With the expansion of the internet since the end of the last century, a vast resource of articles is available online. More are published daily on every topic conceivable, from how to grow daffodils to trends in society; publishers are struggling to keep their doors open with the shift from industrial to technological era and the trends that accompany it.
Examples of what is available by way of articles on cause of the rise in single parenting include the source of the Population reference bureau online. An article available on their website; The Rise – and Fall? – of Single-Parent Families by Bill O’Hare, outlines interesting factors contributing to the rise of single parenting over the last decades. Bill is a coordinator of Kids Count, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in Baltimore, Maryland.
According to his research, data from the 2000 Census have been misleading regarding the extent of the rise in single-parent families. Census data revealed that single women headed households increased three times as fast as married-couple families.
Bill writes that; ‘Over the last five years, it appears that the yearly increases in single-parent families that defined the U.S. landscape for more than 40 years have ended. The share of children born to unmarried mothers has stabilized, the divorce rate continues to fall, and the share of children living in single-parent families has stabilized and inched downward.’
This vastly changes the perception of what one may expect when reading factual articles on cause of the rise in single parenting online.
Single parenting trends analysis
After the 1950′s the amount of children living in single-parent families increased with 1960 Census reporting 9 % of children living in single-parent families compared with the 28 % rise at the turn of the century. Data from the 1990 Census show that more than half the kids in large cities such as Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C., lived in single-parent families.
Articles on cause of the rise in single parenting also report two major demographic trends appearing to be identified as causes for the rise in single parenthood over this period, aside general population inflation. The first being a big increase in births to unmarried women and the second an increased rate of divorce. Today one-third of all births occur to unmarried women. Children may also become part of single-parent families through the loss of a parent though widowhood has been a relatively minor factor for the past 50 years.
Bill’s research goes on to show that the amount o children in single parent families over the past ten years in early 1990′s shows a continuation of the trend until 1995 when the percentage stabilises and edges downward in 2000. Three separate trends make up this one and result in that between 1996 and 2000, the share of children living with a never-married parent rose.
Such statistics may, when looked at out of context, contribute to perceptions through articles on cause of the rise in single parenting that the trends are consistent. However, this increase was outweighed by a drop in the share living with a divorced parent. Whilst the share living with a widowed parent remained constant, the number of children living with never-married parents increased by 400,000. However this was offset by a decline of 1 million kids living with divorced parents. The combination of these trends resulted in a smaller share of kids living with a single parent by 2000.
The role of government
Bill continues to show that public interest in these children’s’ living arrangements arises that growing up in single-parent households; they may have fewer resources available. 42 % of children in female-headed families were poor in 1999 in comparison to 8 percent of children in married-couple families.
As far as articles on cause of the rise in single parenting go, information relating to policy in this regard shows that the consistent rise in divorce and single parenting led some policymakers to seek appropriate policy interventions for solution. Federal and state welfare reform legislation began to employ measures to assist in prevention such as the federal welfare reform law passed in 1996 rewards states for lowering out-of-wedlock births.
Congress recently decided to phase out the “marriage tax” and increase the per child tax credit to assist in reducing financial stress on families. President Bush’s budget, for example provided $64 million in fiscal year 2002 to fund community and religious groups that promote fatherhood, marriage education, and conflict resolution.
Articles on cause of the rise in single parenting further show that the state of Louisiana allows couples to select a “covenant marriage,” which makes it more difficult for s to obtain a divorce while last year Oklahoma’s governor announced a $10 million initiative to reduce his state’s divorce rate by one-third by 2010.
‘It is unclear whether the recent changes in the percentage of children living in single-parent families reflect a temporary lull in the upward movement or a reversal of a long-term trend.’ Bill says. ‘Also, it is not clear whether improvement is happening across the nation or is a product of increases in some places balanced by declines elsewhere.’
Decomposition of trends in various geographic areas in some articles on cause of the rise in single parenting among different groups, may assist us to understand the implications of the momentous national changes witnessed during the 1990s.
Morality and the rise in single parenting
Articles on cause of the rise in single parenting online include such samples as Michelle V Roberts’; The Rise in Single Parent Families. Michelle has is a Master of Science Degree in Human Services and is pursuing a PhD in Human Service Administration. She has worked in the human services field for over 12 years and is Founder and Executive Director of It Takes The Village Respite Care (ITTV) inc
According to Michelle, there are numerous, well-documented studies indicating how the fundamental structure of American families has been revolutionized. Traditional family structures changed since the 1950′s to include the roles of women around the 70′s and 80s, with the spike being prominent between 1979 and 2003. Causes shift with values and social morality has also contributed to the figures.
Articles on cause of the rise in single parenting in the past century would have alluded primarily to death of a spouse as being the cause however divorce and illegitimacy were added as the decades continued. Reports indicate that one in every four children is born out of wedlock, many of them being born to teenage mothers. Now, though most women still want to marry, they know they don’t really need to have children.
On Examiner.com, Anna Sargent and Alexandria Singles’: Single parents on the rise
In the article they cite the New York Time’s Business Economix section by Catherine Rampell, “Across the industrialized world, about 15.9 percent of children live in single-parent households. The United States is at the higher end of the single-parent spectrum, with 25.8 percent of its children living with just a mother or a father”.
In the end, articles on cause of the rise in single parenting such as this outline how good parents have two major things in common their love for their children and wanting the best for them as being a common ground for good parenting in any circumstances. Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Andrew Jackson and Herbert Hoover are all prime examples of what single parent households can achieve.
Articles on cause of the rise in single parenting: the expert’s conclusion
David T. Ellwood and Christopher Jencks from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University add to resources examples of articles on cause of the rise in single parenting. Their contribution; The Spread of Single-Parent Families in the United States since 1960 was supported by Russell Sage Foundation’s New Inequality Program.
They look at how the spread of single-parent families has been an intellectual challenge and a source of persistent frustration for social scientists. Some of the nation’s most influential social theorists have presented a large body of empirical research with no consensus about why single parenthood spread or why it spread faster in some populations than others.
This paper examines changes in American families with children over the course of the twentieth century and raise questions attempting to tie al their predecessor’s research together. In the end their contribution to articles on cause of the rise in single parenting shows that improved job opportunities may be an answer to increasing marriage among men but is more ambiguous about the effects of female labor market opportunities.
The authors explain that; ‘Contraceptive technology, access to abortion, and attitudes regarding premarital sex and the family all changed during in the 1960s and early 1970s, but family change continued well into the 1990s. This could be because technical, legal, and attitudinal changes just take a long time to exert their full influence, but it could also mean that other factors were at work. Yet if one takes a broad view of the trends and findings, we believe a fairly plausible hypothesis emerges. Like Sweeney (2002), we think that the relationship between economic opportunity and marriage has changed over the years. ‘
Finally, three factors that should emerge in most articles on cause of the rise in single parenting likely to have altered preferred timing of marriage and parenthood include;
- the pill;
- legalised abortion;
- sex outside of marriage; and
- gender role expectations.
The article continues to cover economic opportunities of improvement for college-educated women, the dynamics of economically attractive mates and other contributing factors roles. On the whole, they conclude that the changing nature of America’s families remains mostly a set of puzzles but with enough empirical information trends emerge which can assist to make sense of this. As time passes, articles on cause of the rise in single parenting will slowly begin to reflect these trends and incorporate a broader, less stigmatic viewpoint on the topic at hand.