What Beats Having Two Parents?

A superficial investigation of census data could lead one to conclude, contrary to popular opinion, that single-parent family configurations work to the educational advantage of students. For example, the census indicates that as more African American children were raised in single-parent families, fewer of them dropped out of school. In 1970, 31.5% of African American children lived with one parent; however, by 1991, that number had skyrocketed to 57.5%. During this same time period, trends in dropout rates for African American students significantly declined. More specifically, for 16to 17-year-olds, 12.8% were high school dropouts in 1970, but by 1990, that number had declined to 6.9% (Progress and Peril, 1993).' In an effort to interpret such data, there has been an enormous amount of research investigating the effects of family configuration on the achievement of students (see Schneider & Coleman, 1993)