STUDY SAYS BROKEN HOMES HARM KIDS MORE

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 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 also 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 and public affairs 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.