Education Experts on Gender Gap

AAUW's Where the Girls Are study did not look at family composition. Our study shows that boys' and girls' scores and graduation rates have improved over the past few decades as the number of single-parent households has increased, but there is no analysis in our study about whether being raised in a single-parent household adversely affects either boys or girls.

Nevertheless, a cross comparison of single-parent households and family income could be informative on this question. We know from the AAUW data that family income is the strongest predictor of children's academic performance. When we look at aggregated data, children at all ages - boys and girls - from higher-income families significantly outperform their peers from lower-income families. The performance gap is an economic one.

From our previous research, Behind the Pay Gap in particular, we know indisputably that significant income disparities exist between men and women with comparable education and experience who are doing comparable work. When this disparity is combined with what we know generally about lower total family incomes attributable to single-income households, we can assume that mother-only households are more likely to be of lower socioeconomic status. By inference, therefore, households led by single-parenting mothers would be more likely to have children who perform less well, in general, than children from two-parent families, especially when both parents are wage earners.

The issues you raise about gender modeling, however, are important and deserve further examination. A study that controls for family income and looks at the correlations between academic performance and the presence or absence of male role models could, perhaps, inform new strategies to address any resulting negative achievement consequences. Likewise, such data could be especially helpful in targeting resources to vulnerable populations - which is truly the important message of AAUW's research.

Yes, and I am sorry there was not enough time to address this issue in the eight-minute NewsHour segment. Boys certainly suffer when there is no adult role model in the home, but so too do girls suffer without a father. Boys learn what adult men do from watching their fathers and doing things with them. But so, too, do girls take lessons from their fathers. The children see how adults differentiate their family roles and this becomes a reference for how they will live their lives later as adults.

A girl's first experience with unconditional male love comes from her father if she has one. She also learns how to "manage" a man through her relationship with her father. Girls that grow up without this loving father may later experiment in male relationships because they lack the father template to guide their choices. And this experimentation with men can be especially costly to girls and women.

A large part of the single parent problem is men losing their jobs -- and hence breadwinner roles -- in families. The loss of traditional male jobs in the transformation of the economy from goods production to service provision has left many inadequately educated men positioned to support their families. So a growing share of families with children are without fathers, to the detriment of both sons and daughters.