I found this artical not only informitive for a De facto paerent but also a single parent or any parenet that may not fit the "Norm"

What do you think?

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2000 Census -- AASP Report

"America's Families and Living Arrangements:
March 2000"





Data on Children Living with Single Parents

Comments from Book Authors,
Educators, and other Experts



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The following book authors, educators, and other experts -- all of whom are members of the American Association for Single People -- have authorized AASP to publish their comments on "America's Families and Living Arrangements: March 2000," a report just released by the Census Bureau.

For information on how to reach these experts for further comments, please contact Stephanie Knapik, AASP's Director of Public Affairs, at: (818) 242-5124 or you mail send her an e-mail message to knapik@unmarriedAmerica.com









Thomas F. Coleman
Los Angeles, California

Executive Director
American Association for Single People



More than 20 million children, more than 27 percent of young people in the nation, now live in a single-parent household. Data from the 2000 Census only confirms what we already know. Single parent households have become a permanent part of the ever-increasing diversification of America's families.

Single parents should not be stereotyped as one generic class of people. Some have never married, while others are single through divorce or the death of a spouse. While most single-parent homes are headed by women, there are a growing number of men who are raising children on their own. In fact, the number of single dads grew 25 percent between 1995 and 1998, from 1.7 million to 2.1 million, while single mothers remained constant at about 9.8 million.

Political leaders and corporate officials should do more to respond to the needs of single parents, while at the same time addressing the needs of people without children. Public and corporate policies should be balanced and fair. The private choices of adults, to be single, to marry, or to divorce, as well as their choices to have children or not, should be respected.










Wendy Paterson
Amherst, New York

author, "Unbroken Homes: Single Parent Mothers
Tell Their Stories"




Here's something to keep in mind when reading the data from the recently released report from the 2000 Census on marital status and living arrangements.

Much damage has been done by sloppy, value-laden or poorly applied research using demographic data. Every time a census comes out, correlational data is extracted for various reasons to point out measures of societal "demise" that alarm the public.

Single parents, particularly single-mother headed homes are often the target of oppressive reports on "deviance factors" by those who use aggregate data. Readers of studies that quote census data need to be reminded that large numbers of people and statistical measures of central tendency do not provide an accurate picture of any single individual member who is counted in those data.

Sometimes individuals counted as members of a "group" would not recognize any of the correlational factors with which they are associated as representing their real lives.

More than 27% of all children already live in homes headed by single parents. If trends remain consistent from other census data, it will only be a matter of a few years when one-third of all children will live with a single parent. This is a profound percentage. It shows that attempting to describe and idealize the two-parent family will alienate and marginalize a very large segment of American homes.

The diversity of the American family experience should be recognized in every possible way. The new census data documents a wide diversity of family structures.

Dr. Paterson has been a single mother for 12 years. She is an Assistant Professor of Elementary Education and Reading at Buffalo State College with a Ph.D. in Learning and Instruction from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her dissertation was ethnographic research using five case studies of single mothers. Dr. Paterson is very active in women's issues on campus.









Andrea Engber
Midland, North Carolina

author of "The Complete Single Mother"


It's no surprise to me that the numbers of children living with single parents is on the rise.

I founded the National Organization of Single Mothers ten years ago when I became aware that the numbers were out there but the needs of this huge group were not being met.

What's important to note is that like other segments of our society, single parent families come in all shapes, sizes, colors--most are doing an excellent job raising children with the resources they have. However, when we take raw figures, we tend to lump this diverse group into one stereotype: that children living in a single parent household are doomed to failure. This is grossly untrue.

When you look at the violence that has erupted in our schools and across the nation over the past few years, most of these children came from middle class, two-parent families. Moreover, a number of studies show advantages to being raised in single parent homes. For starters, these children get more one on one with their parent because there isn't the distraction of another adult. Studies of preschoolers in child care showed that the children of single parents had better communication skills. In a 1995 landmark study, The Hite Report on the Family, the researcher found that men raised in healthy, mother only households had stronger relationships with women in later life. Girls reported that their mothers were role models (unlike those of previous generations who often felt that their mothers were "door mats" in traditional two-parent households). Additionally, boys also reported that they didn't feel the need to "choose sides" in order to mature into manhood whereas boys from those earlier generations felt they had to side with dad and reject mom. Unfortunately, the research that points to positive aspects of being raised by a single parent rarely gets published in the mainstream media.

More single men are raising strong, resilient children; divorce has always been here and will remain; more women are opting for motherhood sans marriage (in fact, in 1998, the majority of first births were to single women!). These new MOMs (Mothers Outside of Marriage) are actually older and wiser than some believe. The fastest growing group of MOMs--the rate of births for these women have doubled in the past decade--are educated women with professional careers.

Let's focus on what these numbers mean in a positive light rather than hold on to the same old thinking. Let's stop pining for that false nostalgia of the '50s and '60s when we were force-fed models of happy marriages and families when in truth, the highest sales of tranquilizers were to housewives and men were rarely called upon to participate in the child rearing process other than to occasionally discipline as in "wait 'till your father gets home," and were pressured to be the only breadwinners.

The face of the new American family has changed. Let's do more than recognize it. Let's embrace these families and stop alienating groups who don't fit the two-parent picture that never was the ideal scenario to begin with.

Andrea Engber is co-author of The Complete Single Mother: Reassuring Answers to Your Most Challenging Concerns; editor of Single Mother; the founder of the National Organization of Single Mothers; and a syndicated columnist of the weekly, Single...With Children. She has been a frequent guest on national radio and television talk shows and has raised her terrific son, Spencer, alone for nearly half of his fifteen years.