A single parent is a person who has a child or children but does not have a spouse or live-in partner to assist in the upbringing or support of the child in household together. Reasons for becoming a single parent can include annulment, death, divorce, break-up, abandonment, domestic violence, rape, childbirth by a single person or single-person adoption. A single parent family is a family with children that is headed by a single parent.The Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia, Single-Parent Families, Sage Publications
History Single parenthood has been common historically due to parental mortality rate due to disease, wars, homicide, work accidents and maternal mortality. Historical estimates indicate that in French, English, or Spanish villages in the 17th and 18th centuries at least one-third of children lost one of their parents during childhood; in 19th-century Milan, about half of all children lost at least one parent by age 20; in 19th-century China, almost one-third of boys had lost one parent or both by the age of 15. Such single parenthood was often short in duration, since remarriage rates were high.Dupaquier J, Helin E, Laslett P, Livi-Bacci M, Marriage and remarriage in populations of the past, London: Academic Press, 1981.
Divorce was generally rare historically (although this depends on culture and era), and became especially difficult to obtain after the fall of the Roman Empire, in Medieval Europe, due to strong involvement of ecclesiastical courts in family life (though annulment and other forms of separation were more common).Kent's Commentaries on American Law, p. 125, n. 1 (14th ed. 1896).
Single parent adoptions have existed since the mid 19th century. Men were rarely considered as adoptive parents, and were considered far less desired. Often, children adopted by a single person were raised in pairs rather than alone, and many adoptions by lesbians and gay men were arranged as single parent adoptions. During the mid 19th century many state welfare officials made it difficult if not impossible for single persons to adopt, as agencies searched for married heterosexual couples. In 1965, the Los Angeles Bureau of Adoptions sought single African-Americans for African-American orphans for whom married families could not be found. In 1968, the Child Welfare League of America stated that married couples were preferred, but there were "exceptional circumstances" where single parent adoptions were permissible.
Demographics
Households Among all households in OECD countries in 2011, the proportion of single-parent households was in 3-11% the range, with an average of 7.5%. It was highest in Australia (10%), Canada (10%), Mexico (10%), United States (10%), Lithuania (10%), Costa Rica (11%), Latvia (11%) and New Zealand (11%), while it was lowest in Japan (3%), Greece (4%), Switzerland (4%), Bulgaria (5%), Croatia (5%), Germany (5%), Italy (5%) and Cyprus (5%). The proportion was 9% in both Ireland and the United Kingdom.OECD Family Database, SF1.1:Family size and household composition, OECD -Social Policy Division -Directorate of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, June 12, 2016.
Among households with children in 2005/09, the proportion of single-parent households was 10% in Japan, 16% in the Netherlands, 19% in Sweden, 20% in France, 22% in Denmark, 22% in Germany, 23% in Ireland, 25% in Canada, 25% in the United Kingdom, and 30% in the United States. The U.S. proportion increased from 20% in 1980 to 30% in 2008.
In all OECD countries, most single-parent households were headed by a mother. The proportion headed by a father varied between 9% and 25%. It was lowest in Estonia (9%), Costa Rica (10%), Cyprus (10%), Japan (10%), Ireland (10%) and the United Kingdom (12%), while it was highest in Norway (22%), Spain (23%), Sweden (24%), Romania (25%) and the United States (25%). These numbers were not provided for Canada, Australia or New Zealand.
Children In 2016/17, the proportion of children living in a single-parent household varied between 6% and 28% in the different OECD countries, with an OECD country average of 17%. It was lowest in Turkey (2015, 6%), Greece (8%), Croatia (8%) and Poland (10%), while it was highest in France (23%), United Kingdom (23%), Belgium (25%), Lithuania (25%), United States (27%) and Latvia (28%). It was 19% in Ireland and Canada.OECD -Social Policy Division -Directorate of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, OECD Family Database, Chart SF1.2.A. Living arrangements of children, 2017
Among children living in a single-parent household, most live primarily with their mother, others primarily with their father, while other children have a shared parenting arrangement where they spend an approximately equal amount of time with their two parents. Among those living primarily with one single parent, most live with their mother. In 2016 (or latest year available), the proportion of 6-12 year olds living primarily with their single father ranged between 5% and 36% among the different OECD countries. It was highest in Belgium (17%), Iceland (19%), Slovenia (20%), France (22%), Norway (23%) and Sweden (36%), while it was lowest in Lithuania (4%), Ireland (5%), Poland (5%), Estonia (7%), Austria (7%) and the United Kingdom (8%). It was 15% in the United States.OECD -Social Policy Division -Directorate of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, OECD Family Database, Table SF1.3.A. Living arrangements of children by age
In 2005/06, the proportion of 11- to 15-year-old children living in a shared parenting arrangement versus with only one of their parents varied between 1% and 17%, being the highest in Sweden. It was 5% in Ireland and the United States, and 7% in Canada and the United Kingdom.Bjarnason T, Arnarsson AA. Joint Physical Custody and Communication with Parents: A Cross-National Study of Children in 36 Western Countries , Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 2011, 42:871-890. By 2016/17, the percentage in Sweden had increased to 28%.Statistics Sweden, Barns boende (växelvis boende, hos mamma, hos pappa, etc.) 2012—2017, November 11, 2018.
Impact on parents Over 9.5 million American families are run by one woman. Single mothers are likely to have mental health issues, financial hardships, live in a low income area, and receive low levels of social support. All of these factors are taken into consideration when evaluating the mental health of single mothers. The occurrence of moderate to severe mental disability was more pronounced among single mothers at 28.7% compared to partnered mothers at 15.7%. These mental disabilities include but are not limited to anxiety and depression. Financial hardships also affect the mental health of single mothers. Women, ages 15–24, were more likely to live in a low socio-economic area, have one child, and not to have completed their senior year of high school. These women reported to be in the two lowest income areas, and their mental health was much poorer than those in higher income areas.
A similar study on the mental health of single mothers attempted to answer the question, "Are there differences in the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, between married, never-married, and separated/divorced mothers?" Statistically, never married, and separated/divorced mothers had the highest regularities of drug abuse, personality disorder and PTSD. The family structure can become a trigger for mental health issues in single mothers. They are especially at risk for having higher levels of depressive symptoms.
Studies from the 1970s showed that single mothers who are not financially stable are more likely to experience depression. In a more current study it was proven that financial strain was directly correlated with high levels of depression. Among low-income single mothers, depressive symptoms may be as high as 60%.
Inadequate access to mental health care services is prevalent amongst impoverished women. Low-income women are less likely to receive mental health care for numerous reasons. Mental health services remain inequitable for low-income, more so, low-income single women are more likely to have depression, anxiety, and other poor mental health outcomes. Researchers Copeland and Snyder (2011) addressed the barriers low-income single mothers have on receiving mental health care, "Visible barriers often include the lack of community resources, transportation, child care, convenient hours, and financial resources." Meanwhile, low-income single mothers are more likely to bring their children in for mental health treatment than themselves. Researchers Copeland and Snyder analyzed sixty-four African American mothers who brought their children in for mental health treatment. These mothers were then screened for mild, moderate, and severe depression and/or anxiety. After three months the researchers used an ethnographic interview to address whether or not the participants used mental health services that were referred to them. Results indicated that the majority of the participants did not use the referred mental health care services for reasons that included: fear of losing their children, being hospitalized and/or stigmatized by their community counterparts.Copeland, Valire C. & Kimberly Snyder. 2011. “Barriers to Mental Health Treatment Services for Low-Income African American Women Whose Children Receive Behavioral Health Services: An Ethnographic Investigation.” Social Work in Public Health 26:1, 78–95
Impact on children According to David Blankenhorn,Blankenhorn, 1995 D. Blankenhorn Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem Basic Books, New York (1995) Patrick Fagan, Mitch PearlsteinM. Pearlstein From Family Collapse to America's Decline: The Educational, Economic, and Social Costs of Family Disintegration Rowman & Littlefield, New York, NY (2011) David PopenoeD. Popenoe Families without Fathers: Fathers, Marriage, and Children in American Society Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ (2009) and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead,B.D. Whitehead The Divorce Culture Alfred Knopf, New York (1997) living in a single parent family is strongly correlated with school failure and problems of delinquency, drug use, teenage pregnancies, poverty, and welfare dependency in the United States. Using multilevel modelling, Suet-Ling Pong has shown that a high proportion of American children from single parent families perform poorly on mathematics and reading achievement tests.Pong SL. Family structure, school context, and eighth-grade math and reading achievement. Journal of Marriage and the Family. 1997 Aug 1:734-46.Pong SL. The school compositional effect of single parenthood on 10th-grade achievement. Sociology of education. 1998 Jan 1:23-42.
In Sweden, Emma Fransson et al. have shown that children living with one single parent have worse well-being in terms of physical health behavior, mental health, peer friendships, bullying, cultural activities, sports, and family relationships, compared to children from intact families. As a contrast, children in a shared parenting arrangement that live approximately equal amount of time with their divorced mother and father have about the same well-being as children from intact families and better outcomes than children with only one custodial parent.Fransson E, Låftman SB, Östberg V, Hjern A, Bergström M. The living conditions of children with shared residence–the Swedish example. Child Indicators Research. 2017 Jan:1-23.
The United Kingdom Office for National Statistics has reported that children of single parents, after controlling for other variables like family income, are more likely to have problems, including being twice as likely to have mental illness. Both British and American researchers show that children with no fathers are three times more likely to be unhappy, and are also more likely to engage in anti-social behavior, abuse substances and engage in juvenile deliquency. Widowed parents