• 21
  • October
    2011

When most people hear about a single parent raising a child alone, they picture a woman. While single mothers may have been the norm, there has been a definite increase in single fathers. According to the 2010 census, in the last 10 years there has been a 27 percent increase in families led by a single father -- almost three times the growth of households headed by single moms.

In 1950, single dads -- something only seen on shows like My Three Sons and Andy Griffith -- accounted for only 1.1 percent of all households. Fifty years later, that number had grown to 6.3 percent. And now, just ten years later, it has jumped once again: 8 percent of all American households with children are parented by a single father.

Single mothers are still more predominant than single fathers, but this increasing growth shows a shift in single-parent families. Experts say that greater acceptance of unmarried couples and shared custody arrangements have changed traditional child-rearing ideas. They believe that as the nation becomes more accepting of nontraditional families and as more mothers enter the workforce, single dads will continue to become more involved in the lives of their children and there will continue to be a rise in households led by single fathers.

Part of this shift has been led by the fact that fathers are becoming more successful in court. A family law professor at the University of Notre Dame noted, "If the dad is really interested in getting custody and wants to have a relationship with his kids, he is far more successful than he was 20 years ago."

Before 1973, men were typically only granted custody if the mother was dead, in jail or mentally ill. Absent one of those three situations, the presumption was the mother was a better caregiver. But that is no longer the case. In fact, state custody records actually show that custody by single fathers has grown by almost 40 percent in the last decade -- suggesting that the census data doesn't have the whole picture.

Source: "Single-Dad Courtroom Wins Show Greater Embrace of New Families."