Last updated on April 8, 2021
The Pew Research Center is a widely known nonpartisan fact-gathering organization based in Washington, D.C., that is broadly viewed as authoritative on information it releases pursuant to polling and research on many issues important in American life.
One of its recurrent research themes stresses, broadly, important aspects relating to the American family and trends concerning it. Those include things like family composition, education and income levels of care givers, job mobility, attitudes toward religion, marriage and divorce, and other key considerations.
The focus of recent Pew research focuses on single-parent families in the United States, with new analysis pointing to some interesting trends and fundamental demographic changes in recent years.
Those focus most centrally on what might broadly be termed fathers’ rights, especially in areas such as child custody and visitation, the number of family homes led by single fathers, the progressively increased role of fathers as caregivers within the home, and related matters.
Researchers note, for example, the fundamental shift in the sheer number of single dads heading households across the country, including in Georgia. In 1960, that number stood at a paltry 300,000. Today it is estimated at around 2.6 million, a ninefold increase.
Moreover, that paradigm shift is accompanied by a higher level of appreciation in society generally toward the important role that dads play in the lives of their children. As stated in a recent media article on the subject, “dads are getting more credit for the influence they have as parents.”
In recent decades, single fathers have tripled their amount of interaction with their children.
The Pew research analyzed data culled from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Source: NBC News, “More single dads than ever head US housseholds,” Megan Gannon, Jully 3, 2013
