Single parent
In the United States, 83% of single parents are mothers. Among this percentage of single mothers: 45% of single mothers are currently divorced or separated, 1.7% are widowed, 34% of single mothers never have been married. Although decades ago, having a child outside of marriage and/or being a single mother was not prominent. Census information from 1960 tells us that in that year, only nine percent of children lived in single parent families. Today four out of every ten children are born to an unwed mother.
Responsible fatherhood
The number of children living in single-parent households has increased dramatically since the 1960s. Approximately 9% of children under 18 lived with a single parent in 1960; by 2007 this rate increased to nearly 32%. The largest growth occurred between 1970 and 1985, when the growth of single-mother families leveled off.
This shift is attributed to a variety of widely recognized social changes that occurred in American society in the 1960s and 1970s: changing sexual morals increased the prevalence of sexual activity outside of marriage and decreased the stigma surrounding out-of-wedlock births; American attitudes about marriage and divorce changed; and women made economic gains that increased their independence and ability to leave unhappy marriages.
While the social science community of the 1960s and 1970s initially regarded single-mother households as “just another alternative family form,” evidence began to surface in the late 1970s demonstrating that children raised in households where the father was absent were disadvantaged relative to other children.