Study Paints Bleak Picture for Kids Without Fathers

A new study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation of New York gives credence to the flap over fatherlessness.

In its sixth annual Kids Count Data Book, a national state-by-state effort to track the status of children in the United States, the foundation finds that the percentage of children living in mother-only families has increased from 6% in 1950 to 24% in 1994. This trend has been matched by an even more rapid rise in the percentage of young men with earnings below the poverty level for a family of four, said Douglas W. Nelson, executive director of the foundation.

The data in his organization’s report “make clear the powerful, fundamental and inescapable correlation between the declining earning success of less educated, less skilled young males and the increases in unwed parenting and single-parent families,” Nelson said.

The report further showed that children who grow up without fathers are five times more likely to be poor and almost 10 times more likely to be extremely poor than those who grow up in homes where a father is present.

The Booming Divorce Culture

The Institute for American Values in New York also has some grim news, declaring that “the divorce” revolution--the steady displacement of a marriage culture by a culture of divorce and unwed parenthood--has failed. It has created terrible hardships for children, incurred unsupportable social costs, and failed to deliver on its promise of greater adult happiness.”

This sobering pronouncement is delivered in “Marriage in America: A Report to the Nation,” published by the insititute in March. The report says one potentialy positive trend is a move toward “divorce busting” in marital therapy and improved education about marriage.

Fighting for the Future of Child Care

At the national headquarters of the YWCA in Washington, the push is on to gather 200,000 signatures of opponents of the proposed $1.6 billion in cutbacks in federal child-care assistance recently passed by the House of Representatives.

The YWCA of the U.S.A. currently provides child care for more than 350,000 children in more than 1,000 sites across the country, making it one of the nation’s largest nonprofit child-care providers. The YWCA is credited with launching the country’s first child-care center in 1896.

The Child Care Block grant program, recently approved by the House as part of its welfare reform package proposals, would cut federal child-care assistance by $142 million next year, and $1.6 billion over the next five years. If enacted, the measure would affect more than 300,000 children from low-income families.

Promoting Foster Parenthood

More than a dozen merchants in the L.A. area have joined with the Children’s Bureau of Southern California to boost the group’s campaign to recruit foster parents for abused and neglected children. The merchants are displaying marketing media distributed by the group to encourage foster parenthood.

* Compiled from Times staff and news services.