Family structure, educational attainment, and socioeconomic success: Rethinking the "pathology of matriarchy"

The effect of alternative family structures on children's educational and occupational success has been constant over the past 30 years. Higher rates of unemployment and lower-status occupational positions could account for the negative effect of single-mother families on children's attainment throughout the period. Children from single-father families and stepfamilies have consistently had lower attainments than children from both two-biological-parent and single-mother families. The influence of many other dimensions of children's family background declined from the 1960s to the 1980s but has declined no further since. Among six candidate theoretical frameworks, the findings are most consistent with an evolutionary view of parental investment.