Single Mothers, the Children, their Homes and the obvious case for Equal Shared Parenting
Compiled by Paul Clements FRA (US)
37.8% of single mothers are divorced, 41% never married, and only 6.5% widows.
Brookings Institute, “Assessing the Impact of Welfare Reform on Single Mothers”, Part 2, 3/22/04
“The strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison, is that they were raised by a single parent”.
C.C. Harper and S.S. McLanahan, “Father Absence and Youth Incarceration”, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Assoc., San Francisco, CA, 1998
In 1996, 70% of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long sentences, were raised by single mothers. Wade Horn, “Why There Is No Substitute For Parents”, IMPRIMIS 26, NO.6, June, 1997
72% of juvenile murderers, and 60% of rapists came from single mother homes.
Chuck Colson, “How Shall We Live?” Tyndale House , 2004, p.323
70% of teen births occur to girls in single mother homes.
David T. Lykken, “Reconstructing Fathers”, American Psychologist 55, 681,681, 2000
70% of drop-outs, and 70% of teen suicides come from single mother homes.
Wade Horn, “Why There Is No Substitute For Parents,” IMPRIMIS 26, N0. 6, June 1997
70% of runaways, 70% of juvenile delinquents, and 70% of Child murderers, come from single mother homes.
Richard E. Redding, “It’s Really About Sex”, Duke Univ. Journal of Gender Law and Policy, Jan.1, 2008
“Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous, and more likely to end up divorced.”
Wade Horn, “Why There Is No Substitute For Parents”, IMPRIMIS 26, No.6, June, 1997
“After controlling for single motherhood, the difference between black and white crime rates disappeared.”
Progressive Policy Institute, 1990, quoted by David Blankenhorn, “Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem,” New York, Harper Perennial, 1996, p.31
63% of all youth suicides,
70% of all teen pregnancies,
71% of all adolescent chemical/substance abusers,
80% of all prison inmates, and
90% of all homeless and runaway children came from single mother homes.
Bob Ray Sanders, “Hey Y’all, Let’s Fill The Hall (Of Fame), Ft. Worth Star Telegram, Oct.28,2007
Mona Charen, “More Good News Than Bad?”, Washington Times, Mar.16, 2001 (citing Bill Bennett, “The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators: American society at the end of the 20th Century., New York, Broadway Books, 1994)
Children brought up in single mother homes are:
5 times more likely to commit suicide,
9 times more likely to drop out of high school,
10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances,
14 times more likely to commit rape,
20 times more likely to end up in prison,
32 times more likely to run away from home.
Chuck Eddy, “The Daddy Shady Show”, Village Voice, Dec. 31, 2002
“America has more than twice as many teenage births as other developed nations.”
Isabel V.Sawhill, to House Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Human Resources, June 29, 1999
86% of American teen births are out of wedlock.
Dr. David Popenoe, “The Future of Marriage In America”, Rutgers Univ., The National Marriage Project, 2007
600,000 out of wedlock births in 1979.
Patrick Fagan and William H.G.Fitzgerald, “Why Serious Welfare Reform Must Include Serious Adoption Reform. Heritage Foundation Reports, July 27, 1995
Less than 1% of children born to never married women were placed for adoption from 1989 to 1995.
U.S. DHHS, Child Welfare Information Gateway, “Voluntary Relinquishment For Adoption, Numbers and trends, 2005
In 2003, there were 1.5 Million unwed births, and less than 1% were put up for adoption.
Fagan and Fitzgerald (above)
Only 4% of college graduates have illegitimate children, and only 16% of college graduates get divorced, compared to 46% of high school dropouts, who marry in smaller numbers to begin with.
Dr. David Popenoe, “The Future Of Marriage In America; “The Frayed Knot – Marriage in America”, The Economist, May 26, 2007
50% of single mothers are below the poverty line, their children are 6 times more likely to be in poverty than children with married parents.
Chuck Colson, “How Shall We Live”, Tyndale House.
85% of homeless families are single mother families.
Barry H. Waldman and Stephen P. Perlman, “Homeless Children With Disabilities, “ The Exceptional Parent, June 1, 2008 (American Academy of Developmental Medicine and Dentistry
90% of welfare recipients are single mothers.
Jason DeParle, “Raising Kevion”, New York Times, Aug. 22, 2004
There were 3 million single mothers in 1970 and 10 million in 2003.
U.S. Census, Table FM-2, All Parent/Child Situations, by Type, Race, and Hispanic origin of Householder, 1970 to 2003
The illegitimacy rate went up more than 300% since 1970.
House Ways and Means Committee, Nonmarital Births to Adults and Teenagers and Federal Strategies to Reduce Nonmarital Pregnancies, appendix “M”, 2003
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