Responsible Fatherhood

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.

In 2008 in the United States there were an estimated 28 million children growing up in households without fathers.