News Archives - Single Parent Wealth

The Rise of the Single Father

06/03/2014 Donna Comments 0 Comment

Single Father Households are on the Rise

Single father households are becoming more and more common in the United States. Single Father households have risen from a little over 1% in 1960, to a record 8% according to a report from the Pew Research Center. That is about a nine-fold increase in the number of single father households in a little over 50 years.

Single father headed households have gone from less than 300,000 to more than 2.6 million in 2011. While single mother lead households have increased from 1.9 million in 1960 to 8.6 million in 2011; that rate of increase is only four-fold during that period. What this means is that single father households make up a larger (and growing) share of all single parent households in the United States. Single parent households headed by fathers have gone from 14% in 1960, to 24%. That’s almost a quarter of all single parent households.

How Single Father Lead Households are Different

According to this Report there are some notable statistical differences between single mother homes and single father homes. For instance 41% of single fathers are living with a partner. While only 16% of single mothers are cohabitating. On average single fathers tend to have higher incomes than single mothers. This translates to 24% of single father households living at or below the poverty line versus 43% of households lead by single mothers.

What is a Single Father?

The definition of a single father household can vary depending on who is doing the defining. In this report, a single father is a male who is 15 years of age or older, who is the head of their household. They are also living with their own children (under the age of 18). The term ‘their own children’ can mean biological children, step-children or adopted children.

Fathers who are living in a household headed by someone else (for example, a young single father living with his parents) are excluded from the analysis. Also excluded are single fathers whose children are not living with them.

The term ‘single father’ includes men in a variety of family circumstances. About half (52%) are separated, divorced, widowed, or never married and are living without a cohabiting partner. As stated above, 41% are living with a non-marital partner. And a small percentage (7%) are married but living apart from their spouse.

It’s interesting to note that, statistically speaking, cohabiting single fathers are particularly disadvantaged on most socio-economic indicators. They are younger, less educated and more likely to be living in poverty than are single fathers who are raising children without a spouse or partner in the household.

Why the Increase in Single Father Households?

The increase in single father households is likely due to a number of factors, most of which have also contributed to the increase in single mother households, and to the decline of two-married-parent households.

For one, non-marital births has increased significantly. And even though divorce rates have leveled off in recent decades, they remain higher than they were in the 1960s and 1970s. Some experts suggest that changes in the legal system have led to more opportunities for fathers to gain custody of their children in the event of a breakup, as well.

Also, the role of fathers has evolved over the years. The public now acknowledges the importance of fathers not only as breadwinners, but also as caregivers. Some data shows that fathers are narrowing the (still sizable) gap with mothers, in the amount of time they spend with their children. And Pew Research surveys find that the public believes that a father’s greatest role is to provide values to his children, followed by emotional support, discipline and income support. Public opinion ascribes roughly the same hierarchy of roles to mothers.

Study Sheds Light on Single Parent Stress

03/31/2013 Donna Comments 0 Comment

Self-esteem plays a key part in a single mother’s happiness, but makes little difference to the life satisfaction of single fathers, new research shows.

Research by an academic at Western Australia’s Edith Cowan University, Bronwyn Harman, into the life satisfaction of different family formations, showed that single parents believed they were still viewed negatively by society, even though they accounted for 17 per cent of families in Australia.

Dr Harman interviewed scores of single parents, and then rated their life satisfaction based on their resilience, self-esteem and social support. She found that while all three factors contributed to the happiness of single mothers, self-esteem ”had no impact” on the life satisfaction of single fathers.

”Single mothers can have lots of social support, but unless they have that internal self-belief, they don’t believe what they’re being told,” Dr Harman said.

”With dads, they just believe what they’re told – ‘you’re doing a good job’.” Dr Harman found little difference in the ”relatively low level” of life satisfaction among both single fathers and single mothers. ”When you combine the negative stereotypes with the day-to-day struggle of being a single parent, it would generally not be a very happy place to be,” she said.

All single parents said they were stigmatized by society. ”Single mothers said partnered mothers were threatened by them, viewing them as potential husband stealers,” Dr Harman said.

”Single fathers said society viewed them as a ‘failure’, ‘with suspicion’, and ‘rejected’. There is an incorrect but pervasive view that only mothers know how to parent.”

Single dads told of spending tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees for access to their child, being regularly excluded from special occasions involving their child, and being cut out of the communication loop by their child’s school.

Single mothers reported finding daily life a struggle, with no one to share the burden of illness and tiredness, or their parenting successes.

Dr Harman said a lack of social support for single parents contributed to their low levels of life satisfaction.

”Being a parent with a partner is hard enough,” she said. ”You can’t imagine what it would be like juggling and struggling all by yourself with no one to fall back on.” Justine Proctor became a single mother five years ago when her husband – from whom she was separated – died.

”There are not a lot of good things about being a single parent,” she said.

Now her son, Luke Harford, is on the cusp of adolescence, Ms Proctor feels keenly the lack of a partner. ”My son is just at the age where he does need a father figure around, a good male role model,” she said.

Ms Proctor said her ”saving grace” was the Single with Children support group.

She said the best thing about her family set-up was her bond with Luke. ”I’m hoping the bond is going to last through the teenage years,” she said.

POSP – Better Opportunities for Single Parents

03/28/2013 Donna Comments 0 Comment

This from the Fort Bliss Monitor

Single parents attend the Better Opportunities for Single Parents monthly meeting March 12 at the Combat Aviation Brigade Dining Facility. Photo by Sgt. Ida Irby, 24th Press Camp Headquarters.

Sgt. Ida Irby, 24th Press Camp Headquarters:

Better Opportunities for Single Parents is a fresh organization created to give a voice to single parents in the Army. The Fort Bliss BOSP group hopes to also reach out to DoD civilians, National Guard, reservists, retirees, and veterans of all branches who are in a single-parent situation due to temporary duty, overseas deployment or separate duty stations.

Since November 2011, the BOSP program is growing daily as a result of up-to-date commander’s briefings, newcomers briefings and family readiness group trainings.

“Bring your voice, your issues and your concerns,” said Sgt. Richard Carreon, vice president of the BOSP. “‘Total Army Family’ sums up what it takes for single parents to be successful. Without the chain of command, chain of concern, FRG, family care plans and the arsenal of Army programs; it would be virtually impossible to raise a child as a single or dual military parent.”

Why It’s Better to Be a Single Parent

03/26/2013 Donna Comments 0 Comment

This article comes to us from Dishon & Block

Being a single parent is not an ideal situation. No matter how you spin it, almost everyone agrees that having two parents is better than one. However, being a single parent post-divorce or separation gets a worse rep than it deserves, and there are advantages to raising children alone.

Rather than trying to work with your ex to make parenting compromises, you’ll get to make your own decisions. Kerri Zane, single mother advisor, offers five reasons that being a single parent actually can be better:

1- No negotiations necessary. Parents trying to co-parent will continue to fight and deal with disagreeing views on how to raise their children. All the fighting and disagreeing can make both environments unhealthy for your child. As a single parent you can be the security blanket and the healthy, loving parent that your child needs.

You can read the entire article here.

Single Parent Dads – Happy Fathers Day

06/19/2011 Donna Comments 0 Comment

Happy Fathers Day to all the hardworking dads out there; single parent dads, joint custody dads, step dads and regular dads.

I’ve found some inspiring articles about dads. I hope you enjoy them. And enjoy your special day!

Single dads find support among their peers

Just because Sheldon Kitzul is a social worker and life coach doesn’t mean he has all the answers to the challenges of fatherhood, including single parenting. So, recently, he dropped into 1UP, the Victoria Single Parent Resource Centre to see what they offered and opted to join its Dads With Dads Support Group.

A special tribute on Father’s Day to single dads

Until recently, many occupations were “gendered,” in that people thought of them as being necessarily male or female. A doctor, for example, was always assumed to be male, while a nurse was inevitably seen as female.

This meant that female doctors and male nurses were all but invisible. But no longer: The fall of gender barriers in recent decades has provided new visibility to those who previously lived in the shadows.

Fathers get a bad rap in the media and the courts

Arnold Schwarzenegger. John Edwards. Eliot Spitzer. John Ensign. Mark Sanford. To hear the media tell it, we live in the era of the bad dad.

Stories about famous, successful men who submit to temptation and harm their family lives in the process certainly make great headlines and Internet fodder, as do the divorces that often follow.

Lost in the obsession over this handful of episodes is the fact that research shows that most fathers are heavily invested in their kids’ lives and that their presence is vital.

Fathers Day: Dads are very important, and every child should have one in their lives

This is the day for fathers and their children to celebrate that they have each other.

There is much to celebrate. Dads are enormously important. They understand boys as only a former boy can, and can offer guidance and examples that only a male can provide. They teach daughters things a man understands better than a woman, and help them get ready to have healthy relationships with males.

On Father’s Day, honoring the single dads who step up

Most days, it sure doesn’t feel to Mark Hertle like he’s part of one of society’s hottest trends. Take what is supposed to be a routine part of parenting: the PTA meeting.

“I go in to those meetings, and I’m still viewed with some suspicion,” Hertle says. “It’s like: Why am I there? Am I cruising for a date or something? It’s just a little bit of a sense you get, that you’re an outlier.” Yet in that often thankless duty of child-rearing, they say nobody is stepping up these days more than dads like Hertle. By which I mean: single dads.

Read more: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com

One in Four U.S. Children Raised by Single Parent

04/29/2011 Donna Comments 0 Comment

MIAMI (AP) — One in four children in the United States is being raised by a single parent — a percentage that has been on the rise and is higher than other developed countries, according to a report released Wednesday.

Of the 27 industrialized countries studied by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. had 25.8 percent of children being raised by a single parent, compared with an average of 14.9 percent across the other countries.

The United Kingdom was second (21.5 percent) followed by New Zealand (23.7 percent). Greece, Spain, Italy and Luxemborg had among the lowest percentages of children in single-parent homes.

Experts point to a variety of factors to explain the high U.S. figure, including a cultural shift toward greater acceptance of single-parent child rearing. The U.S. also lacks policies to help support families, including childcare at work and national paid maternity leave, which are commonplace in other countries.

“When our parents married, there was a sense that you were marrying for life,” said Edward Zigler, founder and director of Yale’s Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy. “That sense is not as prevalent.”

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