Marital Status of Parents an Important Factor for Children to Grow Up Healthy

The Bible teaches us the truth that God created man and women, they should form a beautiful family which shows the model of love to their children. God's’s family plan is that works the best.

Healthcare, nutrition, good schools, safe neighborhoods, love and plenty of encouragement are the essentials for children to grow up into healthy, happy, productive, well-adjusted adults. But there is one more very important factor--marital status of parents does affect a lot for proper child-development.

The latest census data shows that married men show they are more committed to bringing in a full-time income to support their families, and children are the proven benefactors. The Family Research Council conducted a research and the result shows the importance of supporting the Bush Administration's marriage initiative program, which encourages married couples to work out their problems and stay together.

All things being equal, children with married parents consistently do better in every measure of well-being than their peers who have single, cohabiting, divorced or same-sex and step-parents, and this is a stronger indicator than parental race, economic or educational status, or neighborhood.

Pitirim Sorokin, founder and first chair of the Sociology Department at Harvard, proclaimed the importance of married parents. The most essential sociocultural patterning of a newborn human organism is achieved by the family. It is the first and most efficient sculptor of human material, shaping the physical, behavioral, mental, moral and sociocultural characteristics of practically every individual...From remotest past, married parents have been the most effective teachers of their children.

Sara McLanahan of Princeton University finds that regardless of which survey we looked at, children from one-parent families are about twice as likely to drop out of school as children from two-parent families.

Children from biological two-parent families have, on average, test scores and grade-point averages that are higher, they miss fewer school days, and have greater expectations of attending college than children living with one parent. Additionally, of those from either type of family who do attend college, those from two-parent families are seven to 20 percent more likely to finish college.

Children from divorced homes are 70 percent more likely than those living with biological parents to be expelled or suspended from school. Those living with never-married mothers are twice as likely to be expelled or suspended. Also, children who do not live with both biological parents are 45 to 95 percent more likely to require parent/teacher meetings to deal with performance or behavior problems than those who live with married parents.