LONDON (Reuter) - Single-parent families are not necessarily bad for children if the parent encourages them intellectually and culturally, psychologists said Tuesday.
And some conflict within the family actually seems to help inspire children, Tony Cassidy and colleagues at Nene College in Northampton, central England, said.
``The actual composition of the family is less important than its cohesiveness,'' Cassidy told the British Psychological Society's annual meeting.
Cassidy's group assessed 169 families -- a third of them associated with the armed forces, a third skilled manual workers and a third students.
Achievers came from families who said they had encouraged expressiveness and intellectual or cultural activities.
Cassidy was surprised to find the effect was even stronger if the mother or father was absent for part of childhood.
Some conflict also helped, especially if children learned to deal with it positively.
There was one negative factor -- having lots of boys.
``The more male siblings in a family, the less expressive and cohesive it tends to be,'' Cassidy said.
Article from Mercury Online service, 01:47 PM ET 12/16/96
Please email suggestions on improvements to this site to
webmistress@queerparents.org.
This web site maintained and copyrighted
©1996-2002 by Will Doherty. Last modified on 16 May 2002.