Background: The study of parent-child living arrangements and children’s required level of education attained was borne out of observations made and concerns shown by the researcher towards people who have experienced the phenomenon of single parenting. Most of the arguments are that children suffer when they grow in any other type of parent-child living arrangements other than both parents. As more single-parent families appear in societies, interest grows as to the effect of these households on children's wellbeing. Assessing the risks and impacts of family instability on children is therefore essential in planning programmes and policies to promote healthy children and families. The study used data from Ghana’s Demographic and Health Surveys (GDHS) of 2008 and 2014. The number of children involved were 14,491 in 2008 and 13,339 in 2014. The response rate for each of the data sets yielded 99 percent.
Method: Parent-child living arrangement was categorized into four namely; child does not live with any of his/her biological parents, child lives with mother alone, child lives with father alone and child lives with both parents. The required level of education was also categorized into three as follows: the child has no education, the child is not attending the required level of education and the child is attending the required level of education based on the expected school going age of the child. All other variables were treated as control variables. The study was guided by two theories namely; Family Deficit Model (March, 1990; Thiessen, 1997) where we argued for the nuclear or two-parent households as the idea family structure rather than the Family Risk and Protective factor Model (Donahoo, 2003) which does not regard the single parent family as irregular family structure. Data were analyzed in four stages (namely; univariate, bi-variate, trivariate and multivariate analyses) for children aged 6-17 years and categorized into their school going ages. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software was used to do the analysis. The study was organized into eight chapters.
Results: Half (50%) of the children (6-17 years) live with both parents. Twenty percent live with only their mothers, another 20 percent do not live with both whereas seven percent live with only their fathers. Higher proportion of children who are resident in rural areas live with both parents (55% in 2008 and 57% in 2014) than children in urban areas (44% in 2008 and 43% in 2014). From the bi-variate analysis, higher proportion of children who come from households categorized as poorer or poorest (worse) live with both parents than children from households categorized as richer or richest (better) in both 2008 and 2014. Less proportion of children who do not live with any of their parents than children who live with either one or both
parents are attending the required level of education. The proportion of children who live with only their mothers and are attending the required level of education constitutes the highest followed by children who live with both parents. This finding might be possible because of the predominance of the extended family system in Ghana where other family members try to support single mothers to take care of their children coupled with the fact that women are more likely to invest in the lives of their children because of the anticipated benefits they expect to receive from their children in future.
In 2008 and 2014 children in households below the wealthiest/richest category are more likely than the wealthiest to have no education or not to be attending the required level of education than to be attending the required level of education. The results from the multivariate analyses are consistent with that from the bi-variate analyses that indicated a significant association between household wealth status and children’s attainment of the required level of education.
Conclusions: The data could not prove that parent-child living arrangements have strong and consistent effect on children’s required level of education attained but rather household wealth perhaps due to the strong support especially financial that most Ghanaian households receive from extended family members.