This year's KIDS COUNT Data Book, the sixth annual edition, places a special focus on a problem that is at the heart of many current social policy debates: the increasing fraction of our children who are growing up without their fathers actively involved in their lives. This is, to be sure, a complex and controversial phenomenon, but two things ought to be beyond dispute. First, the trend toward father absence is not a good thing for most of the children affected by it. And, second, the share of children in mother-only families is increasing dramatically.
Since 1950, the percentage of American children living in mother-only families has climbed from 6 percent to 24 percent in 1994. [1] According to Census Bureau data,[2] 19 million children were living in families with no father present in 1994. Because many of the children currently living in two-parent families are projected to experience a divorce before they grow up, more than half of today's children are likely to spend some of their childhood in a single-parent home.
Furthermore, between 1985 and 1992, the share of families with children headed by a single mother increased in every state and the District of Columbia. The share of our children living in mother-only families is increasing in cities, suburbs, and rural areas, and it is rising among all racial groups.
While the percentage of children in single-parent families is increasing almost everywhere, the trend is more advanced in certain communities. In a growing number of neighborhoods, father-absent families are the norm. The 1990 Census shows that across the country there were 4.5 million children growing up in neighborhoods where more than half of all families with children were headed by a woman with no husband present. Such neighborhoods can be found in nearly every state.
All children growing up in these neighborhoods have a diminished opportunity for learning how to be a partner in a stable two-parent family, and the lack of role models for boys is a particular problem.