Information Related to "What Does It Take to Be a Successful Single Parent?"
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Many of you reading these words are single parents. But even if you're not, chances are you know family members or friends who are single parents. It's now so common that it's hard to not know any single parents.
A third of American babies are born out of wedlock. Statistically, half of all American children under age 18 will live in a single-parent home at some point in their lives.
Currently about a fifth of all Canadian and South African children live with just one parent. Britain, France, Germany and Australia aren't far behind. In Jamaica, St. Lucia and Haiti, more than four in 10 households are headed by a single parent. In Denmark and Norway, it's close to half.
It's doubtful that many of our readers chose to be single parents. It's not the point of this article to judge single parents for what brought them to their current circumstances. Some were widowed, others had children out of wedlock, some divorced or were divorced, others are separated. What we want to focus on is where to go from here.
Let's begin by defining what we mean by "single parent": If you carry the day-to-day responsibility of parenting one or more children without the consistent, hands-on support from a partner, you're a single parent.
Even a married person may be a part-time single parent, if his or her spouse is physically disabled or behaviorally dysfunctional (from drug addiction or substance abuse, for example). The same is true when a spouse's work takes him or her away for extended periods.
The prevalence of divorce adds greatly to embedding single parenting into our culture. One shocking study concluded that most children born in recent years will have more spouses in their lifetimes than children of their own.
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