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Single-parent household children's educational achievement[edit]

In this section we will use data from U.S. Census bureau and the National Assessment of Educational Progress to evaluate how the increase in single-parent households may have affected children's educational achievements. The percentage of children living with single parents increased substantially in the United States during the second half of the 20th century. According to Child Trends, 2013 only 9% of children lived with single parents in the 1960s—a figure that increased to 28% in 2012. The main cause of single parent families are high rates of divorce and non-marital childbearing. According to Blankenhorn 1995, Fagan 1999, Pearlstein 2011, Popenoe 2009 and Whitehead 1997 researches, single parent family is strongly correlated with school failure and problems of delinquency, drug use, teenage pregnancies, poverty, and welfare dependency in American society. Using multilevel modeling, Pong 1997 and Pong 1998 high proportions of children from single parent families perform very poorly on math and reading achievement tests in schools.

Fatherless effects on children's educational achievement

A father's presence for a child/s full social and cognitive development is important; therefore, being fatherless is not beneficial for a child.

The article by Marybeth Shinn, reveals that fatherless families are known to have lower cognitive test scores. One of the most unique findings was that fatherless children would score low on numerical analysis questions and high on verbal questions, while children with a fathers presence had equal scores for both sections of the aptitude tests. This observation concludes that a father’s impact is different than a mother’s. A father brings different values and skills into a child’s life and without their impact a child could have lower developmental areas of performance. Any reduction of interaction with parents has the ability to decrease a children’s cognitive development.

Shinn's article reveals American and British statistical data that supports her claims that children's education is negatively affected by not having a father-figure in the household.

American

Study by: Blanchard and Biller

Who: Lower and middle class boys

Age: 3rd grade

Family life of the different groups:

1. Father absent at young age
2. Father absent at older age
3. Father present

Results: All of the 10 achievement scales had higher scores by all the participants with a father present. There wasn’t a unique difference in the scores when comparing them between the two different fatherless groups; therefore, revealing that there is a significant difference in the cognitive development of children who grow up with or without a father.

Study by: Jaffe

Who: Detroit students

Age: 8th grade

Race: Black

Family life of the different groups

1. Father present and helps with financial expenses
2. Father absent and family must deal with financial expenses on their own

Results: Students with a father succeeded more in school.

This further exemplifies the importance of a father being present for the cognitive development of the child.

British Children

Study by: Douglas, Ross, and Simpson

Who: British children

Age: 8,11, and 15

How many: 3,526

Family life of the different groups:

1. 165 children are fatherless due to death
2. 118 children are fatherless due to the father's significant absence

Results: The scores of children that correlated with the fathers being absent (but not dead) dropped .16 SD units for girls and .14 units for boys around 7th grade to sophomore year of high school. The children that had a father die were not affected if the father did not die from an illness. This shows that father-absentness had an effect on the children.

The role of Income and Poverty on educational achievement

However, not all of the cognitive withdrawal is directly correlated to the fathers lack of interactions. Other data from this article shows that the environmental changes such as the role of anxiety and financial problems also increases the lower cognitive levels of children. It is said that fatherless households are the main factor contributing to poverty. The chance of fatherless children living in poverty is much more likely to occur than children who live in a full parent household. These low income levels impact the education of children in these single-household families. Most families that have a low-income from a single parent has a higher risk of their children going to less resourceful schools, lower caliber schools, schools that contain lower motivated children, and schools that have less opportunities for after-school activities. All of these factors can correlate to a lesser chance of a college education and a lower chance for a positively impactful external society. These situations affect the child in the present situation, but also impact their future life on their own.

United States Single mothers

In the United States, 83% of single parents are mothers. Among this percentage of single mothers: 45% of them are currently divorced or separated, 1.7% are widowed, 34% of single mothers never have been married. Although decades ago, having a child outside of marriage and/or being a single mother was not prominent. Census information from 1960 tells us that in that year, only nine percent of children lived in single parent families. In the time span between 1960 and 1990, there were significant findings that revealed a decreasing rate of fathers in a family home. In-between this time period, the span of three decades, the rate that children lived without a father drastically increased by more than 50%. This increasing rate of a decreased father-presence in the household tremendously impacted children and would continue to negatively impact their lives if the rate continued to decline. This trend, beginning in the 1960s, was not expected. Today four out of every ten children are born to an unwed mother.

Research on the effects of being fatherless

Without a father in a child’s life, they go through many developmental changes that can negatively effect their life. Culture and biology are two driving factors that create a father’s impact to be different than a mother’s impact. In the American culture, fathers are more involved in vigorous activities that help contribute to a child's self-independence. The decision-making in children is found to be altered from the lack of these father-child interactions. Ronald J. Angel and Jacqueline L. Angel, sociologists from the University of Texas, have shown that fatherlessness is mentally threatening to children. They have shown through studies that a child’s social development is hindered without the physical interactions that a father gives a child. These impaired social developments have the ability to lead children to be more likely to drop out of education and have children as teenagers. A father has a very important role in how their children distinguish what is important and how they interact with their peers.

Single Mother Households in Norway

Being a single mother in Norway can occur for many reasons; however, one of the most common reasons comes from losing a father from military deployment.

The study by David B. Lynn and William L. Sawrey identifies how Norwegian boys and girls are affected by their fathers absence during wartime. They focus specifically on father's who were absent from sailing in the war.

They took 80 Norwegian families from a sailor district that contained only a mother and her children. Half of the 80 mother-child pairs had father-present families and the other 40 had father-absent families. The father-absent group had to have an absent-father for longer than 8 months at a time. All of the participants went through interviews that asked about the family dynamic, including being asked to recreate a drawing of their household.

Findings in the Study:

1. Boys without a father were more immature.
2. Boys without a father spent most of their developing lives searching for a father-figure.
3. Boys without a father made unintelligent decisions about who they would trust as their peers. The boys that were fatherless were more affected by this peer choice than the females.
4. Boys without a father searched for masculinity.
5. When the female sex doesn’t have a male father figure they still advance to maturity because they relied more on the mother of the family.

These results reflect a more social evaluation of Norwegian boys and girls due to fatherlessness. It underlines the fact that male children who do not have a father lack identification with themselves. They tend to do more searching for identification of masculinity than actually creating their own personal achievements. They grow up in confusion and must search on their own to find their niche.

As for fatherless Norwegian girls, they do less searching for their selves due to their same sex parent still being in the household. They are highly attached to mothers because they are feared for their absence; however, their developments aren’t as altered because their identity isn’t being questioned.

Fatherhood bonding

Infants can become attached to their fathers. Mother-infant bonding has been a common focus in household research; however, more studies in the United States and Europe have been focused on the details of father-children attachments. In the book, Gender in cross-cultural perspective, Barry S. Hewlett showed that infants do create bonds with their fathers. She explained how recently born children bond with their fathers at similar ages during development. Researchers question how father-infant bonding occurs because fatherood has many different roles in various cultures. Questions arise about how fathers have the ability to bond with children if they do not have the same kind of role that mothers do in the baby’s development.

The father of a child can develop the bond during the pregnancy of his partner, feeling attachment to the developing child. Research indicates that this may have some biological basis. Statistics show that fathers' levels of testosterone tend to decline several months before the birth of the child. Since high testosterone levels seem to encourage more aggressive behaviour, low levels may enhance the ability to develop a new relationship bond (i.e. with the child).

Fathers also have an important bonding role after the child is born. Fathers find many ways to strengthen the father-child bond with their children, such as soothing, consoling, feeding (expressed breast milk, infant formula, or baby food), changing diapers, bathing, dressing, playing, and cuddling. Carrying the infant in a sling or backpack or pushing them in a baby transport can build the bond, as can participating in the baby's bedtime routine. These are broad activities that fathers share to develop their father-infant bond. Fathers also have specific bonding roles that develop from their different cultures and societies.

American/European Father-Infant Bonding 

European and American fathers are seen to have more of an aggressive and vigorous relationship with their child. This doesn’t mean harmful; however, it means there is physical and highly stimulating interaction between the father and child. This gave the child emotions that reflected an exhilarating and fun-loving experience that allowed them to create a father-infant bond different than a mother-infant bond. It is shown that an infant's facial expressions and emotions towards their father is significantly different than their emotions towards their mothers, even at a very young age This shows that a father being present gives the child a variety in the way they interact with different people. The rough housing doesn’t just have importance towards the bonds the children make with the father, but also helps to teach them life lessons. Rough play helps to teach self control, helps children understand appropriate social roles, helps them realize when certain emotions should be used, and helps them understand others emotions and facial expressions. This form of bonding between the father and infant creates a bond that is unique. It allows the child to learn valuable lessons, while also being in an environment that enhances all of their senses and allows them to intensify their relationship with their father.

Aka Father-Infant Bonding

The Aka’s are a hunter gatherer society in the southern Central African Republic and northern Congo-Brazzaville. The way they form their father-infant bond is very different than that of the Europeans and Americans. While Europeans and Americans focus on rough playing, the Aka’s do not allow this high stimulating environment to develop with their children. Aka fathers are always around their infants when they are born. They always sleep with their infants and are always in close proximity of them for more than half a day. Overall, Aka fathers are more relaxed and intimate during fatherhood than those in the United States.

The four factors that are key for Aka father-infant bonding:

1.        Understanding the Infant

Aka fathers are around the child more than most cultures. They hold the child often; therefore, they learn important signs the child shows that most fathers would not. For example, they understand signs that show when the child is hungry or sick.

2.        Understanding Fatherhood Practices

Fathers understand when to be more playful, when to be more physical, how to correctly hold a child, and how to calm them down. They understand all of the interactions that are needed to take good care of a child.

3.        Connecting with the Infant

The father understands how to make a bond with the infant. They know if the infant needs more rough play or soothing. They play large roles in caretaking, so they understand the infants needs at another level.

4.        Representing the culture and fatherhood goals

The Aka’s are hunter-gatherers; therefore, animal hunting is not a sufficient or main way that they obtain food. This means that the males do not play a main role in going out and hunting for the tribe or their own families. This allows the father to be able to spend more time with the infant and really create a bond with them. This makes a father’s role in child upbringing an important aspect of the Aka culture.

The Aka foragers in the Central African Republic do not hunt with bows. Their main source of hunting is through nets. In Hillary N. Fouts cross-cultural research, she had statistical data that supported the claim that different roles in foraging populations had an impact on the amount of time a father spent with their children. Fouts took different foraging populations in Africa and compared their type of hunting and the percentage of time these fathers were seen holding their child. Her first foraging group was the Aka population. They were a net hunting group that held their children aged 1-4 months 22% of the day, held their children 8-12 months 11.2% of the day, and held their children 13-18 months 14.3% of the day. The other net hunting population was the Bofi. They had fathers hold babies aged from 36-47 and 48-59 months for 5.4% of the day.

In contrast, the foraging groups that participated in bow hunting had fathers hold babies for significantly less time. The Hadza foraging population had fathers hold babies from the ages 0-9 months for only 2.5% of the day. The other bow hunting foragers, the !Kung, had fathers hold babies from 0-6 months for 1.9% of the day and babies 6-24 months 4.0% of the day.

This statistical data shows that different roles in a society influences how much time the father spends holding and interacting with his children. This is important because it shows that each culture is different regarding father upbringings and father bonding.