Children who grow up in households without two biological married parents experience more behavioural issues, attain less education, and have lower incomes in adulthood, but the reason why this occurs is not fully known, according to Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute.

Commenting on an article by Melanie Wasserman, “The Disparate Effects of Family Structure,” published in the spring 2020 issue of The Future of Children, Hymowitz says that, while the reasons for such outcomes remains out of reach, the most confident of Wasserman’s conclusions is that ”the absence of a biological father in the home yields especially negative consequences for boys.”

Wasserman’s study focuses on differences according to race and gender, but the evidence is inconclusive as to why boys should suffer more in some areas, like education, than girls.

Hymowitz does say these are questions that have become so politicized as to scare off a lot of potential researchers in other fields, such as, “Are there innate emotional, developmental, and/or neurological differences between the sexes that can explain why boys are more easily affected by family structure and the neighbourhoods where they live?”