s really not about “traditional” vs. “nontraditional” but must be about something else. Why are some families – traditional or nontraditional – not able to do be stable?
This has been true since before the Old Testament.
There is just more structure and normalcy in a home with both parents. That’s the way it was meant to be Boys and girls both need the same and opposite sexes for role models. This is, of course, if the parents aren’t fighting like cats and dogs, then there is no stability. A dysfunctional family is no better than a one parent family. In fact, it’s worse.
A sad but interesting project would be to track all of those under 30 murdered in Chicago and Baltimore since 2010. There will be a mix of all races and sexes, but skewed toward blacks and males. Then look at their family composition before and after they turned 18.
Predict it won’t be a happy data set, and don’t think any of us will be surprised. And how will we change these stats?
Just look around you on any given day. People are more interested in their cellphones then their task at hand. Example: How many people text and drive at the same time? How many people are not aware of their surroundings with their nose buried in their cellphone? I’m not saying cellphones are the “devil”. I am saying that in our society today Family Values and Morality are at the back of the class. Think about it, if you are successful in life who do you give credit to for that? Certainly yourself, but you also had a Mom and Dad pushing you to do the right thing, and do your best. Growing up I was taught there was a process to becoming a parent. You met someone, you fell in love, you got married, you started a family. Now it seems like having a child is a badge of honor to some or a way to get more Goverment Assisstance. I mean come on, multiple children with multiple Fathers, no way that is the right way to do it. Granted, some single parents have it all together, the majority, I think not. That’s my two cents about this.