Effects of Single Parenting

Single parent families are at a higher risk of poverty than couple families, and on average single mothers have poorer health than couple mothers.
Most children from single parent families do well. Many factors influence how children develop in single-parent families: the parent's age, education level, and occupation; the family's income, and the family's support network of friends and extended family members (including the non-resident parent, if available). Disadvantages in these factors that often accompany single parenting appear to cause most of this association rather than single parenting itself.
Shocking headlines do get published; for example a 2003 Swedish study, stated that those living with a single parent were about three times more likely to kill themselves or end up in the hospital after an attempted suicide by the age of 26 than children living with two parents, however this only happened to 2.2 percent of girls and 1 percent of boys.
A variety of viewpoints do exist, with different readings of the research possible. The Institute for the Study of Civil Society reports that children of single parents, after controlling for other variables like family income, are more likely to have problems. There are impacts of sole parenting on children, however the weight of the evidence it is suggested, do not appear to support a view that sole parents are a major cause of societal ills and are doing irreparable damage to their children..