Employee Benefits:
What Single Parents Should Know
| Single Parents in the Workplace |
Single parents who work not only face the challenge of raising children without the assistance of another parent in the home, but they usually must do so with much less income than a two-parent family. Working single parents often face both a "time crunch" and a "money crunch." The number of single-parent families, especially those headed by women, has increased significantly since the 1960s. In fact, the proportion of single-parent families has more than doubled over the last 30 years, up from 11 percent in 1970 to 27 percent of family households with children today.(1) The percent of single mothers (2) with children under 18 who work increased from 53 percent in 1969 to 66 percent in 1996. About three of every five mothers with children under age six are employed. Over the last 23 years, the percent of mothers employed with spouses present grew more rapidly than the percent of single mothers employed.(3) In recent years, the growth in households headed by single fathers outpaced the growth in those households headed by single mothers, but men still make up only one in six single parents. Single fathers grew from 1.7 million in 1995 to 2.1 million in 1998. There is likely to be a continued increase in the number of custodial fathers as gender equality increases. |
Source Futurework: |
| Endnotes: 1. U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau Report, “Growth in Single Fathers Outpaces Growth in Single Mothers,” www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/family.html, December 11, 1998. 2. Single women are considered those “without a spouse present.” 3. The percent of mothers of children under age six, with a spouse present, who were employed increased from 32 percent in 1975 to 61 percent in 1998. The corresponding percentages for mothers without a spouse in the house-hold were 42 and 59 percent.
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