Factors behind adolescent well-being.

Americans are preoccupied with family structure and have lost sight of the important role that family relationships play in the well-being of adolescents, according to David Demo, chairman of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Department of Human Development and Family Studies. In the early 1990s, then-Vice Pres. Dan Quayle accused the producers of "Murphy Brown" of setting a bad example with a story line about the lead character having a child out of wedlock. Two-parent families, he argued, were essential to raising a well-adjusted child.

Demo, however, says otherwise. "The family structure is not the most important influence. In my opinion, Dan Quayle was wrong."

Demo and Alan Acock, a professor at Oregon State University, Corvallis, studied a nationally representative sample of 850 adolescents from intact, first-married families; divorced, single-parent families; stepfamilies; and continuously single mothers and their children. They examined the social, psychological, and academic well-being of the adolescents, finding that there are small differences across the four family types, but huge ones within each family type.

Some adolescents in two-parent families have high levels of social, psychological, and academic well-being, though others do not, Demo points out. "They're depressed; they're anxious; they're cruel to other adolescents; they're bullying other adolescents; they're skipping school; they make terrible...