wing that disruptions to the family unit correlate with lower academic achievement for the children. Children involved with divorce, separation, or family blending with new stepparents and stepsiblings in general do not perform as well in school (Hou and Ram 309). However, experts are beginning to wonder if some of those earlier studies about changes in the family structure and effects on education were somewhat exaggerated in their findings. Retrospect causes researchers to believe that educational difficulties in those children were caused by preexisting difficulties in the families, not the changes in structure themselves. It is, however, reasonable to say that children from disrupted families manifest some problems which impact their education in later years, but the effects lessen with age, as they come in contact with the outside world and their peer groups. Divorce is more harmful to younger children compared to adolescents, and remarriage is more difficult for adolescents and beneficial to the younger children (Hou and Ram 310).
Single parent families are more likely to be stressed financially and in other ways as well, leaving fewer resources of all kinds to devote to the child's educational well-being. This is especially true for single parent families living in poverty with children who are disabled (Jones et al 197). The schools find this type of family harder to reach and the single parent usually is not as involved in school
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