New Research Shows How Important Family Strength is for Academic Performance

by Glenn T. Stanton | April 24, 2025 | Family

Important new research published by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) from highly respected family scholar Nicholas Zill explains, “When it comes to student achievement and adjustment, the advantage of being raised by married birth parents has actually increased over the last quarter century.”

This good news comes from a larger IFS research brief on the impact married moms and dads and intact families have on academic performance. The report addresses the problem of rising grade inflation in American schools. In the mid-90s, 40 percent of students in elementary, middle and high school in the U.S. earned “mostly A” grades on their report cards. In 2019, that number rose to 54%.

Good news, right? Students are doing better.

Not quite. Nicholas Zill explains,

These grading and disciplinary changes are partly the result of well-intentioned though largely cosmetic efforts to improve social mobility and reduce gaps between racial, ethnic, and economic groups in this country. Progressive education reformers have sought to make family background less of a determinant of how well a student does in school.

However, he adds some very important news,

Despite the ballooning number of students getting stellar grades on their report cards, those being raised by their married birth parents are still more likely to get mostly “A” grades than those being raised by single parents, stepparents, cohabiting birth parents, or other relative or non-relative guardians. This is the case even after taking account of parent-education and family-income differences across family types, as well as differences in their racial and ethnic composition.

Zill demonstrates the trendlines this way.

He then explains, “The intact family advantage has actually increased as grading has become more lenient.” Specifically, “It went from 1.45 times better odds in 1996 to 1.68 times better odds in 2019, a statistically significant change.”

Schools Contacting Parents for Troubling Behavior

It’s not only grades that are improved by intact married families. Not surprising, behavior does too. IFS finds that “Despite the overall drop in school contacts with parents, students being raised in unmarried and disrupted families are more likely to get emails sent to their parents from the school than those being raised by their married birth parents.” This remains true even after scholars adjust for parent’s education, race/ethnicity and family income differences across various family types.

These disciplinary trendlines look like this.

Dr. Zill asserts, “The disrupted family disadvantage increased even though disciplinary practices have become more lenient. It went from 1.63 times higher odds in 1996 to 2.09 times higher odds in 2019, a statistically significant change.”

Conclusion

IFS finds that these benefits to children being raised by married mothers and fathers are due to how marriage boosts well-being and success for parents. They hold these married parents “are also more likely to have followed the “success sequence” of first finishing school, then finding employment, then getting married, and then having children.” Contrarily, “Never-married mothers have, by definition, not followed at least part of that sequence.” Of course, these relatively simple but consequential life choices matter.

This new research report concludes,

The results reported here are a further demonstration of the difficulty of overcoming family influences — both hereditary and environmental — on student achievement and adjustment.

The moral of the story is that married homes, with moms and dads investing in their marriages and in their parenting as a team make real measurable differences in the lives of their children and the larger community.

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