The number of single father households has increased about ninefold since 1960, from less than 300,000 to more than 2.6 million in 2011.1 In comparison, the number of single mother households increased more than fourfold during that time period, up to 8.6 million in 2011, from 1.9 million in 1960. I stopped sharing my news and felt intensely sad when I watched married pregnant women put on a pedestal. This is the case for fathers with same-sex and opposite-sex partners. I had to earn respect by proving that I could effectively raise my son on my own. About half (52%) are separated, divorced, widowed or never married and are living without a cohabiting partner; some (41%) are living with a non-marital partner; and a small share (7%) are married but living apart from their spouse.3. My news was often met with disdain by members of my family and advice from friends that I terminate my pregnancy. Hes a better father than my father ever was.. Ms. MARY POLS (Journalist, Time; Author, "Accidentally On Purpose"): Thank you, nice to be here. Median household income is adjusted using an equivalence scale that corrects for economies of scale, and is then standardized to represent a three-person household. We all come to single parenthood in different ways: some through divorce; some through the death of a spouse, and others, like myself, increasingly through personal choice. Well, how did you do that? Its my personal feeling that it's in the best interest of the child (boy or girl) that they can have a relationship with their father. What did you find inspirational about the interviews with men who grew up without fathers? How do people treat you? One thing that we don't want to do is attempt to demonize single mothers or necessarily demonize the American public. Fifty-three percent are solo mothers, who tend to vote Democrat, and the majority are part of the vast millennial generation ranging from age 24to 39. You're in a very fortunate situation, and you are lucky, as is your son. Email us, talk@npr.org. And, you know, when my son was about a year old, I applied for a fellowship at Stanford. Single fathers are much less likely to be black15% areas compared with single mothers (28%), but more likely to be black than fathers in married two-parent households (7%). Stay with us. We as a society can do better for children raised by single mothers and for families headed by single parents in general. economists David H. Autor and Melanie Wasserman took a deep dive into the economic trends, research No, he doesn't have a father. With billions confined to their homes worldwide, which living arrangements are most common? and Wasserman or anyone else has a definitive explanation for the gender differences in outcomes. 79.5%. I'm currently in graduate school in Washington. CONAN: All right, Paige, thanks very much for the call. President Barack Obama was raised by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, from the time that he was born until he was 4 years old, when she married Lolo Soetoro. Catch up on any essays, posts and CONAN: And broadly, the groups broke into three categories: accepters, rejecters and, in the middle, people you call skeptics. Some married two-parent households include a step-parent. She carried her chin a few degrees higher than most. They gave me a bag lunch and little help. She needed to be able to work to pay for the education she wanted for her son and her daughter. She went back to Indonesia during that period and confided to a friend how distraught and upset she was to be reduced to one sentence. And I wonder if you think she's right about that? And I kept asking the parents, and I knew that they were, you know, they were very religious people, and I felt that when I had explained my situation to them, they had looked somewhat askance on me. Fatherless boys suffer from anger issues or depression. I would say in the grand scheme of things, I turned out okay. Today the number has dropped to 59 percent. to raise our children and financially support them at the same time. Mr. MORAN: Interesting. One third graduated with a college degree, while one sixth had not completed high school. Mr. MORAN: We can say with some degree of confidence that on a number of the other trends that attitudes have grown more tolerant over the years. Her form was well padded, territory ceded long ago to the pleasures of appetite and the forces of anatomical destiny. Several famous actors, actresses, musicians, and athletes were raised by single mothers. ALAN: I had the opposite. In fact, it is their history that fuels their determination to honor and love their own sons and daughters even more. He's just gone. Almost one third (24.3%) of single mother families were food insecure, 12 about one-ninth (11.7%) used food pantries, one third spent more than half their income on housing, which is generally considered the threshold for severe housing cost burden.. Maybe he's just curious about how a 39-year-old woman goes about such a decision. Ms. POLS: I was just going to speculate that maybe right before they got the phone call from the pollster, they were watching one of the reality shows about unwed teenagers or something like that. CONAN: All right, Rich Moran, thanks very much for your time today, appreciate it. Tell us your story. Naturally, this would be case-by-case, but I think children should know both of their parents. Each of their stories were the very thing that pushed me to complete this film (which I did with my own savings and credit cards). So I feel like what happened for me as a single mother was basically kind of a continuation of that, and that's not to say that my friends treated me badly by any means but just that it is - it is a little awkward. But in fact, the story of presidents being raised by single mothers is as old as America itself. It doesn't mean you can't grow up to be president. I think that my half of the political spectrum the left half too often dismisses the importance of family structure, noted New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, responding to another of Chettys studies. But my best guess is that these attitudes are based on personal experiences and just what they see. Mr. MORAN: Good question. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more. I interviewed nearly two hundred colleagues, friends, professors, employers, acquaintances, and relatives, including her two children. Putnam But he has been an active part in my son's life. ", The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother. "And she believed that he would never get that if he didn't have a strong English-language education. "She made it look easy, though I know it never was.". Boys without fathers didnt choose their biological father, but they can choose their father figure, role model or mentor. I remember my boss calling me into his office, and we were talking about it, and, you know, maybe I was four months pregnant or something like that. (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax Black boys are almost half as likely to end up incarcerated (14% for intact; 23% for single parent) and twice as likely to go on and graduate from college (21% for intact; 12% for single parent) if they are raised in a home with their two parents,compared to boys raised by just one parent. That's really irritating, and it's so not true of what we're feeling out here in the world. Stay with us. ", On interviewing President Obama for the book, "I asked him about the [implication left] by his book that his mother was sort of a naive idealist something that comes through in the way he talks and sometimes in the way other family members talk about her. It just means that the chances - the likelihood that bad things will happen is increased if you grow up in a single-parent household. WATCH LIVE: Merrick Garland testifies before Senate Judiciary Committee, The Left's utopian open border policies are unsustainable, No bail and no brains: Seattle judge releases accused mass shooter. Four years later, Obama moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents while his mother stayed in Indonesia with her second husband and daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng. I combed through tattered field notebooks, boxes of personal and professional papers, letters to friends, photo albums, the archives of the Ford Foundation in Midtown Manhattan, and the thousand-page thesis that took Dunham fifteen years to complete. She returned to Honolulu in 1963; she and Obama divorced in 1964. This Harvard research is part and parcel of a larger effort to call into question the idea that married, two-parent families matter not just for Black children but, indeed, all children. Three months pregnant with their child, she married him in 1961. And in the fevered imaginings of supermarket tabloids and the Internet, she is the atheist, the Marxist, the flower child, the mother who "abandoned" her son or duped the state of Hawaii into issuing a birth certificate for her Kenyanborn baby, on the off chance that he might want to be president someday. The most remarkable and inspiring aspect of the film is the hope it conveys. That's at npr.org. You know, if a - one of my clients, you know, gets kicked out of school for getting into a school fight and has to go to court, the judge blames the mom, says you're not putting in the family structure in place to keep your child well-behaved, and that kid usually gets adjudicated delinquent, is on probation for 12 months, gets into another fight, and they're stuck in the system. Janny Scott was a reporter for The New York Times from 1994 to 2008. College student:I was in quarantine on campus. headed by single mothers. CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Does a Dog's Head Shape Predict How Smart It Is? No matter the route and circumstances, all single parents share a common ground. Research like this has kept some influential thinkers and journalists on the left defending the scientific consensus about marriage, fatherhood, and family. Who Is The Coolest Actor In The World Right Now? I personally have never let statistics dictate my life, nor my sons future. In other words, poor black boys in neighborhoods with lots of Black fathers were significantly more likely to realize the American Dream. Single mothers earn income that place them well below married mothers in the income ladder. He was raised by his mother May Smith until he was 4 years old, at which point his grandparents took over the primary parenting responsibilities. Among children living with mother only, 38.1% lived in poverty. In 1972, Scott says, Dunham rejoined her son in Hawaii and stayed there during his middle school years. People tended to either pity me or expect me to bounce back rapidly. NPR's Tom Gjelten will join us with the latest, plus we'll wrap up our series on Oscar-nominated documentaries with Josh Fox, director of "Gasland." And I'm going to be a good mother, and I'm so excited to hear that somebody's got an upstanding freshman in college, a single mother. columns you've missed along with book reviews and family news from the Times and elsewhere, all free. 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