Single parent
[6] 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).
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 1968, the Child Welfare League of America stated that married couples were preferred, but there were "exceptional circumstances" where single parent adoptions were permissible.
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%).
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%).
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.
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."
Researchers Copeland and Snyder analyzed sixty-four African American mothers who brought their children in for mental health treatment.
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.
[20] According to David Blankenhorn,[21] Patrick Fagan,[22] Mitch Pearlstein[23] David Popenoe[24] and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead,[25] 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.
[26][27] 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.
[28] 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 suffer from mental illness.
Improvements in sanitation and maternal care have decreased mortality for those of reproductive age, making death a less common cause of single parenting.
[citation needed] In the United States, the rate of unintended pregnancy is higher among unmarried couples than among married ones.
[41] Most of these fragile families come from low economic status to begin with and the cycle appears to continue; once the child grows up they are just as likely to still be poor.
Yet there is some evidence that suggests that if the father is living with the mother at the time of the birth he is more likely to stay after one year if the child is a son rather than a daughter.
Single parents will typically only have their own income to live off of, and thus might not have a backup plan for potential children in case something happens to them.
[56][57] The Delhi High Court has held that "mother’s name is sufficient in certain cases like the present one to apply for passport, especially as a single woman can be a natural guardian and also a parent".
[58] Considering these socio-legal transformations, a study suggested that despite facing numerous challenges, single mothers who are raising their children with little support from the families, society or state are challenging the dominant male breadwinner and provider model while redefining the heteronormative model of parenting.
[61] In South Africa, the number of single-parent households has risen in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries due to a variety of factors, including the HIV/AIDs epidemic, increasing economic migration within the country, and the social changes brought about by colonialism and apartheid.
[62] In South African academic literature, single mothers are studied as a part of the "female headed household" demographic.
[65] Within South African media, the idea that unmarried women may seek to become pregnant in order to access child benefits is a common one.
[75][76] The results of the 2010 United States Census showed that 27% of children live with one parent, consistent with the emerging trend noted in 2000.
[77] The most recent data of December 2011 shows approximately 13.7 million single parents in the U.S.[78] Mississippi leads the nation with the highest percent of births to unmarried mothers with 54% in 2014, followed by Louisiana, New Mexico, Florida and South Carolina.
[80][81] Single-parent households are on average much poorer, a pattern largely explained by the lack of a second source of income in the home itself.
[82] According to a 2016 report from the United States Census Bureau, the percentage of children living in families with two parents decreased from 88 to 69 between 1960 and 2016.
[83] The percentage of children living with single parents increased substantially in the United States during the second half of the 20th century.
[85] Historically Zimbabwe has had a tradition of polygamy, and so a second or third wife might run a household and take care of their children as a lone parent.
