Children in single-mother families typically have poorer outcomes, across a range of measures, than those living with both parents.
However, many studies have concluded that, once factors such as low income and poor maternal mental health are accounted for, the impact of family structure on cognitive outcomes is small (see Chapple,
2009, for a review). Yet it is well known that children who grow up in single-mother families have different socioeconomic circumstances to those living with both parents and this is, at least in part, because they live with a single mother:
single motherhood is linked to reduced income, a high risk of poverty, worse maternal mental health, poor parenting practices, and a range of other disruptions, such as home and school moves and multiple family transitions (Hill, Yeung, & Duncan,
2001; McLanahan,
2009). As a result, regression-based models comparing children in single and two-parent families which condition on contemporary socioeconomic and psychological characteristics are likely to underestimate the impact of single motherhood on their outcomes. Although prior studies have examined the role that a range of mechanisms play in mediating the relationship between family structure and child outcomes (e.g., Carlson & Corcoran,
2001), they have not previously quantified the magnitude of these relationships. As a result, the indirect effect that single motherhood has on child outcomes remains poorly understood. In this article, using data from three British birth cohorts and structural equation models, we address this gap in the literature. We estimate both the direct and indirect effect of single motherhood on children’s cognitive attainment and assess the relative importance of different mechanisms, including differences, and changes, in economic and parental resources, in driving attainment gaps.
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