Children of one-parent families earn less, have fewer friends and are more likely to be single, a study shows.
Adults who were born into a single-parent home earn 27 per cent less than those whose parents stayed together, a report by the University of Warwick in the UK reveals.
Having grown up without seeing their two parents together, they are also 9 per cent less likely to be in a romantic relationship themselves and more often divorced.
Almost a quarter of British children are being raised in one-parent homes, the vast majority by single mothers.
Co-author Dr Sakari Lemola said: “The way our parents interacted in their relationship when we were children has an influence on how we interact with our partner when we are adults. There is evidence that we at least partly learn our so-called ‘attachment style’ from our parents.
His study, with the German Institute for Economic Research, took data from 641 people who spent their entire childhood with a single mother.
The findings, reported in the journal PLOS One, also reveal that children with a single parent from birth have only 4.08 friends on average, compared with 4.62 for those whose parents stayed together.