http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,455027375,00.html
Friday, January 24, 2003 

 
Risk of mental woes climbs for kids of 
single parents 
By Emma Ross
AP medical writer  
 
      LONDON ‹ Children growing up in single-parent 
families are twice as likely as their counterparts to 
develop serious psychiatric illnesses and addictions 
later in life, according to an important new study. 

Researchers have for years debated whether children 
from broken homes bounce back or whether they are 
more likely than kids whose parents stay together to 
develop serious emotional problems.

      Experts say the latest study, published this week 
in The Lancet medical journal, is important mainly 
because of its unprecedented scale and follow-up ‹ it 
tracked about 1 million children for a decade, into 
their mid-20s. 
      The question of why and how those children end 
up with such problems remains unanswered. The 
study from Sweden's National Board for Health and 
Welfare in Stockholm suggests that financial 
hardship may play a role, but other experts say the 
research also supports the view that quality of 
parenting could be a factor. 
      The study used the Swedish national registries, 
which cover almost the entire population and contain 
extensive socio-economic and health information. 
Children were considered to be living in a single-
parent household if they were living with the same 
single adult in both the 1985 and 1990 housing 
census. That could have been the result of divorce, 
separation, death of a parent, out of wedlock birth, 
guardianship or other reasons. 
      About 60,000 were living with their mother and 
about 5,500 with their father. There were 921,257 
living with both parents. The children were aged 
between 6 and 18 at the start of the study, with half 
already in their teens. 
      The scientists found that children with single 
parents were twice as likely as the others to develop a 
psychiatric illness such as severe depression or 
schizophrenia, to kill themselves or attempt suicide 
and to develop an alcohol-related disease. 

      Girls were three times more likely to become drug 
addicts if they lived with a sole parent, and boys were 
four times more likely. 

      The researchers concluded that financial hardship, 
which they defined as renting rather than owning a 
home and as being on welfare, made a big difference. 
      However, other experts questioned the financial 
influence, saying Swedish single mothers are not poor 
when compared with those in other countries and 
suggested that quality of parenting could be a factor. 
      "It makes you think that what you're seeing is just 
the most dysfunctional families having these 
problems, rather than the low income. The money is 
really an indicator of something else," said Sara 
McLanahan, a professor of sociology at Princeton 
University, who was not involved in the study. 
      "If you really thought that it was the income that 
makes the difference, you would think that Swedish 
lone mothers would do a lot better than the British or 
those in the U.S., but they look very similar," she said. 
      Other experts agreed. 
      In the last 20 to 30 years, poverty has been greatly 
reduced everywhere in Europe, but psychiatric 
problems in children have not, said Dr. Stephen 
Scott, a child health and behavior researcher at the 
Institute of Psychiatry in London, who also was not 
involved in the study. 

      He said that in previous studies, once researchers 
have adjusted their results to eliminate the influence 
of bad parenting, any increased risk of emotional 
problems shrinks markedly. This, he said, indicates it 
is not so much single parenthood but the quality of 
parenting that is at issue.

      "The 
kind of people who end up as single parents might 
not have done well by their kids, even if they hadn't 
ended up alone. They tend to be more critical in their 
relationships, more derogatory toward other people," 
Scott said, adding that it is also harder to be a warm, 
non-critical parent when you're bringing up a child 
alone. 
      However, he noted that there are plenty of 
children from single-parent families who don't end 
up with serious emotional problems. 
      There may also be a genetic element: More 
irritable people are more likely to become separated, 
but they are also more likely, whether they are 
separated or not, to have more irritable children, 
Scott said. 

      "The whole field is highly debated. This is another 
piece in that debate that makes several important 
points ‹ firstly that there really is an increased risk in 
young adulthood of pretty bad things. It also 
indicates it's not all about the money, but may be 
about the people themselves," McLanahan 
said.

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On the Net: 
The Lancet, www.thelancet.com