ABSTRACT
What does it mean to be a single parent? Single parents are parents raising their children alone. They can be unmarried and living alone, or separated, divorced, or widowed. They can be male or female, young or old, educated or uneducated. Often, single parents are classified as single because they are unmarried, but the “single parent” is actually living in a home with a partner who is sharing the parenting responsibility. In this chapter, we explore what it means to be a single parent in the United States today. We describe the changing incidence of single parenthood over the last half century, and we explore the many types of single parenting situations. We address the question of whether there are unique features of single-parent families that put these families at risk, or whether the circumstances that have contributed to the increasing formation of single-parent families in recent decades are responsible for many of the risk factors that have been observed. Finally, we acknowledge that not all children of single-parent families are at risk; some children of single-parent families emerge strong and grateful for being the children of dedicated, hard-working parents who model strength and courage.
