"Either it's better to grow up in a family with a strong and institutionalized relationship between the parents, or it has to do with who chooses to marry in the first place," researcher Jon Lauglo, who coordinated the study, told newspaper Aftenposten.
The study of grades given over a year to classes of 16-year-olds showed that the children of married parents achieved higher grades (an average of 4.07 in the Norwegian grading system) than those of parents who lived together but weren't married (3.88), and quite a bit higher than children of parents who didn't live together (3.66).
Of the students included in the research, 58.7 percent had married parents, 4.5 percent had parents who lived together but weren't married, and 38.8 percent had parents who did not live together.
"I have to move all the time between mama and papa, and I'm always forgetting schoolbooks at each place the whole time," said 18-year-old Christine Lie. Her parents are divorced, and she thinks it has affected her schoolwork.
Lie and other students her age interviewed by Aftenposten said that having to move between divorced parents' homes also makes it harder for each parent to follow up on their children's schoolwork.
Julia Furuholmen has little doubt she has reaped the benefits of having parents who are married. "I get a lot of help with homework," she said. "If my father is working, then my mother is around to help," she said.
The leader of Norway's association of single parents, Stig Rusten, also thinks divorce can lead to economic problems within families, and notes that divorced parents can also tend to lack higher education themselves. Others believe the schools need to be aware of students' living situations, and perhaps offer more help to those without two parents at home.
