16-05-2025
How Family Structure Leads to Academic Success
Commentary
In 1965, the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Sixty years later, Moynihan's words still ring true, as evidenced in a
While Zill examines the phenomenon of '
This is not surprising, as Moynihan pointed out so eloquently, because family structure is perhaps the most important factor in a child's success, or lack of success, in life.
Without such structure, children suffer. Even Rahm Emanuel, the liberal former mayor of Chicago, understands this. After a particularly violent weekend in his city, he
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'This may not be politically correct, but I know the power of what faith and family can do .... Our kids need that structure.'
But unfortunately, politicians, activists, and social commentators leave out the critical role
Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation pointed this out when he
And as Zill discovered, that gap is continuing to widen. From 1996 to 2019, the odds of a child from an intact family doing better academically than one from a fragmented family increased from 1.45 to 1.68—a 'statistically significant change'—with 60 percent of children from married families receiving 'mostly A' grades compared to 47 percent of those in non-intact families.
Better grades result in better opportunities—whether it be getting into college or seeking employment. On the other hand, lower grades tend to continue the cycle of economic and societal despair that negatively impacts so many young people today.
For instance, harkening back to Moynihan's prophetic words that the family is the basic socializing unit of American life and affects adult conduct, Zill found that students from non-intact homes tend to have more disciplinary issues than those from married homes.
He reports that parents or guardians of students raised in unmarried or fragmented families were more likely to get emails sent to them about schoolwork and conduct concerns than those from married families.
And fragmented homes tend to lessen the overall effectiveness of schools. George Will perhaps put it best when he
He states that this includes the quality and quantity of reading material children have access to in the home, the amount of electronic entertainment children are subjected to, the amount of homework performed there, and, in his words, 'most important—the number of parents in the home.'
He concludes, 'Family disintegration is the stubborn fact that severely limits the efficacy of even the best education policies.'
Married parents tend to be more involved in their child's education and overall lives. and when parents are involved, children are more likely to succeed.
Children cannot benefit from their parents' involvement in their education if there is no parent capable of being involved—either because the parent is absent or because a single parent is struggling to keep the house functioning on a basic level and does not have the time or mental space to be highly engaged in their child's education.
Children need structure—the structure married families provide. If we want all children to succeed, and not just those from married, functioning families, we will need a rejuvenated national commitment to the renewal, preservation, and strengthening of families and parenting.
That is how upward, rather than downward, mobility will occur and create productive citizens, along with better and more effective schools, in the future.
Reprinted by permission from
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
