Turns out two-parent households are no fix for racial inequality

Christina Cross.

Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer

Nation & World
Turns out two-parent households are no fix for racial inequality

New data-based study debunks long-held notion, finds wide opportunity gaps remain

Christy DeSmith

Harvard Staff Writer

September 22, 2025 8 min read

Growing up in a two-parent nuclear family confers many advantages in life. But a new book shows the benefits are much greater for white Americans than their Black counterparts, undercutting a long-held notion that simply increasing the number of two-parent families would resolve racial inequality.

In “Inherited Inequality,” Christina Cross summons large datasets to compare outcomes for generations of Black and white children raised in what is widely considered the optimal family structure for adult outcomes. The associate professor of sociology demonstrates that Black children raised by two parents have far fewer resources — with worse outcomes in school and in the labor market — than white youth from the same family structure.

“What really struck me was that African American children in two-parent families had outcomes more similar to their white peers from single-parent families,” Cross said. “My research shows that opportunity gaps would remain high even if African American children lived with two parents at high levels.”

“Inherited Inequality” also revisits how single Black mothers became a cultural fixation. As Cross writes, these parents were assigned much of the blame for racial disparities in poverty, joblessness, and incarceration for decades.

“My goal with this book is to supplant that narrative with a more accurate one,” she said. “I hope it helps us think more carefully about how we can support Black families — and disadvantaged families more generally.”

We caught up with Cross, a faculty member since 2019, to ask about the book, its methodologies, and its message. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

Let’s set one thing straight: This is not an argument against marriage and the nuclear family. Can you summarize the book’s argument?

This is a book about the power and limits of this important family structure. For decades, Americans have been led to believe in the power of the two-parent family for fixing racial inequality. The idea here is that some groups, like African Americans, have a harder time getting ahead because they have lower rates of two-parent families than groups that are, on average, better off. The idea is that African Americans could level the playing field by embodying the nuclear family ideal. My book shows this just isn’t the case.

“This is a book about the power and limits of this important family structure. For decades, Americans have been led to believe in the power of the two-parent family for fixing racial inequality.”

How did you discover that Black American youth reap fewer benefits from growing up with two parents?

I started my career focused on what many people call “nontraditional” families. Some of my earlier work showed that the negative impacts of growing up in a single-mother family were weaker for African Americans.

In 2019, I then published the unexpected finding that the largest gaps in outcomes between Black and white children were between those living in two-parent families.

I was surprised, which led me to dig deeper. I thought, “What could be going on here? Could this be some sort of outlier?” It was completely at odds with the dominant thinking on family structure — that the two-parent family was this great equalizer.

You took a data-driven approach to investigating the topic. What did you learn about educational outcomes for Black and white youth from two-parent families?

I used two nationally representative datasets, with findings on multiple generations, to see whether these patterns of inequality in children’s outcomes were constant. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) have produced some of the best data we have available on children and families.

To give just two examples, I found Black children from two-parent families were two to four times more likely to be suspended or expelled than white children living in the same family structure. Their rates of on-time high school completion were 25 percentage points lower than their white peers.

You also looked at differences in earnings, family finances, and accumulated assets like houses and other investments. What did you find there?

I found that Black children in two-parent families have access, by the end of childhood, to about 60 percent of the household income of white children in two-parent families.

When I looked at wealth, the disparities were even more striking. African American two-parent families have about 25 percent of the wealth of white two-parent families. And we know that wealth is very important for providing a safety net during difficult economic times.

“When I looked at wealth, the disparities were even more striking.”

We also know that African Americans are much more likely to experience economic shocks. A longstanding statistic among economists is that African Americans have an unemployment rate that’s roughly twice that of white Americans. That’s been true for 50 years.

You present a new framework to help academics understand the disparities you’ve uncovered. Can you tell us about it, and how it differs from other previous models?

For about 30 years, a framework called the Family Resource Perspective has helped social scientists understand unequal outcomes for children living in different types of families. It argues, pretty convincingly, that children from two-parent families tend to have better outcomes because they have access to greater resources — including money, parental time and supervision, even parents’ psychological well-being.

I develop and test what I call the Diverse Family Ecology framework to help us understand why outcomes are so different for Black and white children from nuclear families. I point out that even children living within the same family structure differ in their access to these critical resources, and I talk about why that is the case.

Can you say more about why?

One of the main things I argue is that these disparities have been embedded in our society — they’re what leads to disparities in outcomes among children from nuclear families. Housing is just one of the arenas we can think about. Historically, African Americans just didn’t have the same support to buy homes, build wealth, and live in safe neighborhoods.

“One of the main things I argue is that these disparities have been embedded in our society — they’re what leads to disparities in outcomes among children from nuclear families.”

Redlining made it more difficult for generations to secure mortgages, but residential segregation also existed for many, many decades and is still quite high. There was a famous book called “American Apartheid” (1993) that showed African Americans experienced the highest levels of residential segregation of any group in the U.S. and tied that to so many negative life outcomes in terms of health, finances, and educational access. Three decades later, African Americans are still the most segregated racial group in America.

Do Black youth from two-parent families experience less racial discrimination?

Unfortunately, no. I used a really special, really unique dataset called the National Survey of American Life. I compared African American children from two-parent families with their Black peers in single-parent, step-, and extended families. They all reported similar frequencies of experiencing discrimination. Roughly 90 percent say they experienced discrimination by age 15.

Your book also delves into the history of the Moynihan report . Please remind us: What was it and how did it impact thinking on family structure?

It was a report, published exactly 60 years ago, commissioned by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration as part of his Great Society agenda. He was trying to understand why poverty rates were so much higher for African Americans — at the time, about 50 percent were living at or near the poverty line.

So, he asked his assistant secretary of labor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, to conduct a study on the root cause.

After about three months of inquiry, Moynihan arrived at a pretty bold conclusion. He pointed to what he called the “destruction” of the African American family. He argued that slavery and racial discrimination had led to high rates of “illegitimate births,” which led to high rates of households being led by women — something he considered against the natural order.

As a consequence, he said, African American children were “floundering” and “failing.”

Where are the report’s footprints still evident?

Until the Moynihan report, nobody had directly linked Black family patterns with poverty. It was incredibly powerful in shaping how we understand racial inequality.

Now it’s the backbone of our social policy. Today, the country’s largest cash assistance program is TANF, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Most people just call it welfare. The program allocates hundreds of millions of dollars each year to promoting the two-parent family and reducing what Moynihan called “illegitimate” or “non-marital” births.

Over the past several decades, the U.S. government has poured billions of taxpayer dollars into advertising and other initiatives that counsel families on the importance of marriage.

Do we know if these programs work?

Evaluations by our own government show these campaigns are largely ineffective.

What I find interesting is that most of the reasons people give for having children outside of marriage have to do with economics. Many say they want to be married; they want a more traditional arrangement. But they’re concerned their partner is not economically stable, they don’t have the money for a wedding, or they haven’t reached a certain financial threshold.

As a researcher, it’s not my job to tell people to get married. But I do find it interesting that providing more direct resources — like subsidies for childcare, for education, for other social services — may be more effective at increasing rates of two-parent families.