"33% - Percentage of births in 2002 to unmarried women. The rate varies from 89 percent for unmarried  teenagers ages 15 to 19 to 12 percent for unmarried women ages 30 to 44."

(Source: U.S. Census Bureau, "Unmarried and Single Americans Week," CB04-FFSE.11, July 19, 2004;  http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/002265.html;  referencing "Percentage of Childless Women 40 to 44 Years Old Increases Since 1976, Census Bureau Reports,"  October 23, 2003; http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/fertility/001491.html .)

"Unfortunately, we've become a society addicted to the fantasy of a quick fix. We want our solutions  encompassed in a sound bite. We want our leaders to manipulate reality to our liking."  

(Source: Bob Herbert, "All the Pretty Words," The New York Times, August 2, 2004;  http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/opinion/02herbert.html?th .)

The young children of single mothers do not usually say much about the hardships they face. Many of these  children, in fact, say dismayingly little about anything at all.

The delayed speech development of many children being reared by single mothers recently received attention  from researchers at the Yale School of Medicine and the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Drawing on  data collected from 1,605 children born at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, the authors of the new study identify  a number of social contexts in which children's expressive language development is likely to be delayed.  Those contexts include living in a bilingual home, living in poverty, and living in a single-parent home.

Among children living in single-parent homes, an elevated percentage in every age group manifested delayed  expressive language development. Among children 12 to 17 months old, 35% of those in single-parent homes had  delayed language development, compared to just 20% of those in two-parent homes. Among children 18 to 23  months, 32% of those in single-parent homes were diagnosed with delayed language development, compared to 18%  of those in two-parent families. Among children 24 to 29 months old, 30% of those in single-parent homes had  delayed language development, compared to 19% in two-parent homes. And among children 30 months or older, 29%  of those in single-parent homes evinced delayed language development, compared to 19% of those in two-parent  homes.  Although sophisticated data analysis gives it statistical significance only for the  18-to-23-month-old children, the elevated incidence of language delay among children reared in single-parent  homes is clearly evident and should stir concern among child psychologists. In any case, it is precisely the  18-to-23-month-old age group that the Yale and Massachusetts scholars has in view when they note that  children manifesting poor expressive language development "have low prosocial peer scores and, in addition,  are low in imitation/play, attention skills, and the overall domain of Competence." "Poor expressive language  domain," the researchers further remark, "may not be an isolated problem and appears to have very early  linkages to the development of social/emotional and behavioral competencies and problems." To underscore this  point, the authors of the new study cite earlier studies indicating that "even as adolescents, these children  [with delayed expressive language development] continue to manifest poor academic skills."