Attitudes Towards Single Parents’ Children in Private and State-Dependent Private Schools

Article - Monday, 24 April 2023

Diaz-Serrano, L. and Flamand, S. (2023): "Attitudes Towards Single Parents’ Children in Private and State-Dependent Private Schools: Experimental Evidence", SERIEs

In the paper, we study whether private and state-dependent private schools in Catalonia (Spain) are more reluctant to interact with single parents than with heterosexual couples. We conduct a field experiment during the children's pre-registration period.

We create three types of fictitious families (heterosexual couple, single mother, and single father) and send e-mails to schools in which the family structure is made explicit. Our results indicate that schools are more prone to interact with single parents than with heterosexual couples. Hence, this suggests that, if any, there seems to be positive discrimination towards single parents in the schooling context.