Father-Only and Mother-Only, Single-Parent Family Status of Black Girls and Achievement in Grade Twelve and at Two-Years Post High School

Over the past three decades, there have been dramatic demographic changes in the number of Black children being reared by a single parent. New arguments and discussions about the "pathologies" of Black families have intensified and new questions regarding the impact of having Black children reared by their mothers without their fathers present have arisen along with this demographic shift. Much of the research on single-parent families has tended to focus on male children and adolescents and has neglected the experience of females in these groups. A secondary data analysis, using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS), examines the relative effect on 12th grade educational achievement in 1992 and two years after high school in 1994 of being in a single-parent, mother-only or father-only family for Black girls in 8th grade in 1988. Findings show that, for these Black girls (a) parental configuration was not as significant a predictor of achievement as was socioeconomic status; (b) in 12th grade in 1992, the students in mother-only households outperformed their counterparts in father-only households; and (c) in 1994 the parental configuration differences disappeared when socioeconomic status was held constant. These results are similar to results reported for Black males based on the NELS data. The implications of these results for interpreting the impact of single-parenting on achievement in girls are discussed.