The relationship between African-American mothers' marital status and children's perceptions of parental roles, family relationships, and future life choices.

Despite the central role psychologists assign to the family as a critical context for socialization, there is a paucity of research on the relationship between family structure and children's perceptions of parental roles, family functioning, and future life choices. This study explores the premise that female headed families may influence the development of children in unique but not necessarily dysfunctional ways. It examines how father-child contact and maternal marital status (i.e., never-married; divorced/separated; and married) influence children's perceptions of parental roles, relationships with parents and surrogate fathers, self-esteem, locus of control, and attitudes toward future life options (i.e, education, work, marriage, childbearing, and alternative life choices). Structured interviews were conducted with 134 African-American low-income 9-13 year old (M age, 11 years 8 months) children (67 boys; 67 girls). Subjects were recruited from the Illinois Department of Public Aid recipient list and local elementary schools. Data analysis indicated no statistically significant differences between mothers' marital status and children's maternal role knowledge, perceptions of the mother-child relationship, feelings about resident parent(s), self-esteem, locus of control, and orientation toward future life choices. However, in comparison to children in two-parent families, children in female headed families were significantly $(p \le .05)$ more likely to perceive the paternal role differently; to describe relationships with fathers as less emotionally positive, to report receiving less discipline from fathers, to see fathers less frequently, to report having a relationship with surrogate fathers, and to report that surrogates had more influence on them then their own fathers. Children in never-married mother families were more likely than children in the other two family types to consider the parenting competence of single mothers equal to that of two parents. Findings are discussed in terms of the importance of understanding the father's role in female-headed families, the usefulness of mother's marital status as an explanatory variable regarding child outcomes, and middle childhood and early adolescent development in African-American children.Ph.D.Black studiesDevelopmental psychologyIndividual and family studiesPsychologySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131516/2/9909972.pd