Research Supports the Nuclear Family to be Healthiest for Children (975 hits)
by Chad Hills
April 5, 2011
Nuclear Families Healthiest for Children Traditional or nuclear families – consisting of two married adults, who are the biological or adoptive parents of all children in the family – are the healthiest family structures for children, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report: Family structure and children’s health in the United States: Findings from the National Health Interview Survey, 2001–2007. As noted in the CDC report, this information is based on seven years of national health survey data that contain numerous child health and access to health care measures for a sample of nearly 84,000 children. Very few nationally representative data sources contain such reliable measures of both family structure and child health.
What’s the bottom line? Nuclear families are the healthiest family structures in which to raise healthy, happy children. Single parenting is difficult beyond belief, and yet two in every five children born are to unwed mothers. I cannot imagine juggling children, school, a job, transportation, grocery shopping and paying bills without my wife – I would lose my sanity. Yet single parents do this everyday. It is far easier to raise children within both parents in a nuclear family; but today, just less than half (48.4%) of all children in the United States are being raised in a traditional or nuclear family. Unfortunately, children raised by single mothers demonstrate this truth. Children in single-mother families are more likely to live in low-income households (32.7%).
You can access the CDC report and read some of the highlights – or read more detail, if you want to dig deeper. ...
