Penn State Professor Paul Amato describes the contours of stepfamily living. In his paper "The Impact of Family Formation Change on the Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Well-being of the Next Generation," Amato writes: "Adding a stepfather to the household usually improves children’s standard of living. Moreover, in a stepfamily, two adults are available to monitor children’s behavior, provide supervision, and assist children with everyday problems. For these reasons, one might assume that children generally are better off in stepfamilies than in single-parent households. Studies consistently indicate, however, that children in stepfamilies exhibit more problems than do children with continuously married parents and about the same number of problems as do children with single parents. In other words, the marriage of a single parent (to someone other than the child’s biological parent) does not appear to improve the functioning of most children."