Joelle Spotswood Dr. Kim Sociology 5 November 2018 Ellwood, D.T., & Jencks, C. (2004). The uneven spread of single-parent families: What do we know? Where do we look for answers? In K. M. Neckerman (ed), Social inequality (3-77). New York: Russel Sage Foundation. Family structures have changed significantly over the last 40 years, especially when considering parental education levels and race. Parenthood is increasingly becoming divorced from marriage, and since people across all groups are waiting longer to get married, the number of single-parent households is increasing. In addition to just married couples, the authors also discuss how cohabitating couples contribute to the speared of single parent families. This article is as much of a review of literature as empirical research. Increased single-parent households, often, though not always, relate to low educational attainment and have lasting economic and child wellbeing effects. The increase of single motherhood has contributed to the “persistence of poverty” (9). From 1964 to the late 1970s, the percent of families in poverty headed by a single mom doubled to about 60% (9). Unlike their more educated peers, “mothers in the bottom two-thirds of the education distribution” continued to be more likely to experience single motherhood during the 1980s, when divorce rates for more educated women tapered. Various research shows that kids who grow up with both biological parents in the house (who presumably get along), do better academically, including graduating high school and attending and graduating college, are less likely to experience teen birth, and are more likely to be gainfully employed and relatively independent as young adults. Non-marital births have increased dramatically since the 1980s, and the authors explain this is, in part, due to an increase in cohabitation. The authors cite a few studies demonstrating that the number of cohabitating couples with children increased by approximately 31% from the late 1980s to 2000, topping out at almost half (17). For couples in the US, unlike their European counterparts, cohabitation is often unstable and couples are unlikely to remain together, thus making cohabitation an unstable family status prone to disruptions leading to increased instances of single-parent households. Linked, of course, to cohabitation and birth out-of-wedlock is premarital sex (which would have made more sense to discuss before cohabitation), and though a separate section, the analysis blurs with cohabitation and the propensity for American couples to separate if cohabitating (again, more than Europeans) (21). Economics explains some of the changes in family situation, and the authors possible explanations provided by the traditional economic model (TEM) (i.e., male specializing in paid labor outside the home, women specializing in nonpaid labor in the home). However, the returns on marriage are shifting for some groups. Wages for low-skilled workers have declined, thus making men, and marriage to them, less desirable and having less economic sense for some women. It makes more sense for some women to be single moms rather than married or cohabitating with a partner who is burdensome rather than contributory. Parallel to this is the increase in wages and employment opportunities (and increase in education) for women. Women are less likely to be dependent on men for financial security, and some single moms are able to deploy some of the risk by living with other adults.
The authors report changes in marriage and childbearing by race and level of education. Single motherhood did not increase for highly educated white women between 1964 and 2000, nor for highly educated black women between 1980 and 2000. Women with less education are waiting to get married but not waiting to have kids. Women with more education are waiting on both (28). The authors also examine employment opportunities/wages (by race), the sex ratio, and welfare benefits as possible components to “explain the educational variation in the spread of single-parent families” (34). None, singularly, are wholly explanatory, though together the authors suggest they may contribute to the variance. Research on marriage, divorce, and separation shows that in general “models find positive effects on marriage for job opportunities of men, negative effects for job opportunism for women, and positive of the sex ratio,” as expected as well as incorrect results for studies on welfare effects (39). What this means, as the authors suggest earlier, is that marriage is not always the best choice for women, though they do note that flawed study design may contribute to the results. For example, there are design differences in studies and many lack the ability to take into account women who marry later (many studies the author examined looked at women ages up to about 34) versus those who will not marry at all. In discussing divorce trends, the authors essentially report different studies report very different results, though most report fairly consistently that stronger male earnings seem to lead to reduced divorced rates (46). Consistent with other literature reports, results from studies regarding households with single moms heading the household are varied and mixed. No finite conclusions are drawn regarding the role of welfare benefits, the marriage market, labor force participation nor any combination of them. A few notable studies, like Murray (1993) explain that welfare is not a cause of single motherhood (as some political pundits claim); rather, it is a way for families “to get by as single parents” (48-49). The authors notably end this section by noting they “cannot be sure of a great deal” (51). Next, the authors examine various non-economic determinants of family structure like gender roles, efficacy and control, attitudes (toward sex, cohabitation, children out of wedlock, and divorce), birth control (contraception and abortion) and no-fault divorce as explanatory variables for the increase in single-parent households. They find that while over time, cohorts have more egalitarian response to women working vs women in the home (especially for responses amongst the educated), less educated women were and still are more likely to believe that a woman’s place is in the home, thus leading the authors to say that more research in this area is needed. The authors also report findings on expectancy models and cultural models for efficacy and control. The first model relates to the “confidence and expectations” and the second “look[s] to larger social norms” (53). Expectancy model results often reflect those of economic models and are used to study young women and economically depressed women. However, these models do not explain adequately the shifting familial patterns (54). Similarly, cultural models, while useful in understanding other shifts, like in attitudes towards premarital sex, do not explain the change in recent patterns. Also, changes in birth control methods and availability and the introduction of no-fault divorce do not explain the spread of single-parent families (60). While the authors find a great deal of contributing factors, like declining male wages, increased education and employment opportunities for women, availability of birth control and changing social norms regarding sex, cohabitation and divorce, no one single consistent pattern emerges explanatorily for the proliferation of single-parent families.
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