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CIAO DATE: 12/03
The Fathers Are Still Missing
On The Issues
December 2001
Single parenthood is declining but is being replaced by cohabitation, and the consequences are no better for children. The results may even be worse.
"Honey, I'm Home" was the cheery title of the Urban Institute Study. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities titled its study with the stodgier "Declining Share of Children Lived with Single Mothers in the Late 1990s." Business Week and the New York Times weighed in with news stories reporting their results. Columnist Mickey Kaus groused that this is the "good big news" that nobody's reporting: Single parenthood is declining, with welfare reform probably playing a significant role in the shift.
The numbers in the two studies are straightforward and accurate, and they amount to helpful testimony from hostile witnesses—the Urban Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities were not big fans of the Welfare Reform Act. The problem is that the numbers are not good news for the socialization of the next generation, and are as likely to be bad news.
It comes down to this, agreed upon by both studies: In the latter half of the 1990s, the proportion of children living with a single mother declined significantly, but the proportion of children living with married parents remained statistically flat. The main explanation for this apparently paradoxical finding is that cohabitation increased, with the increase concentrated among low-income families.
The Problem with Cohabitation
Match this finding against what we know about family structure and the socialization of children. Over the past dozen years, a consensus among social scientists, crossing ideological lines, now agrees that family structure affects outcomes for children in a statistically consistent manner, even after controlling for the usual suspects of income and race. The best results, whether the measure is academic performance, drug use, criminality, income as adults, or just about anything else, are produced by married biological parents. The next best results are produced by divorced single mothers and remarried mothers. There isn't much difference between the two—statistically, stepfathers don't seem to help much.
The worst results are produced by never-married women. "Never-married women" in these studies has been defined to include cohabiting women. We have no evidence that children are socialized better by cohabitation than by a woman living alone—and no wonder: Cohabitation in the United States bears no recognizable resemblance to marriage. Only a sixth of cohabiting relationships last even as long as three years.
A child who has a father for a year or two in infancy has not been socialized by a responsible adult male. As the child grows older, the lesson learned about Daddy is not simply that he was never present but that Daddy knew about the child, saw the child, played with the child—and didn't care enough to stay.
We have no evidence yet that cohabitation is worse for children than no relationship at all, but it is not an implausible hypothesis. So far I've been talking about cohabitation with the biological father. For the substantial proportion of cohabitations that represent boyfriends, often serial boyfriends, cohabitation is almost certainly worse than lone motherhood. The evidence regarding child abuse by boyfriends is especially alarming.
So even if the increases in cohabitation merely continue to replace lone motherhood, the net effect is probably worse than a wash. But the real worry is that we are looking at the development of a new social norm in lower-income America, among blacks and whites alike, that will begin to displace marriage as well.
Cautious Hopefulness
The best evidence of a bright spot is that, from 1995 to 2000, the proportion of black children living with married parents increased from 35 percent to 39 percent. Any change of this sort is welcome. But that increase in married parents must first be broken into children living with biological married parents and children living with a stepfather. From 1995 to 2000, we know that the percentage of black children born to single women dropped from 69.9 percent to 68.5 percent. This is probably a fair representation of the magnitude of increase in black children living with biological married parents—a whole lot better than things continuing to get worse, but a minor change in the continuing social catastrophe of the black family.
And, enthusiastic as I am about welfare reform, there is reason to temper one's confidence in attributing this change to policy. When the percentage of children born to single women hits 70 percent out of a possible 100, as it did for blacks in 1994, it is much easier for that percentage to decline a tick than to increase a tick.
In reacting to the news about changes in American family structure, the right mix seems to be cautious hopefulness about marriage among blacks and concern about the increase in cohabiting parents. The good news involves only 13 percent of the population, and the worrisome news involves the other 87 percent. Hold the champagne.
Charles Murray is the Bradley Fellow at AEI.
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