In 2008, 1.7 million. Angelina Jolie's parents, Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand, separated when the Mr. and Mrs. Smithactress was an infant. Mr. MORAN: It really was fascinating to us to see that sharp division because you're right, skeptics account for about four in 10 Americans. But I'm single in a category that rarely gets acknowledged. But he has been an active part in my son's life. Hes a better father than my father ever was.. I am stronger and I - exactly, I am empowered. Naturally, this would be case-by-case, but I think children should know both of their parents. And then there was part of me that thought: Well, this man has been sort of my friend and mentor, in a way, as my boss, and maybe he just wants to have a conversation. CONAN: Here's an email we have from Ashley(ph) in Anchorage. While 61% of single fathers living with no spouse or partner are white, this share is 49% for cohabiting single fathers. But what if another child wont stop annoying yours?Readmore, In November, this family adopted five young children from foster care. Even for those who did receive assistance, the amount was far less than the minimum theyd need to to stave off hardship like hunger, homelessness, and utility cut-offs. That often doesn't happen, and it doesn't mean that children who are raised by single mothers or in other arrangements somehow turn out inevitably wrong. 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. In 1960, Dunham's family moved to Hawaii, where she enrolled in college. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm actually not a single mother, but I represent juveniles accused of crime in the juvenile justice system. Mary Pols, thanks very much. I interviewed nearly two hundred colleagues, friends, professors, employers, acquaintances, and relatives, including her two children. And, you know, for me, I'm sort of I'm in the middle of movie screening. Men raised without fathers are equally successful in life. Dunham taught English, worked in rural development and consulted on microfinance projects. Founding ideals inspire liberal patriots:Im aspiring to be anti-racist and patriotic. And it - the sort of demonization or marginalization happens not only to the mothers, but to the children, as well. When articles about the book started coming out, they referred to his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, as simply "a white anthropologist from Kansas.". Once again, the quality of the relationships in a childs life determines his or her mental wellbeing. We can feel left out of social events. CONAN: I think that's what the survey was trying to find out. The history of the United States is filled with stories of single mothers raising successful men. I mean, some of their husbands have passed away. CONAN: Rich Moran, I wonder: Have you got any kind of database that can show whether attitudes have changed over the years? Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. And I was in Michigan at the time. 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. Ms. POLS: You know, I - well, first of all, I just have to say to the woman in Alaska that soon they will start brushing their own teeth and putting on their own pajamas, which is really a wonderful thing. Among all homeless families nationwide, about two thirds (60%) were headed by single women with children representing 21% of the total homeless population; nearly half were African Americans (49%). More often than not, when I tell people that Im a single mother by choice, they say Good for you!Politicians who recognize and support these shifts in the shapes of the American family will gain more votes. The number of single father households has increased about ninefold since 1960, from less than 300,000 to more than 2. . I wouldnt label it with the word positive as in positive aspects of boys growing up without fathers. I had a baby on my own at 40 because I decided that I had the rest of my life to find true love and partnership, but only a small window in which to conceive a child. Ones that come to mind would be Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover (completely orphaned at around age 9, somewhat raised by an uncle), Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton to some extent, Barack Obama mostly, and probably some of the 19th Century Presidents but I don't know enough about. You know, informed speculation would suggest probably the number was larger in the past than it is now, but still, when you have 69 percent saying it's bad for society, that's a large number and a fairly clear judgment. In 2019, 15 states had wait lists or had frozen their intake for child care assistance, with wait times ranging from 90 days to two years. Recently, Ms. McWilliams and I screened the film for teenagers at Williamsburg Charter High School in Brooklyn. In 1970, 31 percent of single-mother families were black, 68 percent were white, and 1 percent were "other race." In 2013, the figures were 30 percent black, 62 percent white, and 8 percent "other." Readers should bear in mind that the terms "unmarried . No, he doesn't have a father. Only 11% received cash benefits from TANF. Just over half (56%) of single fathers are white, as are 45% of single mothers and two-thirds (66%) of married fathers. The Times is introducing Well Family, a new online report with expanded coverage of parenting, childhood health and relationships to help every family live well.Readmore, I cant promise that our foster son can stay with us, but I can I try to prepare him for the possibility of leaving without adding to his fear. And at some point, I found this quote by her where - she was a single mother, and I think she may have had her child under somewhat unusual circumstances with someone who was a friend or something like that. About 59% fall into the first category; they have no spouse or partner in residence with them. But while the fact that the sons of single mothers struggle more than their daughters is the easy headline to take away from the work done by Professors Autor and Wasserman, its There's no dad here. Scott's biography of Obama's mother, A Singular Woman, traces Dunham's life and the relationship she had with her son, whose rise in the political world came largely after her death in 1995. (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main From academia to the policy world, most sensible people acknowledged the importance of strong and stable families for kids. But he has said he largely thanks his mother for the values that led him to the work he now does. His father didn't abandon his family, but Clinton never met his father. And it seemed so clear. on the sons of single parents, who are usually women. But my best guess is that these attitudes are based on personal experiences and just what they see. off: They have the highest poverty rate. Analysis of long-term time use data shows that fathers are narrowing the still sizable gap with mothers in the amount of time they spend with their children. I got it. But, you know, people are going to think what they're going to think, and you just kind of have to get back to doing what you're doing, which is working really hard for your child. . These are the constellations that usually make us feel supported and part of a larger community. And it made me really sad because my son loved this boy. Sometimes dads have - kids have two dads. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Psychology Today 2023 Sussex Publishers, LLC. I do think that sociologically, it does have a lot to do with our culture and the way that our culture views women. Reviewed by Ekua Hagan. " [Having no contact with my father] helped show me what a strong woman my mother was, and made me want to be strong like her." Poverty is also linked with single fatherhood: More than one-third (36%) of fathers who are living at or below the poverty line are single parents. 79.5%. CONAN: Here's an email we have from Cynthia(ph) in Billings. SHELLY (Caller): Hi. And the other thing is a lot of the women I work - or the mothers I see, they're not single mothers by choice. And I'm sure that there are a lot of people in Janine's(ph) - excuse me, category, but I wonder, Mary Pols, if you sympathize with Lynn. And I loved the subtlety of the way that, you know, obviously Andy, I know he's an animated character, but he's a great kid, right. ADEL: Because a child without a father, you know, it's such an anomaly that it just doesn't even figure, much less for my son - it's a son - my son's experience in community sports. Stephen Colbert was raised by his mother, Lorna, after his father, James, and two brothers, Peter and Paul, died in a plane crash in 1974 when Colbert was 10 years old. You know, to me, I think a lot about the sort of lack of single-mother role models we have in our culture, and maybe because I'm a movie critic, I really latched on to the mother in "Toy Story.". But first, Rich Moran, senior editor at the Pew Research Center, joins us today from their offices in Washington. They know and believe in their hearts that, really, children are better off being raised by two loving parents. Ms. McWilliams begins the film with her own pregnancy and fearlessly records her. And comments like that, you know. And 18% of fathers living with no spouse or partner are Hispanic, while fully one-third (33%) of cohabiting fathers are. We all know heartbreak, the fear of becoming sick, or losing our income because our children rely solely on us. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. "She believed that he deserved the kind of opportunities that she had had [like] the opportunity to a great university," Scott says. 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. Three months pregnant with their child, she married him in 1961. No matter how you cut it ." Kamala Harris has also said that her mother, divorced and single, was her primary role model. She is currently working on a new book about the future of the family in America. January 17, 2007. When they look at the outcomes of single motherhood, you know, they see increase in drop-out rate, increase in poverty and an increase in children who go - who have their first child before 20 without being married. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. The nuclear family in the house across the street is still there, but different kinds of families live on the block, too: unmarried parents, gay parents, people who choose not to have children at all and, of course, single parents. Equally dramatic differences emerge at the other end of the education spectrum; just 17% of single fathers (and 18% of single mothers) have a bachelors degree, compared with 40% of married fathers. CONAN: Would you explain that - I'm sorry, Mary Pols, go ahead. (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax It is not possible to determine if these single fathers have full-time or part-time custody of their children using Census or American Community Survey data. Of course, there is a wide array of single mothers. When lives are reduced to numbers on a page, we are in danger of losing touch with our humanity. A record 8% of households with minor children in the United States are headed by a single father, up from just over 1% in 1960, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Decennial Census and American Community Survey data. 8. Her book is "Accidentally On Purpose: The True Tale of a Happy Single Mom." So when we say single mothers are bad for society, it's not the single mothers. When President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1963, 93 percent of American children were born to married parents. Thomas Jefferson was. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. 3 Myths of Children Raised by Single Mothers. The point was to raise my children. Without financial aid, single mother students have little or no means to contribute financially to their educational expenses. We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. However, single father householders differ from single mother householders on several indicators. Families headed by women of color fared even worse. and Wasserman or anyone else has a definitive explanation for the gender differences in outcomes. CONAN: All right, Paige, thanks very much for the call. Ms. McWilliams brothers, interviewed at her sons soccer game, gladly stepped into the father role for their nephew. Ms. POLS: But - so I do think there is a - there's just - there is a problem. And as you know, studies suggest the children pay the price. I met with bankers in glass towers in Jakarta where, nearly two decades before Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank shared the Nobel Peace Prize for their work with microcredit, Dunham worked on the largest self-sustaining commercial microfinance program in the world. The earthy figure in the photograph did not fit any of those. Single fathers, on average, have higher incomes than single mothers and are far less likely to be living at or below the poverty line24% versus 43%. And so we included things, as you mentioned: gay couples raising children, women deciding not to have children and single mothers raising children on their own without a male partner. Go to npr.org. Growing up in ideal circumstances doesnt guarantee happiness. The big one is is that people know single mothers. These details completely transform study outcomes. Rand Paul was vindicated this week regarding COVID. My reason was that I know how hard it is to be the sole economic and nurturing support and that our society does so little help. Nice to have you with us today. Statistics have their place in our society, but at the same time, they are broad strokes and not based on an individual case. The same pattern is reflected in poverty status across these household types. Mary Pols is a film reviewer and author. 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." Especially during the pandemic, I have had to find new reserves of strength. Wayward Sons, a report on the emerging gender gap in labor markets and education, from Third Way, They lack the paid-time-off-from-work entitlements that in comparison countries My children's lives are much less dysfunctional than they would be if their father was in their life. Anyway, Shelly, thanks very much for the call. And so my whole life, Ive tried to be for Michelle and my girls what my father was not for my mother and me, he told the graduates of Morehouse College in 2013. 3 Miracles Of Children Raised by Single Mothers 1. Right now, I'm just wondering if, you know, the Downeast Oil Company had deposited $600 more of oil into my furnace today while I've been gone and I'll have to pay it, but things are better. Sean Grover, L.C.S.W., is an author and psychotherapist who leads one of the largest group therapy practices in the United States. And I don't feel that way. And while 22% of fathers with no spouse or partner have a bachelors degree or more, the share of cohabiting fathers with this level of education is less than half that (10%). And I'll take the answer off the air. Men raised without fathers are equally successful in life. You know, my son's father is, you know, he's in California. Mr. MORAN: Exactly right. 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. Single parent households in both the US and England have jumped from less than 10 percent in the 1970s to roughly 30 percent today. She is corn-fed, white-bread, whatever Kenya is not. And during that time, everybody that I met said: Well, you'll never get full custody. I was inspired by how genuine each of the men were. I have always tried to put on a brave face and emphasized the strength Ive gained from parenting on my own. She needed to be able to work to pay for the education she wanted for her son and her daughter. When we come back, we'll bring you an update on Libya. Scott's biography of Obama's mother, A Singular Woman, traces Dunham's life and the relationship she had with her son, whose rise in the political world came largely after her death in 1995. No one could doubt that President Obama understood how much fathers mattered for their kids. I devoted my life to being his mom. Alan's with us from Fulton, New York. Staying Single: What Most People Do If They Divorce After 50, A Psychological Diagnosis for People Who Lie About Everything. George Washington's mother, Mary, became a widow when he was 11. How do people treat you? When Kate Beckinsale was 5years old, her father, Richard Beckinsale, perished of a heart attack. It was impossible not to question, in that moment, the stereotype to which she had been expediently reduced: the white woman from Kansas. Had she lived, Dunham would have been sixty-six years old on January 20, 2009, when Barack Obama was sworn in as the fortyfourth president of the United States. Single fathers are more likely than single mothers to be living with a cohabiting partner (41% versus 16%). 7 Among those who were laid off or looking for work, less than a quarter (22.4%) received unemployment benefits. 2 Today 1 in 4 children under the age of 18 a total of about 13 million are being raised without a father. I drove across the Flint Hills of Kansas to the former oil boomtowns where her parents grew up during the Depression. Families headed by single mothers are among the poorest households, more than a third lived in poverty, and as such, are extremely vulnerable to homelessness. I got to spend a year there studying film. IN A PERFECT WORLD drops the labels and proves that with the right support, role models and love, any child can succeed. make it easier for single parents to balance caregiving and jobholding. Its hard. How? Get the help you need from a therapist near youa FREE service from Psychology Today. Mr. MORAN: Basically, we surveyed nearly 3,000 Americans, and we wanted to test what people really thought the consequences of some of the bigger demographic trends that have reshaped the American family in the last 30 or 40 years are. Compared with fathers heading households with two married parents, single dads are younger, less educated, less financially well-off and less likely to be white. It doesn't mean you can't grow up to be president. Mr. RICH MORAN (Senior Editor, Pew Research Center): Thank you. Social science is usually messy, with correlation and causation difficult to separate. He's now a freshman in college. Ms. POLS: That would probably cause me to teeter right over into the skeptic group myself. The prevalence of poverty presents a more striking difference between the two groupswhile 21% of fathers who are living without a spouse or partner are in poverty, this share rises to 30% for fathers who are living with a partner. Of all single-parent families in the U.S., single mothers make up the majority. Reprinted by arrangement with Riverhead, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. First Family Fabrics: Batiks From Obama's Mother, Indonesia And Obama's Personal Path To Democracy, President's Sister Pays Homage To Mother In Children's Book, Obama's Sister: U.S. To See A Family Tapestry. Email us, talk@npr.org. Will Democrats and Big Tech ever apologize? I am still raising my son, but he sees my commitment to several activities that keep me calm and balanced. In raw and unscripted interviews, each man opens his heart, sheds tears about his mothers struggle, and expresses how his mother remains a constant source of inspiration. You know, is that why you're at this party? Someof the most influential people in the world wereeven raised by a strong single mother. Among the 14 states not expanding Medicaid coverage, the median eligibility level for parents is just 44% FPL, with only two (2) states Tennessee, and Wisconsin, covering parents with incomes at or near poverty. And even though divorce rates have leveled off in recent decades, they remain higher than they were in the 1960s and 1970s. In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment and Motherhood, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Legal Momentum, a womens legal defense and education fund, writes that the U.S. does much less than its high-income peers to assure single-parent families basic economic security, and much less 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. The biggest problem with the fatherlessness label is that it oversimplified. As a result, men make up a growing share of single parent householders.2 In 1960, about 14% of single parent households were headed by fathers, today almost one-quarter (24%) are. CONAN: Let's see if we can get Alan(ph) on the line. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ DellAntonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our familiesand Among children living with mother only, 38.1% lived in poverty. I wish I had time to myself. Since 1990, the Census Bureau has collected data not only on the marital status of household heads, but also information regarding whether the head was living with a non-marital partner. So, you know, I feel strangely lucky, and I know that's not what the perception is, you know, that I think single mothers are sort of looked at as people who have failed on some very deep level, that they have not mated off with a man, or they mated off with a man, and then he said: Honey, I'm out of here. The history of the United States is filled with stories of single mothers raising successful men. ALAN: Well, single fathers run into some of the same things that I've been hearing on the show, that, you know, just the way that you can actually do that by yourself, you know, without a woman around, in your case with a single mom, without a man around and so forth. A year later, he was approached by a literary agent, who asked if he would be interested in writing an autobiography about his life. She carried her chin a few degrees higher than most. To all parents: Dont break the bank to send your kids to their dream school, What a new dad learned in COVID lockdown about politics, responsibility and 'women's work', Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. and statistics regarding growing educational and economic disparities between men and women, and changes in family structure, and found that the decline of two-parent households is particularly hard 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. Fathers who are living in a household headed by someone else are excluded from the analysis, as are fathers whose children are not living with them. A new Pew Research poll found that among all those possible configurations, moms raising kids on their own are considered bad for society. [Obama] said that he did think of her as a bit that way, but he didn't think of it as a pejorative. College student:I was in quarantine on campus. A new Pew Research poll asked Americans about these trends and found almost 70 percent believe that single women raising children on their own is bad for society. She had an Indonesian daughter and an Indonesian husband at the time. The issue is the outcomes that come from a child being raised by just one parent. About 4 out 10 children were born to unwed mothers. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. We're in Maine now. About 40% of U.S. single parents were employed in low-wage jobs and often had no access to paid leave. Student borrowers advocate Biden debt relief program amid Supreme Court battle, Trump and DeSantis attend dueling Republican conferences as GOP primary field heats up, China will target the US homeland in war over Taiwan, Army leader predicts, Users recoil at new iPhone feature that slows charging when clean energy isn't used. How do people treat you? No one not Professors Autor Heres what she had to say: Do you think there are any positive aspects of boys growing up without fathers? Ironically, the work of another scholar just across the Harvard campus from Cross, Raj Chetty, also refutes the idea that Black fathers dont matter. Rachel Lehmann-Haupt is an author of "In Her Own Sweet Time: Unexpected Adventures in Finding Love, Commitment and Motherhood," and a single mother by choice. Across all income levels, single mothers are the group more likely to lack health insurance but the uninsured rates among single mothers have fallen in recent years thanks to Obamacare. Single fathers are younger than married fathers, but older than single mothers. a center-left policy research organization, presents exactly that kind of opportunity. I was 39 when I had my son, and I was just a month shy of 40. And - but when I went back six months later, I did. This is what makes the new documentary IN A PERFECT WORLD such an important and timely film. 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. Beaver Cleaver would have trouble recognizing the typical American family today. In the capsule version of Obama's life story, she is the white mother from Kansas coupled alliteratively with the black father from Kenya. There are some notable differences between single mothers and single fathers. He's just gone. Maybe he's just curious about how a 39-year-old woman goes about such a decision. First and foremost, there has been a marked increase in the share of non-marital births. Median adjusted annual income5 for a single dad household of three is about $40,000a far cry from the $70,000 median among households headed by married fathers, but much higher than that of households headed by single mothers, where the median adjusted annual income for a three-person household is only $26,000. The men featured IN A PERFECT WORLD quietly grew into and embraced their role of dad. And when I - you know, when I heard the Pew Institute study that single motherhood is bad for society, I found that statement really problematic as though it's the mother's fault. We're talking with Mary Pols, who's the author of "Accidentally On Purpose: The True Tale Of A Happy Single Mother." The American family looks a little different now than it did in the days of Ward and June Cleaver. And boy, there's a lot of emails coming in. The children of lower-income parents are ever more 6 Half have one child, 30% have two. With billions confined to their homes worldwide, which living arrangements are most common? Follow them on Twitter:@bradwilcoxIFSand@IanVRowe. Each week, we send out a newsletter containing the news and headlines that matter most to parents. Single mothers earn income that place them well below married mothers in the income ladder. Fully 30% of cohabiting single fathers are younger than 30, compared with only 10% of those who are not living with a spouse or partner. [There were] long descriptions of his father's family history. In 1985, she wrote a list of her long-range goals, which included "finish[ing] her dissertation, making a salary of 60K, los[ing] weight and having constructive dialogue with Barry" a nickname used for the junior Barack Obama. Some married two-parent households include a step-parent. But. For children born to mothers with less than a high school education, growing up in a married household doesn't make as much of a difference: 67.9% of children growing up in unmarried households . support receipt. Can we have a play date with him? 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. I decided: Im just going to own this. Moammar Gadhafi told Libyan state television today that the protesters - many of them young people -are motivated by hallucinogens supplied by al-Qaida. It's the very definition of a vicious cycle, and anecdotes about personal experience or presidents raised by single mothers can't change the numbers or explain them. of the news media for weeks comes down to this same problem: Its difficult to raise children in a society that assumes theres a parent at home, and one in which the guiding philosophy for supporting associated with poor health in middle age, financial hardship and depression. She was raised solely by her mother Judy Loe for the next four years until Loe remarried. Men who grew up without fathers can be outstanding parents. By the time her son is a toddler, his fathers smile is fading and soon he is missing entirely. The increase in single father households is likely due to a number of factors, most of which have also contributed to the increase in single mother households, and to the decline of two-married-parent households.