Single parent families not a risk factor for children's development

Latest research from the University of Otago's Christchurch Health and Development Study shows that the major influences on how a child develops are not related to single parenthood, but rather to how a family functions.

Professor David Fergusson, who leads the long-running study of over 1000 people, says conventional wisdom and some international research links mental health problems, educational performance, economic and criminal behaviour outcomes to the fact that a child is brought up by one parent. Most research has tended to focus on childhood and relatively little has been reported on the longer term consequences of being reared in a single parent family.

This latest paper, which has just been published in the prestigious United States Journal The Archives of General Psychiatry, shows negative outcomes over 25 years are linked to contextual factors such as socio-economic status and family functioning, and how these relate to single parenthood.

However, it concludes that being brought up in a single parent family per se, is not the key predictor of health outcomes by young adulthood.

"This research adds to the growing international evidence that suggests the important factors determining a child's later development outcomes relate to the ways in which a family functions, both socially and economically," says Professor Fergusson.

"For this reason it's important that childhood policies place more emphasis on how a family functions, rather than the number of adults, as a determinant of developmental outcomes in children and young adults."

This particular study looked at 950 children born in Christchurch in 1977 until the age of 16, examining the links between family history and outcomes in young adulthood between 21 and 25 years.

This study was funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand.