Arlene Skolnick and Stacey Rosencranz

About the author: Arlene Skolnick is a research psychologist at the Institute of Human Development at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty. Stacey Rosencranz is a graduate student in Stanford University's psychology department.

Many critics blame single-parent families for causing poverty, crime, drug abuse, and other social ills. While a correlation between single-parent families and social problems does exist, it does not necessarily follow that single-parent families cause the problems. For example, rather than causing poverty, the increase in out-of-wedlock childbearing may be caused by growing impoverishment in the inner cities. Instead of attacking the values of single mothers, society should focus on protecting children in families of all sorts from harmful social...