Growing Up in A Single Mother Family and Student’s Tardiness: A Cross-National Study Exploring the Moderating Role of Family Resources

Abstract

ABSTRACTResearch shows that growing up in a single-parent family has a negative effect on children’s educational level, whereas the relationship between family structure and test scores is less consistent or even nonexistent in some countries. Some authors suggested that something besides cognitive ability is responsible for the poorer school outcomes of children from nonintact families. In this study, we focus on a noncognitive outcome, in this case student tardiness, which is one of the components of problematic absenteeism. Using PISA 2003 data from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we find that children who grow up in a single-mother family have greater chances of arriving late for school in 16 of the 17 countries analyzed. Some studies have analyzed the extent to which the effect of growing up in a single-mother family is compensated by a high level of family resources. However, these yield mixed findings, which can be attributed to the differences between the countries studied. With the exception of Bernardi and Radl (2014), to our knowledge no study analyzes the heterogeneity of family structure effects using a cross-national approach. We find that in most of the 17 countries analyzed, a high level of family resources, such as home possessions, cultural resources, mother’s occupational and educational level, and mother’s type of work, do not compensate for the harmful effects of growing up in a single-mother family on children’s school tardiness.