When Single Parents Marry: Do Children Benefit Academically?

• Published date: 01 October 2021
• Author: Matthew T. Usevitch,Mikaela J. Dufur
• Date: 01 October 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12535

M T. U The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Baylor

College of Medicine

M J. D Brigham Young University

When Single Parents Marry: Do Children Benet

Academically?

Objective: The objective of this research is to

determine whether children born to single par-

ents benet academically if their parents marry.

Background: Children born to single parents

have on average worse educational outcomes

than peers who live with married parents, but

transitions to a married parent family are not

well understood.

Method: We use the U.S. Early Childhood Lon-

gitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort of 1998

to create two groups of children born to sin-

gle parents: children who remain in a stable

single-parent family (n=220) and children

whose single parent marries (n=392). Weexam-

ine differences in readingand math test scores in

context of potential confounding variables.

Results: Initial ndings suggest that children

born to single parents whose parents marry

perform better than do their peers in stable

single-parent families, but this effect disappears

when controls for nancial and human capital,

race, and stress are included.

Conclusion: Financial and human capital

resources explain the perceived benet of par-

ent marriage, suggesting benets of marriage

accrue due to selectivity factors among parents

Ofce of Student Affairs, Baylor College of

Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX 77030

(matthew.usevitch@bcm.edu).

Key Words: academic achievement, family structure, mar-

riage, single parents, stepparents.

more likely to marry. Other factors, such as

stress, race, and number of siblings, play a role.

Implications: Determining the nature of the link

between parental marriage and educational out-

comes has important policy implications as to

whether marriage should be promotedas an edu-

cational benet to children.

A substantial body of research suggests that chil-

dren living in single-parent families tend to have

poorer educational outcomes on average than

children living in married-parent families (Lee &

McLanahan, 2015). A hypothesis that some have

proposed on the basis of these ndings is that

by marrying, a single parent would benet chil-

dren’s academic outcomes. However, describing

the associations between children’s educational

outcomes and a single parents’ marriage may be

more complex (Amato et al., 2015).

Two theories commonly used to give con-

text to family structure discussions—resource

and instability–stress models—provide differing

explanations of how a single parent’s marriage

effects children’s academic outcomes. In this

study, we use the Early Childhood Longitudinal

Study Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) of 1998

to examine the effect of experiencing a parental

marriage on childhood educational outcomes

and to explore this change from the perspec-

tive of a resource model or an instability–stress

model to determine which model is more use-

ful for explaining child outcomes after parental

marriage. We also examine whether the entering

1206 Family Relations 70 (October 2021): 1206–1221

DOI:10.1111/fare.12535

Child Benet After Single Parents Marry 1207

parents’ relationship to the child (i.e., whether

biological parent or stepparent) is differently

associated with children’s academic outcomes.

F S  E

O

Much of the literature on family structure effects

has found that children living with two mar-

ried parents perform better on academic assess-

ments and achievement outcomes than their

peers from other family structures. This liter-

ature shows that children from married fam-

ilies were less likely to disengage from and

drop out of school than were children from

single or stepparent families (Sweeney, 2010).

Further, children from single-parent families

tended to have poorer aggregate outcomes in

both school engagement and achievement com-

pared with children in stepparent families. Liv-

ing in a single-parent family was negatively

associated with educational attainment, and that

association was stronger as time spent living in a

single-parent family increased (Lee & McLana-

han, 2015). Thus, this research suggests that liv-

ing with stepparents was associated with greater

academic growth than was living with a sin-

gle parent, indicating children experienced aca-

demic benets even when one of the parents

was not the child’s biological parent (Sun &

Li, 2011). These potential benets of parental

marriage were found even when children with

married parents were compared with stable,

single-parent families who had not experienced

transitions (Sun & Li, 2011). Similar results

have been documented on a macro scale, where

schools with a greater percentage of children

from single-parent families had poorer aggregate

educational performances (de Lange et al., 2014;

Pong, 1998).

Associations between family structures or

transitions and educational outcomes are partic-

ularly important to understand given the salience

of educational credentials and association with

later life opportunities. Because educational suc-

cess is strongly associated with later occupa-

tional status and autonomy, economic security,

and even family formation (Heard, 2007), pro-

ponents of marriage promotion programs and

policies argue that such interventions could be

used to create opportunities for children that

have impact across the life course (Hawkins

et al., 2013).

F S   R

M

Scholars have proposed competing explana-

tions for associations between family structure

and academic outcomes. Research that used

a resource model described how each parent

in a family provided resources that benet

the child, including income, supplies, human

capital, time, and more. Children who lived

in two-parent families, thus, were seen as

having an advantage because they likely had

access to more resources than did children in

single-parent families (Downey, 1995; Schlee

et al., 2009).

These patterns are documented for both phys-

ical and social resources. One example of physi-

cal resources is income. Positive effects of fam-

ily income on children’s academic performance

have been well established (Sirin, 2005). Simi-

larly, social resources, such as connections that

provide information or emotional support, also

are connected with educational outcomes. An

example of these connections is how social cap-

ital in the form of involved parenting has been

linked to positive school performance (Dufur

et al., 2016; Park et al., 2017). With regard to

children who experienced the marriage of their

single parent, a logical conclusion connecting

both research on resources in education and

resources in families would be that these chil-

dren benet in relation to academic achievement

because the second parent would bring more

resources to the family (Wagmiller et al., 2010).

Research connecting single mothers’ economic

disadvantage to their children’s lower average

outcomes, especially for academics, also pro-

vided compelling support for this model (Amato

et al., 2015).

A E

The resource model is limited, however, by

the types of variables it can describe. Resource

models are often decient in examining stress.

For example, stressful events, such as tran-

sitioning to middle school, which are transi-

tions related to normal life course events rather

than being related to a change in resources,

are a detriment to students’ performance (Gold-

stein et al., 2015). Adding a parent through

single-parent marriage might induce a similar

kind of stress.

An instability–stress model accounts for

specic transitions and stressors that can alter