Single mum or single dad? The effects of parent residency arrangements on the development of primary school-aged children

Single-parent children of both sexes resident with parents (for a minimum of one year) of both sexes, were matched and compared with children from two-parent families. The children were individually matched on criteria believed to be crucial for any meaningful comparison of the children’s performance: age, sex, school year and school cohort

The study generated data about the children’s competence and self-esteem from the children themselves. Data measuring the children’s competence and self-esteem were gathered on a range of dependent measures including the Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC), developed to measure perceived competence in cognitive, social, athletic, physical and behavioural domains as well as general self-worth, the Social Support Scale for Children, was selected to assess children’s perceived level of support from significant others, the Wide Range Achievement Test (Revised), selected to provide a quick measure of the academic achievement of the children in the three basic academic skills areas of reading, mathematics and spelling , and the Everyday Household Responsibilities Life Skills Inventory (EHRLSI), designed to examine the range of everyday household responsibilities and life skills performed by Australian children.

In the present study, comparisons were made between the performance of the single and two-parent children and the performance of the children in the different single-parent residential groups on these four measures using a series of t-tests and ANOVAS.

Findings

The performance of the single-parent children was evaluated in two ways. First, the single-parent children were compared to their two-parent matched peers in terms of their performance on the dependent measures. This provided a comparison of how they were going against the "benchmark" or "norm" of children growing up with the perceived benefits of two parents. Second, single-parent children in the four parent-residency groups were compared with one another in terms of their performance across the dependent measures thus allowing a more detailed examination of each of the residential groups. In combination these two types of comparison provided important data contributing to the "real test of the same-gender hypothesis".

1. Comparison with two-parent peers

The data revealed that girls in the mother-residency group show significant differences in their performance when compared with their matches in two specific domains (physical, behavioural) of the SPPC, two sub-scales (parent, teacher) of the SSSC, and one sub-scale (reading) of the WRAT-R1. With the exception of the reading score, all other differences indicate significantly lower mean scores for the single-parent girls than their two-parent matches.

Girls in the father-residency group show no significant differences in their performance with their matches in either the SPPC or the SSSC. Their spelling and mathematics scores on the WRAT-R1 indicate a significantly lower level of performance than that of their matches.

Boys in the mother-residency group show no significant differences from their two-parent matches on any of the measures. On the other-hand, boys in the father-residency group show significant differences in three specific domains (scholastic, social, behavioural) on the SPPC and, reading and spelling on the WRAT-R1 in comparison to their two-parent matches.

There were no significant differences identified between single and two-parent children on the EHRLSI in either the number or frequency of skills performed as measured by the instrument and reported by the children.

It is worth noting that even where there were statistically significant differences between the single and two-parent children indicating that the single-parent children were not performing as well as their two-parent peers, examination of mean scores revealed that overall, the single-parent children’s scores on the dependent measures were still in the average to above-average range. In one instance, the significant differences between the single and two-parent children occurred where the single-parent children were outperforming their two-parent matches. Overall, these results suggest that these single-parent children are not at risk in terms of their development of competence or their self-esteem as measured by these instruments.

2. Comparison of the four residential groups to one another