In his 1965 report on the black family, Daniel Patrick Moynihan highlighted the rising fraction of black children growing up in households headed by unmarried mothers. He attributed the increase largely to the precarious economic position of black men, many of whom were no longer able to play their traditional role as their family's primary…

Little research has considered the nature of parent-child relationships in stable single-parent households that have not undergone transitions such as divorce and repartnering. This study explored how single mothers and their children negotiated their relationships in a context where the mother has been parenting alone continuously from early in…

Living in a single-parent family is negatively related with children's educational performance compared to living with 2 biological parents. In this article, we aim to find out to what extent the context of the school's share of single-parent families affects this negative relationship. We use pooled data from the Organisation for Economic…

This paper explores the importance of the home and school environments in explaining the gender gap in disruptive behavior. We document large differences in the gender gap across key features of the home environment--boys do especially poorly in broken families. In contrast, we find little impact of the early school environment on non-cognitive…

Single mothers of adolescents with emotional disabilities (ED) have a unique and sometimes difficult childrearing task. Researchers in some studies concluded that these children have a significantly higher incidence of school aggression than their peers from two-parent families. A substantive body of research explores parenting in families of…

This article examines the role of the African American uncle as a vital yet overlooked form of social support and social capital in the lives of adolescent African American male sons living in single-female-headed households. Research rarely examines the affective roles and functions of men in Black families; moreover, poor urban Black male youth…

We examine the roles of neighborhood characteristics in the development of the aggressive behavior of 1,409 urban boys and girls between the first and seventh grades. The multilevel, longitudinal growth analyses find strong neighborhood effects in all models, while controlling for individual-level variables. Results indicated that the effects of…

Describes the plight of divorced mothers. (IRT)

This paper estimates the number of American children in grades K-12 who live without their biological fathers and examines the association of absent-father status with children's well-being. The 2003 Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey of the National Household Education Surveys Program (n = 12,426) shows that 28% percent of White…

Examines why older, single women become mothers and how their premotherhood motivation and experience compare to those of demographically-similar married mothers. The composite picture that emerged from the single mothers was one of ambivalence toward marriage: a combination of an idealized image of marriage and an unwillingness to accept…

A feminist critique reveals varying degrees of androcentric and ethnocentric bias in the sparse nursing literature related to single-parent families. A sound research agenda that is for women and their children is needed. (Author/JOW)

The mother of two boys, one with residual cerebral palsy and one nondisabled, discusses her single parent experiences. She outlines her initial refusal to accept help from family and friends, her original role as a "martyr-Mom," and the difficulties in making decisions alone and balancing attention between disabled and nondisabled siblings. (JDD)

In recent years there has been a rapid growth in the number of households headed by women and in the proportion of these households receiving public assistance. This paper presents a model to test the hypothesis that changes in the public assistance system contributed to the increase in these households. Current Population Survey data on the…

In view of the increasing number of single women who adopt children, the social work profession has an obligation to learn more about this group of mothers. This article is based on a research study to identify characteristics of single adoptive mothers and their children and to learn what community supports the mothers believe would be helpful.…