With single parenting not the taboo it once was thought of in the United States, the number of children growing up in a single parent household is rising. This group includes many categories of families which is another contribution to its increasing number. This group includes children who have lost a parent to death, or divorce, adopted by a single male or female, and born out of wedlock, just to name a few. Again these groups have increased because it is becoming more and more acceptable for them to exist. In fact Single parents account for 27.3% of family households with children under 181. Also 1 in 2 children will live in a single parent family at some point in childhood2. The biggest group in the single parent family though is the children born to unmarried parents or out of wedlock and here the numbers are remarkable. Between 1978 and 1996 the number of babies born to unmarried women per year quadrupled from 500,000 to over 2 million . The number of single mothers increased between 1970 and 2000, from 3 million to 10 million . Not only that but one out of every three children will be born to unmarried parents . With the knowledge of the demographics of the social condition of being raised in a single parent home it is obvious that it effects many children, which to me gives us a very good reason to care about this. Although it is not taboo and some adults choose to be a single parent, there are still many disadvantages for a child growing up in a single parent family. These disadvantages can be seen through Urie Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory.
First one might wonder just what this Ecological Systems Theory is. "Ecological Systems Theory views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment." Bronfenbrenner described his approach to child development best in a bioecological model.