They are also more likely to change residences, which disrupts their lives even further, since it usually means going to a new school and losing contact with old friends. Although single motherhood hurts, some things help, relatively speaking. Children raised by widowed mothers do better than children raised by other single mothers. Boys born to unmarried mothers do worse than boys whose mothers divorced or separated. For black teenagers, success in school is more likely if their parents stayed together until their children were old enough for school.
Black children are also more likely to be successful if they have a stepfather in the house.
McLanahan and Sandefur close with a discussion of policies that would increase the chances that all children, whether raised by one parent or two, make a successful transition into adulthood. Some of these policies require government spending, some do not. The first step toward helping children in single-parent families, however, is to inform parents about the risks associated with family breakup.