Single mothers influence the educational success of their children. The most represented group of single parents is in African American communities, usually mothers and, above all, sons. The quality of the mother-child relationship and the degree of maternal involvement in the child's life can influence the child's development (Quintin p52-66). Religious involvement promotes supportive and responsive family relationships that help the family cope with the economic and social stressors that accompany life. Religious families with parents who belong to two different religions may be more in conflict. But almost all the research was conducted on married couples in this study of 1,717 low-income, mostly urban families: About a quarter of the parents were cohabiting, while 37 percent were single parents and 39 percent were married. Education, marital status, religion and other demographic data at the time of the child's birth. In follow-up studies three years later, they answered more questions about their demographic and religious behaviors, as well as describing their children's behavioral problems. Two parents attending religious services improve child acting out behaviors such as fighting, arguing, and bullying, to the same extent that they increase annual income by $10,000. Single mothers who were strict about their religious beliefs also had better-behaved children, perhaps because their parenting style provided extra structure for their married families in which only one parent was religious and having a religious mother was beneficial to the children. children, as the study showed. But in single or cohabiting and out-of-wedlock people, births are often frowned upon by religious institutions, creating a stigma that the family must address the vast differences between families...... middle of paper......ce for adverse developmental effects of single parenthood (Henry p450-465). Children with two parents are considerably higher in white and Hispanic families. than in black families. Such a finding would be consistent with the notion that the culture of African American families has traditionally provided greater support and adaptive responses to single parenthood, mitigating some of the potential negative consequences for children. There is considerable evidence that boys are generally more vulnerable. Growing up in a single-parent household poses a pervasive threat to child development and academic achievement, regardless of the influence of associated factors such as low income. Single-parent and two-parent families tend to be quite small and to be significantly reduced when appropriate family income controls are taken into account (Henry p.450-465).