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.
Maternal mortality in the United States
In the 1950s, the maternal mortality rate in the United Kingdom and the United States was the same—1 in 1000 pregnant and new mothers died. By 2018, the rate in the UK was three times lower than in the United States, due to implementing a standardized protocol. In 2010, Amnesty International published a 154-page report on maternal mortality in the United States. In 2011, the United Nations described maternal mortality as a human rights issue at the forefront of American healthcare, as the mortality rates worsened over the years. According to a 2015 WHO report, in the United States the MMR between 1990 and 2013 "more than doubled from an estimated 12 to 28 maternal deaths per 100,000 births." By 2015, the United States had a higher MMR than the "Islamic Republic of Iran, Libya and Turkey". In the 2017 NPR and ProPublica series "Lost Mothers: Maternal Mortality in the U.S." based on a six-month long collaborative investigation, they reported that the United States has the highest rate of maternal mortality than any other developed country, and it is the only country where mortality rate has been rising. The maternal mortality rate in the United States is three times higher than that in neighboring Canada and six times higher than in Scandinavia.