State of the Family
State of Parent–Child Relationships
Around fifty years ago, children spent roughly 3–4 hours a day interacting with family members. Today, that number has dropped to about 14½ minutes daily, and most of that interaction is negative comments or reprimands.1
The average father in the home gives his children only about 37 seconds a day of truly undivided attention.1
97% say having parents they can talk to helps reduce teen pregnancy; 93% say having loving parents reduces their risk; and 76% say their fathers are very or somewhat influential in their decisions about sex.2
Parents today spend roughly 40% less time with their children than parents did a generation ago.3
In one poll, 57% of fathers and 55% of mothers said they feel guilty about not spending enough time with their children.4
About 1.6 million children ages 5–14 return from school each day to a home where no adults are present.5
More than 75% of American children are considered at risk because of paternal deprivation. Even in two-parent homes, fewer than 25% of children experience an average of at least one hour a day of relatively individualized time with their father.6
In fatherless homes, about 40% of children have not seen their fathers in at least a year. Of the remainder, only about 20% spend even one night a month in their father’s home, and just one in six see their father once a week or more.7
Research on parent–infant attachment shows that when fathers are affectionate, spend time with their children, and have a positive attitude toward parenting, their infants are far more likely to form secure, healthy attachments.8
State of Children’s Parents’ Marriage
Between 1962 and 1985, the share of people answering “no” to the question, “Should a couple stay together for the sake of the children?” jumped from 51% to 82%.9
The number of divorced adults in America more than quadrupled—from 4.3 million in 1970 to 17.6 million in 1995.10
A national poll found that 75% of Americans strongly agree that children suffer when their parents divorce.11
Of children born to married parents, roughly half will experience their parents’ divorce by the time they turn 18.12
More than one million children each year are affected by their parents’ separation or divorce.13
State of Fatherhood and His Presence
An estimated 24.7 million children live apart from their biological father.14
- Two years after divorce, 51% of children in sole mother-custody homes see their father only once or twice a year—or not at all.15
- 42% of fathers fail to see their children at all after divorce.7
- Over 72% of Americans say fatherlessness is the most significant family or social problem facing the nation.16
- 43% of urban teenagers live away from their father.17
- Around 90% of homeless and runaway children come from homes where the father is absent.18
- Roughly 80% of rapists with displaced anger come from fatherless homes, and 60% of repeat rapists grew up without fathers.1920
- About 71% of pregnant teenagers lack a father in the home.21
- 63% of youth suicides come from fatherless homes.22
- 85% of children with serious behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes.23
- 90% of adolescent repeat arsonists live with only their mother.24
- 71% of high-school dropouts come from fatherless homes.25
- 75% of adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes.26
- 70% of juveniles in state-run institutions have no father present.27
- 85% of youths in prison grew up in a fatherless home, and about 75% of adult prisoners grew up without a father.2829
- 43% of U.S. children live without their father in the home.30
- More than half of children who don’t live with their father have never been inside his home.31
- Adolescent girls 15–19 years old who grow up without a father are significantly more likely to engage in premarital sex than those raised by both a mother and a father.32
- Over 90% of Americans agree that fathers make a unique and irreplaceable contribution to their children’s lives.33
- Studies of one-year-olds show that children with highly involved fathers are less likely to cry, worry, or have their play disrupted when left with a stranger.34
State of Single-Parent Families
One in two children will live in a single-parent family at some point during childhood.35
About one in three children are now born to unmarried parents.35
Between 1978 and 1996, the number of babies born each year to unmarried women quadrupled from 500,000 to more than two million.36
The number of single mothers grew from three million to ten million between 1970 and 2000.37
Live births to unmarried women rose from 224,300 in 1960 to 1,248,000 in 1995. Children living with never-married mothers increased from 221,000 in 1960 to 5,862,000 in 1995.38
In 1996, young children living with unmarried mothers were five times more likely to be poor and ten times more likely to be extremely poor.39
Nearly three-quarters of children in single-parent families will experience poverty before they turn eleven, compared to about 20% of children in two-parent homes.40
Children raised in single-parent households face significantly greater risk for teen substance abuse and other destructive behaviors.41
Studies of nearly 6,000 children found that those in single-parent homes had more physical and mental health problems than children living with two married parents. Boys in single-parent homes were especially vulnerable.42
Children in single-parent families are two to three times as likely as those in two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems.43
Three out of four teenage suicides occur in households where a parent has been absent.44
Endnotes / Sources
- Robert Hamrin, Straight From a Dad’s Heart. ↩↩
- Chassler, Sey. “What Teenage Girls Say About Pregnancy,” Washington Post Parade Magazine, February 2, 1997, p. 3, citing survey from Mark Clements Research Inc., 1996. ↩
- John P. Robinson, How Americans Use Time: A Social-Psychological Analysis of Everyday Behavior (New York: Praeger, 1977), p. 70; and John P. Robinson, “Caring for Kids,” American Demographics, July 1989, p. 52. ↩
- Lynn Smith and Bob Sipchen, “Two-Career Family Dilemma: Balancing Work and Home,” Los Angeles Times, August 12, 1990, p. A1. ↩
- U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Who’s Minding the Kids?” Statistical Brief, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, April 1994. ↩
- “The Father Factor and the Two-Parent Advantage: Reducing the Paternal Deficit,” paper based on author presentations at White House meetings with Dr. William Galston, Deputy Director of Domestic Policy for President Clinton, December 17, 1993, and April 15, 1994. ↩
- Frank F. Furstenberg Jr. and Christine Winquist Nord, “Parenting Apart: Patterns of Child Rearing After Marital Disruption,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 47 (November 1985): 893–904. ↩↩
- M. J. Cox et al., “Prediction of Infant-Father and Infant-Mother Attachment,” Developmental Psychology 28 (1992): 474–483. ↩
- Arland Thornton, “Changing Attitudes Toward Family Issues in the United States,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 51 (1989): 873–893. ↩
- Arlene F. Saluter, “Marital Status and Living Arrangements: March 1995, Update,” U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Report PPL-52 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1997). ↩
- Maggie Gallagher, USA TODAY, poll on attitudes toward divorce and children. ↩
- Larry Bumpass, “Children and Marital Disruption: A Replication and Update,” Demography 21 (1984): 71–82. ↩
- National Commission on Children, data on children affected annually by parental separation and divorce. ↩
- National Fatherhood Initiative, Father Facts, 3rd ed., p. 5; includes 1997 Gallup Youth Survey data. ↩
- John Guidubaldi (1988, 1989); Guidubaldi, Perry, and Nastasi (1987), research on post-divorce father–child contact in sole mother-custody homes. ↩
- National Center for Fathering, “Fathering in America Poll,” January 1999. ↩
- Youthviews, Gallup Youth Survey 4, June 1997. ↩
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau of the Census, data on homeless and runaway children from fatherless homes. ↩
- “Criminal Justice & Behavior,” vol. 14 (1978): 403–426, findings on rapists from fatherless homes. ↩
- Raymond A. Knight and Robert A. Prentky, “The Developmental Antecedents of Adult Adaptations of Rapist Sub-Types,” Criminal Justice and Behavior, vol. 14 (December 1987): 403–426. ↩
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services press release, March 26, 1999, on pregnant teenagers and father absence. ↩
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bureau of the Census, statistics on youth suicide and fatherless homes. ↩
- Centers for Disease Control, findings on behavioral disorders and father absence. ↩
- Wray Herbert, “Dousing the Kindlers,” Psychology Today, January 1985, p. 28. ↩
- National Principals Association, Report on the State of High Schools. ↩
- Rainbows for All God’s Children, data on adolescent chemical abuse and fatherlessness. ↩
- U.S. Department of Justice, Special Report, September 1988, on juveniles in state-operated institutions. ↩
- Fulton County, Georgia jail populations and Texas Department of Corrections, 1992, on youth in prison from fatherless homes. ↩
- Daniel Amneus, The Garbage Generation (Alhambra, CA: Primrose Press, 1990). ↩
- U.S. Department of the Census, statistics on children living without their fathers. ↩
- Frank Furstenberg and Andrew Cherlin, Divided Families: What Happens to Children When Parents Part (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991). ↩
- John O. G. Billy, Karin L. Brewster, and William R. Grady, “Contextual Effects on the Sexual Behavior of Adolescent Women,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 56 (1994): 381–404. ↩
- Gallup Poll, 1996; National Center for Fathering, “Father Figures,” Today’s Father 4, no. 1 (1996): 8. ↩
- M. Kotelchuk, “The Infant’s Relationship to His Father: Experimental Evidence,” in Michael Lamb (ed.), The Role of the Father in Child Development, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley, 1981). ↩
- State of America’s Children Yearbook 2000, Children’s Defense Fund. ↩↩
- National Survey of America’s Families, data on births to unmarried women, 1978–1996. ↩
- U.S. Census Bureau, Household and Family Statistics, 2000. ↩
- U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1996–1997; and Arlene F. Saluter, “Marital Status and Living Arrangements: March 1995,” Current Population Survey PPL-52, update (Washington, DC: GPO, June 1997). ↩
- “One in Four: America’s Youngest Poor,” National Center for Children in Poverty, 1996. ↩
- National Commission on Children, Just the Facts: A Summary of Recent Information on America’s Children and Their Families (Washington, DC, 1993). ↩
- Rhonda E. Denton and Charlene M. Kampfe, “The Relationship Between Family Variables and Adolescent Substance Abuse: A Literature Review,” Adolescence 29, no. 114 (1994): 475–495. ↩
- Gong-Soog Hong and Shelly L. White-Means, “Do Working Mothers Have Healthy Children?” Journal of Family and Economic Issues 14 (Summer 1993): 163–186. ↩
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, “National Health Interview Survey,” Hyattsville, MD, 1988. ↩
- Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Family Matters: The Plight of America’s Children,” The Christian Century, July 1993, pp. 14–21. ↩
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