Feminists Got It Wrong: One-Parent Students Leave School Earlier

One of the leading early feminist voices once remarked,

“The nuclear family must be destroyed… Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process.”  Linda Gordon Historian & leading feminist voice.

However, a study by researchers at New York University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Irvine finds that children from single-parent households obtain fewer years of school than children who grew up in married-couple households. By age 24, children who grew up in single-parent homes were less likely to have obtained a bachelor’s degree than children raised in married-couple households.

The researchers adjusted their data to take into account family income because households with single parents, on average, earn significantly less than households with two parents. But they found that income differences accounted for only about one half of the gap in educational attainments.

The study, “One Parent Students Leave School Earlier,” has been published on the website of the journal EducationNext. It may be accessed here.