f middle and lower class black and white preschool children and found differences between social class but not between races. This type of contradiction remains unresolved, therefore, researchers need to control for both race and socioeconomic status when investigating the effects of single parent families on a child's academic achievement.
The type of single parent family composition is another important variable which has been noted as having an effect. Santrock (1973) noted that not only is the length of the parental absence a variable, which in most cases is the father, but also the age of the child during and at the time the absence occurs is an important variable. This is especially true of girls' cognitive development. Sufton-Smith, Rosenberg, and Landly (1968) have pointed out the effects that family composition has on sibling IQ and the need to control such variables in research investigations into IQ. These authors recounted the widespread belief that the school effects of father absence are more pervasive for male then for female children. They also observed that an only female child is affected by father absence but an only male child is not, theorizing that in single child families the child identifies more with the opposite gender parent and that is to boys' advantage. The only sensible conclusion, according to these authors, is that, while a fatherless boy reacts differently than a fatherless girl, we don't know why fatherlessness affects boys' and girls' academic achievement differently. The authors suspect that the cause is mediated by the mother's differential care for male and female child when the father is away.
Sutherland (1930) compared two groups of fatherless children with controls and found that measured IQ was less for children from fatherless families than from fathered families and that IQ correlated with size of family. Thus, the number of siblings in the fatherless family should be control...