INTRODUCTION
The proportion of children living in single-parent families has increased markedly around the world since 1960, and this increase has been especially significant in the United States (Burns, 1992; Hobbs and Lippman, 1990). The United States has a higher proportion of single-parent households than that of any other developed country. The proportion of children in the United States living with only one parent increased from 9.1% in 1960 to 28% in 1997 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998).
Although there are differences in the prevalence of single-parent families across ethnic groups, with nearly 47% of African American children living in single-parent families, this increase has affected all groups of Americans (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000). Given current divorce and remarriage trends, demographers predict that more than half of all America’s children will spend some part of their formative years in a single-parent family (Ahlburg and DeVita, 1992; Bianchi, 1995).
For observers on the national scene in the early 1990s, this changing family pattern was viewed as particularly alarming. Considered a prime symptom of the erosion of American culture, single-parent families were reputed by many to be responsible for society’s declining values and the breakdown of the social fabric. In an Atlantic magazine article entitled “Dan Quayle was right,” Whitehead (1993, p. 77) characterized the family disruption associated with the rise in single-parent families as “a central cause of many of our most vexing social problems.” Indeed, the term single-parent family became almost a euphemism for family breakdown, a kind of social pathology, and a major contributor to all that is wrong with our society (Kamerman and Kahn, 1988).
To some extent, this alarmist view of the early 1990s contains a grain of truth. A wide range of research from sociologists and psychologists has shown that children of single-parent families are more likely to have difficulties with emotional and psychological adjustment and with school performance and educational attainment, and they are also more likely to have behavioral adjustment problems, later marriage, and earlier childbearing compared with children of two-parent families.
Because single-parent children appear more vulnerable to a wide variety of societal problems, these 109
children have been routinely referred to as at risk for developmental difficulties. However, new studies that have appeared within the past decade are raising questions about these families and whether or not children growing up in single-parent families are necessarily at risk, particularly in the child’s early years (e.g., Ricciuti, 1999).
To say that a child is at risk is a statistical statement, indicating that, probabilistically speaking, children in single-parent families are generally more likely to have developmental difficulties than other children are. One of the reasons children from single-parent families may be at risk is that single-parent families are also disproportionately poor compared with other families. According to Garfinkel and McLanahan (1986), no other major demographic group is so poor and no other group stays poor for so long. International studies show that poverty rates are higher among children in single-parent families than those in all other family types in every country studied (Hobbs and Lippman, 1990). Data from the 2000 census indicate that 34% of single-parent homes headed by a woman and 16% of single-parent families headed by a man live in poverty (June 2001 US Census Bureau). As a consequence of poverty alone, many children of single parents grow up in deteriorated and dangerous neighborhoods, often with inferior housing and educational systems. How much of the single-parent risk status is related to poverty and how much of the single-parent risk status is due to other factors also associated with single-parent families are questions with important psychological and social policy implications.
Increasingly, signs have emerged that perceptions and acceptance of single-parent families are changing. More and more single-parent families are emerging very visibly on the national scene, and the public has become more accustomed to seeing them. When Ingrid Bergman conceived a child out of wedlock in 1950, writers of the movie star columns were aghast, and Ingrid Bergman was effectively blackballed for nearly a decade from the American screen. In the 1990s, derision and concern greeted the television character Murphy Brown’s birth of her out-of-wedlock child.
However, in the year 2000, Madonna, a real-life rock star, birthed a baby son Rocco, and the event was greeted with as much joy and interest as the birth of any baby to a prominent rock star. Shortly after Rocco’s birth, Madonna married the child’s father; there may have been more interest in Madonna’s subsequent marriage than in the birth of her child. Could this be indicative of a changing view of nonmarital births? Could public perceptions of social clocks and developmental sequences of “first marriage, then baby carriage” be changing at the beginning of the twenty-first century?
Could changes in public perceptions of births to single parents also be related to changes in our understanding of the risks related to growing up in a single-parent home?
To unravel the multiple factors that may be related to our understanding of whether or not children of single-parent families are at at risk, it is necessary to identify the many similar and divergent characteristics of single-parent families. One of the most important characteristics of single-parent families and their children is their heterogeneity. Although about half of all children growing up in single-parent families live in poverty, many do not. Similarly, contrary to stereotypical views and journalistic ravings, not all single-mother families are on welfare. Although many single mothers draw funds from public assistance, more than half do not (Kamerman and Kahn, 1988).
The phenomenological experience of growing up in a single-parent family varies depending on the nature of the family, the experiences of the parent, and the family context. Single parents may be divorced, widowed, or unmarried; they may be teenaged or older; they may have been previously married or not. Although most single parents are women, the number of male single parents is increasing. Although legally single, some parents classified by Census statisticians and researchers as single may be living in a committed, partnered relationship not legally acknowledged (see Patterson, in Vol. 3 of this Handbook, for information about lesbian and gay parenting). These statistically single parents are often rearing their children in the context of a committed, partnered relationship.
For some single parents, becoming a single parent may have been a planned and conscious decision;
for others it was not. Some single parents may have chosen to have and to rear their children with another adult parent; they became single parents when this partnership did not work out, resulting
in divorce, separation, or widowhood. Other single parents may have decided to become parents knowing that they would be without partners. The commonality across these varied types of single parents is that the parent does not have a legally married partner in the home. How these individuals came to be parents, the choices they made, and the experiences that were thrust on them, all have differential implications for their family’s life circumstances.
Differences in how the parents came to be single parents affect individuals’ employment, their financial circumstances, their relationships with other adults, their involvement with their child, and their competence as parents. The etiology of the parent’s single parenthood also may have implications for the child’s perceptions and experiences growing up. For example, imagine that 10 children from different types of single-parent families are brought together to discuss their experiences. They would describe many common experiences, such as not having enough money, missing their mothers or fathers, and problems getting along with their single parent. These concerns, however, do not differ from those of children living in all families. Those issues that are unique to single-parent families are issues for which there are large individual differences across single-parent families. Depending on their age, children from recently divorced single-parent families might talk of anger at their parents’
separation, of fights between mom and dad over custody and child support, and about what happens on dad’s day for visitation (see Hetherington and Stanley-Hagan, in Vol. 3 of this Handbook, for more information about parenting in divorced and remarried families). Some children of divorce may wonder why dad and mom are not living together anymore; others may be relieved to be free finally from the marital discord. Children of widowed single parents may be mourning their parent’s loss, whereas children of adolescent single mothers may have difficulty with mom’s inexperienced and immature ways and wonder when mom will ever finish going to school. Children of never-married mothers may wonder about their father, who he is, and what he is like. Some children may be confused about who their fathers are, and why they are not around, whereas other children, albeit a minority, may be learning to live without a mother. Some children may feel isolated and alone, whereas others are living in cramped households, with not too much in the way of material goods but plenty of people to be with and love. Researchers need to unravel these various psychological experiences to understand what it is about the single-parent family that might contribute to the at-risk status of these children.
These issues are our foci in this chapter: to describe the changing demographics of single-parent families, to describe similarities and differences across parenting situations in single-parent families, and to explore some of the parenting factors that might be responsible for the at-risk status of children growing up in single families. In the first section, we consider the changing demographics of single-parent families over the past several decades. We show that not only is the number of single-single-parent families increasing, but also the circumstances that are responsible for the formation of single-parent families—divorce and separation, widowhood, and out-of-marriage births—are changing too. In the next section, we summarize the literature on parenting in common types of single-parent families—divorced single-parents, adolescent single-parents, and “not-married” mothers—with the intent of identifying parenting features both unique to these specific single-parent family types and common to single parents as a group. We examine in this section the differences between mother-headed and father-headed single-parent families. We suggest that single-parent families that arise from different circumstances differ in a number of important ways, and these differences need to be considered before any understanding of the more general effects of rearing children in a single-parent family is attained. In the third section, we consider research directions that appear especially promising.
Because so much critical attention has been focused on the effects on child development of growing up in a single-parent family (examples of excellent reviews include those of Herzog and Sudia, 1973; as well as Amato, 1988; Amato and Keith, 1991a, 1991b; Cashion, 1982; McLanahan and Bumpass, 1988; and Ricciuti, 1999), we direct our attention in this chapter to describing and understanding the situations single parents face during the time of their single parenthood and how these situations may influence their behavior toward their children.
Divorced
Never Married Widowed
Married, spouse absent
FIGURE 4.1. Percentage of children under 18 years of age living with one parent, by marital status of parent: 1970, 1980, 1990, and 1997. (Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, 2000.)
DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES IN SINGLE-PARENT FAMILY FORMATION
Not only has the prevalence of single-parent families changed over the past four decades, but so have the conditions that have lead to the formation of single-parent families (Amato, 2000; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992). As Figure 4.1 shows, in 1997 most children were in single-parent families, either mother or father headed, created by divorce or separation, and nearly 40% of children who were living in single-parent homes had parents who had never been married. However, what cannot be as easily discerned from Figure 4.1 is that the proportion of single-parent children living in a family created by divorce or separation (columns one and two combined) declined from 86% in 1970, to 73% in 1990, to 58% in 1997. Also declining, from 20% in 1970 to 5% in 1997, is the proportion of children living in single-parent families created by the death of a parent. Of all single-parent families, the most significant is the increase in children in single-parent families headed by a never-married parent. This group increased from approximately 6% in 1970, to 26% in 1990, to 37% in 1997.
This increase reflects both increases in births to unmarried individuals and single-parent adoptions.
In addition, the increase in the proportion of children living in a home with a never-married parent is partly a function of the decrease in the proportion of single-parent families created by divorce, separation, or the death of a parent. This increase may also reflect, not necessarily changes in attitudes toward marriage, but changes in women’s willingness to enter into marital unions that place them at serious economic and social disadvantage (Edin, 2000).1
Many women have children outside of marriage; the past few decades have seen fluctuations in the rates of nonmarital births. In the 1960s, nonmarital birthrates increased steadily, averaging 285,600 per year. This number quadrupled over the next two decades to approximately 1.1 million by 1990 and peaked in 1994 at nearly 1.3 million. However, since 1994, the rates of births to nonmarried women have been decreasing. Before a U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee hearing on Reducing Nonmarital Births, Stephanie Ventura (June, 1999), researcher and demographer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stressed the following four points regarding recent trends in nonmarital births:
“Nonmarital births skyrocketed from 1940–1990 but trends have stabilized in the 1990’s, with a decline since 1994. Teens are not the only women having nonmarital births; two-thirds of nonmarital births are to women 20 and older. Teen birth rates have declined considerably since 1991, with declines in all states and racial and ethnic groups. Nonmarital birth rates have fallen for all population groups, but most sharply for African American women.”
1At the same time, there is some suggestion that from 1996 to 2000, there have been increases in the incidence of single parents cohabiting with their unmarried spouses in response to new welfare regulations.
Although premarital births have been more common among African American women since at least the early 1960s, responsibility for the increase over the past 40 years in premarital births has been shared across racial groups. According to Ventura (1999), two trends have contributed to the rising numbers of premarital births. First, there has been a large increase in the number of unmarried women in the childbearing years, and, second, there has been a 40% decrease in birthrates for married women since 1940.
More interesting is the changing character of the women having out-of-marriage births. The largest percentage of increases in births outside of marriages has been for European American, em-ployed, college-educated women (Bachu, 1998). For a number of reasons—increased employment, delayed marriage, reduced likelihood of marriage, and delayed childbearing—single motherhood has increased dramatically among affluent and well-educated women. This trend for births outside of marriage has been particularly dramatic among mothers in managerial and professional occupa-tions, for whom the percentages more than doubled from 3.1% in 1980 to 8.2% in 1990. According to Bachu (1998), the “propensity to marry,” that is, the tendency to avoid an out-of-wedlock birth with a forced marriage, decreased most dramatically for European American women by over 30%
from the 1930s to the 1990s. The desire to marry to avoid an out-of-wedlock birth has historically been lower for African American women than for European American women, but the propensity to marry has also decreased for African American women (Bachu, 1998; Cherlin, 1998). The statistics of the declining propensity to marry partially symbolize the abating stigma associated with an out-of-wedlock birth and the concurrent financial gains women have made. Furthermore, for low-income women in general, they report that there are fewer eligible or appealing men to marry (Cherlin, 1998;
Edin, 2000).
As Figure 4.2 shows, the percentage of increase in women having children out of marriage is particularly large for older women, especially for women in their thirties. In fact, even though teen birthrates have fallen for all population groups, the drop in teen birthrates has been sharpest for African American women (Ventura, 1999). In 1975 one half of all nonmarital births were to teenagers. This number decreased to one third in 1997, largely because many women over 20 years old are having nonmarital births.
Across racial groups, the number of never-married single mothers increased by 9% between 1990 and 1997, the number of married but separated mothers decreased by 23%, and the number of mothers who were single because of divorce increased over this same time by 4%. However,
FIGURE 4.2. Percentage of increase in rates of live births to unmarried women by age of mother: 1980 to 1997.
overall the proportion of children living in single-parent homes headed by a mother has decreased since 1990. This is largely because the number of father-headed single-parent homes increased from 12% of all single-parent homes in 1990 to 18% in 1997. The large increase in the number of never-married single fathers has contributed to this growth. The number of never-never-married single-father families increased by 50%; the number of families of divorced single fathers with custody increased by one third. These general trends are mirrored within each of the ethnic groups.
At the same time, the number of single parents, both male and female, who adopted children increased dramatically in the 1980s (Groze, 1991). The majority of adoptions are by women.
Estimating the exact increase in single-parent adoptions is not possible because of differences in sampling strategies across studies, and the number of families of single parents who adopt chil-dren is still low compared with the number of single-parent households in the general population (Groze, 1991). Shireman (1995, 1996) and others (e.g., Feigelman and Silverman, 1977; Shireman and Johnson, 1976) have suggested that most single-parent adoptions are to women, and when single parents adopt they tend to adopt children of the same gender as themselves. Adoptions by single fathers are still uncommon, but adoptions by single mothers are not. In fact, in some places in the United States approximately 30% of all adoptions are to single women (V. Groza, personal com-munication, August 24, 2000). Perhaps as a consequence of the fact that most single adoptive parents are women, single-parent adoptive families tend to have lower incomes than dual-parent adoptive families (Groze, 1991; Shireman, 1996; Shireman and Johnson, 1976).
Finally, single parenthood is a transitional, not a permanent, status for many parents. Garfinkel and McLanahan (1986) estimate that the median length of time children spend in a mother-only family is approximately 6 years, approximately one third of the time most children remain in a household.
Whether this single-parent experience begins early in the child’s life or late may lead to very different experiences, with different consequences for parents and their children.
African American Families
Although the dramatic increase in single-parent families pervades all social strata and ethnic groups
Although the dramatic increase in single-parent families pervades all social strata and ethnic groups