US Lone Parents Statistics

There are 11.9 million single parents in the US. (7)

28% (20 million) of all children in the US under 18 live with one parent.(6)

84% of children who live with one parent live with their mother.(6)

The percentage of children who live with two parents has been declining among all racial and ethnic groups.(1)

32% of all births were to unmarried women in 1997. (2)

56% of single parent households had no other adult living in the house. (6)

The number of single mothers (9.8 million) has remained constant while the number of single fathers grew 25% in three years to 2.1 million in 1998. Men comprise one-sixth of the nation's single parents. (7)

Of children living with one parent:
38% lived with a divorced parent;
35% with a never-married parent;
19% with a separated parent;
4% with a widowed parent;
4% with a parent whose spouse lived elsewhere because of business or some other reason.(8)

Most single-parent children live in metropolitan areas (14.5 million), and six in 10 of them (9.2 million) are in cities with populations of 1 million or more.(8)

(1)US Census Bureau
(2)National Center for Health Statistics
(6)US Census Bureau March 1998 Supplement to the Current Population Survey
(7)US Census Bureau Household and Family Characteristics March 1998
(8)US Census Bureau-Census Brief "Children with single parents-how they fare" September 1997

Thanks to Single Parent Central