Single Moms Just As Good

by Leigh Graham

categories: Children, Education, Inequality, Race Ethnicity Class & Gender, Research, Women

Published September 30, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT

In a non-news flash for those of us who have succeeded despite growing up in the dreaded den of broke-a** dysfunction that is the female-headed-household, i.e., with a single mom, a new study of 5,000 families reveals that "Family stability -- regardless of whether it's a one- or two-parent household" is what's key for children to thrive. Yet, the research shows that for black children alone there were clear differences on math and reading test scores for those kids in 2-parent families.  I, like so many activists, scholars and proud kids of single moms, am trying to figure out why this racial difference persists.

My parents divorced when I was 3, and when I was 8, my mom moved us back to MA so I could grow up among my extended family.  There was definite shuttling between my mom's, aunt's and dad's houses, but it was on a schedule, with extensive adult involvement in my life, and lots of cousins and friends in the neighborhood with whom I went to school, played sports, had sleepovers, and hung out at the mall.  My mom was able to buy a small condo in our middle-class suburban town, and then a two-family house with her brother, so I was able to enroll in the same schools as my cousins, where my aunt was involved in the PTA and local sports programs.  When my mom met my stepdad when I was in high school, it was definitely disruptive for me emotionally, but I had a very strong familial safety net - emotionally and logistically - such that we all got through it with little more than a lot of tears and fights and some long-term inconsequential behavior on my part that now just makes me cringe.

There's a couple key points to note in my story and in the research: I'm white and I grew up in a middle-class town.  Acknowledging that using test scores as proxy for childhood success is problematic in itself, I wonder why African-American children don't demonstrate the same measures as other kids.

Given my frame of reference, I look to socio-economic factors first; African-Americans have higher rates of poverty and lower incomes than whites, and are more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods than others, where in some the incarceration rates for black men is off the charts. Also, far fewer African-American women are married than white or Hispanic women, and more are divorced or widowed.  Taking this data together, I see the double whammy of less economic security combined with a suggested higher risk of family disruption - if kids are in the home and of an impressionable age when divorce and/or death is happening.  Hispanic women have high poverty rates and low incomes also, but very little divorce fewer than 3 in 10 have never married.

I loathe the quick leap to "More marriage, please!" political arguments from conservatives who aren't interested in making education and healthcare affordable for families, fighting for equal opportunity, pay and treatment for working women, or sanction through their behavior if not words domestic violence and sexual assault.  As this research indicates, single mothers - or single fathers - are quite capable of raising successful kids, with the enormous caveat that we need to put within reach the financial, educational, political and social resources necessary to make that happen.

(Photo of Heather and her mom at Heather's med school graduation, by Pictures from Heather)