Scholastic achievement and family marital structure: Bedouin-Arab adolescents from monogamous and polygamous families in Israel

In a sample of Bedouin-Arab adolescents from monogamous and polygamous fami lies in the Negev region of Israel, the authors examined scholastic achieve ment levels in the subjects of Arabic, English, Hebrew, and mathematics. Th ere were no significant differences in the scholastic achievement levels in those 4 disciplines between adolescents from monogamous families and those from polygamous families. There was, however, a significant interaction be tween gender and family marital structure for Hebrew scores: Polygamous fam ily structures tended to engender higher Hebrew scores for the male partici pants, whereas monogamous family structures tended to engender higher Hebre w scores for the female participants. However, the major overall finding wa s that polygamous family marital structures did not affect deleteriously th e scholastic achievement levels of the Bedouin-Arab participants.