World Family Map 2013


TWO, ONE, OR NO PARENTS?

IFS Website
Institute for Family Studies

Executive Summary

by Laura H. Lippman & W. Bradford Wilcox

The family is a core social institution that occupies a central place in the lives of men, women, and children around the world: It is

Traditionally, the family has been defined as a group of people linked through blood, marriage, or adoption, typically centered on a married couple and their dependents and relatives. However, nontraditional families made up of people linked neither by blood nor by marriage have often existed, and are now found in growing numbers in many regions around the world. 

Given the centrality of the family to child and adult well-being and the changing dynamics and structure of families today, an urgent need exists to map trends in family life across the globe, with a special focus on the consequences of these trends for children. Enter The World Family Map Project, a new, nonpartisan, nonsectarian initiative from Child Trends, acting in partnership with a number of foundations, nongovernmental organizations, and universities, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Focus Global, and the Social Trends Institute. 

The World Family Map Project seeks both to monitor the health of family life around the globe and to learn more about how family trends affect the well-being of children. This effort is particularly timely because of dramatic demographic, cultural, and economic changes affecting family life. Fertility and marriage rates are falling in much of the world, especially in higher income regions. The percentage of children living in two-parent families is also falling, particularly in Europe, the Americas, and Oceania. Likewise, individualism is on the ascendancy, as is equality between the sexes, while family-centered values and adherence to traditional gender roles are losing ground in many regions. The global economic slowdown is also putting major pressures on family life, yet it is precisely in these times that strong families are needed to support optimal child and youth development. The World Family Map Project aims to broaden understanding about how these developments among families affect children and youth in different regions of the world. 

In pursuit of this mission, the project will issue an annual report, The World Family Map, designed to paint a holistic portrait of global family life by mapping trends in family structure, family socioeconomics, family processes, and family culture in every region of the world. The report will be the first to provide internationally comparative data for low-, middle-, and high-income countries on key characteristics of families across the selected domains. The report will also feature an essay on a topic of major international import to the family, usually related to child well-being. 

For its inaugural 2013 edition, The World Family Map covers family trends in 45 countries. Taken together, these countries represent every region of the world, as well as a majority of the world’s population. This inaugural edition also features an essay, Two, One or No Parents? Children’s Living Arrangements and Educational Outcomes Around the World, which explores the links between one indicator of family structure (i.e., the number of parents in the household) and children’s educational outcomes in low-, medium-, and high-income countries.

The indicators section of The World Family Map shows that family trends and strengths vary markedly by region. Here are some highlights:

Family Structure

Family Socioeconomics

Family Processes 

Family Culture

These family trends are related to distinct patterns of economic wealth, family solidarity, education, religiosity, and urbanization, factors that often cut in different directions, depending on the trend. The World Family Mapalso shows that no one country or region excels in all of the domains mapped out by the report.

Finally, the report’s main essay—Two, One or No Parents? Children’s Living Arrangements and Educational Outcomes Around the World—presents strong evidence that children living in two-parent families in middle- and high-income countries are more likely to stay on track in school and demonstrate higher reading literacy than are children living with one or no parents. In these high- and middle-income countries, the additional financial, social, and cultural capital that two parents can provide to their children appears to give them an educational advantage over their peers from single-parent homes and those who do not live with either of their parents.

However, this family structure advantage is not found in many low-income countries (mostly in the southern hemisphere). In these countries, children in one-parent households often do about as well as or sometimes even better than children in two-parent households on indicators such as secondary school enrollment and being the right age for their grade. There are several reasons why children in single-parent households in poorer countries may be performing well academically. The family may receive social and financial support from extended kin or the resident parent may draw on the financial resources of the nonresident parent who is working as a migrant worker away from home. It is also possible that children may benefit from living with single mothers if these mothers invest in their children’s education more heavily than do fathers and if single mothers have more control over the resources and decision-making that support children’s education. 

In many low-income countries, family structure simply may not matter as much for children’s education, given the many obstacles to good educational outcomes that affect children in all types of families. Parents may not be able to afford schooling for their children; schools and teachers may be inadequate; parents and their children may suffer from poor health and nutrition; seasonal labor demands may take priority; and attitudes toward school may militate against achievement. 

The inaugural World Family Map essay concludes by noting the anomaly of the increasing fragility of two-parent families in most middle- and high-income countries even as the evidence shows that such households give children a hand up in excelling educationally. Ironically, perhaps, low-income countries may provide insight about how to strengthen families in a climate of instability, both socially and economically, insofar as those countries rely on extended kin to buffer children from the effects of single parenthood or orphanhood. 

Overall, this report demonstrates the importance of monitoring the strength of the family globally, and the benefit of understanding the variety of ways in which families contribute to the well-being of children and youth.

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