I haven’t seen my dad in eight years.
Getting to acknowledge it hasn’t been easy. For much of my life, my imagination morphed my diffident single-parent household into the big American family I saw on screens and read about in books. For years, I craved the excitement of a bustling home. And for years, when well-meaning teachers told me to ask my parents to sign the odd permission slip, I’d nod and smile.
Yet, I look around myself to find that my experience isn’t uncommon. In fact, for families across America, the single-parent life is almost inescapable. According to Pew Research Center findings, nearly a quarter of children nationwide live in a single-parent household—a larger share than any other country in the world.
That figure isn’t stagnant; it’s rising.
But even as single parenthood becomes increasingly common in communities across the U.S., and even as the standard of the nuclear family erodes, single-parent households—particularly those with single mothers—are consistently stigmatized. Today, almost 50% of Americans believe single motherhood is bad for society, proliferating the feelings of shame and inadequacy that are already common to the wearying and often painful experience of raising a child alone.
The problem, as many single-parent families have come to realize, is that the road to acceptance is a long one.
High school senior Lucia Vargasa, raised by her single mom since she can remember, tells me that she often finds herself at the crossroads of pity, estrangement and disapproval. “Inevitably, someone will bring up my dad. When they find out it’s just my mom and I, things get uncomfortable—really fast.”
When Lucia tells me that, I understand. Seeing an old family friend at the grocery store, or the kindly neighbor who wants to know more about my family life, or even the sweet kid in biology class almost always results in my resigned, off-the-rack confession—that no, my dad hasn’t moved in since we last spoke.
But it’s not that single-parent families are the only ones in pain, either. Debates over what a family ought to look like leave passionate people on both sides of the aisle feeling worn out and exasperated. And, unsurprisingly, both camps make good points.
For example, critics of the erosion of the two-parent paradigm often cite some important statistics: children from single-parent households are more likely to have behavioral issues, fare worse in school and earn lower incomes as adults. To those that point to the so-called “two-parent privilege,” the disadvantage of living in a one-parent home boils down to an issue of simple arithmetic: two parents can earn more than one.
Objectively speaking, that’s true. Single-parent households are disproportionately more likely to live in poverty than their two-parent counterparts, and the implications of that are stunning. When Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce unveiled, in a 2019 study, that wealth is a better indicator of future success than academic performance, many Americans received an explicit confirmation of an implicit understanding: that affluence, sadly, is one of the single most important predictors of lifetime success. With lower average household incomes, kids from single-parent homes simply have bigger obstacles to surmount.
And single-parent households have flaws beyond difficulty in providing for their children. Parents doing the job on their own may have less time, weaker support systems and fewer opportunities to engage in the parent-child bondmaking indispensable to success in domains beyond school and the home.
As Lucia’s mom, Rosalynn, explains it to me, the story goes like this: “The pressure on single parents is tremendous. You want the best for your child—that’s a given. But then you have to put in double the work to ensure that your hopes and expectations materialize. Depending on the circumstances, that’s not always possible.”
As the Vargasas’ commentary illuminates, and as my family’s experiences corroborate, the single-parent life is nothing to fantasize about. Many single parents probably realize that living in a healthy two-parent home is logistically easier. So although the arguments against the rising prevalence of single-parent families may seem condescending, they’re often rooted in good intentions—protecting kids, their futures and their parents.
Still, to many single-parent families, the elegantly framed discourse fails to capture just one thing: context.
“It’s the indelible aspect of the single-parent experience that is somehow continuously forgotten,” Ms. Vargasa tells me. “We are not a monolith.”
Considering parents become single for all sorts of reasons, that’s a critical point. Whether it’s divorce, death, incarceration or otherwise, there are often multiple, interweaving factors that precipitate single parenthood. In some cases, raising a child alone is a deliberate and reasonable choice.
That’s why beleaguering the single-parent reality with generalities and stereotypes is never the way to go. Rather than helping Americans find common ground, denying the importance of context almost always perpetuates the stigma of single parenthood. And that, unsurprisingly, does everyone a disservice.
“When the common denominator doesn’t exist,” Lucia says, “there comes a time when you have to stop searching for it.”
That point explains why, for example, some parents are better off raising their children alone. The choice to become a single parent is a difficult one, but when marriage threatens the health of the family dynamic, it can be necessary.
What’s more, many families will argue that it’s precisely that consideration—context—that can prove single parenthood to be a beautiful thing. Building resolve, a capacity to beat adversity, and living at peace in my home are just some of the blessings my single-parent household affords me.
So, with legitimate views on both sides, how can we reconcile such disparate visions of the American family?
The hard truth is that we probably can’t—at least not in the short term. When an issue is so fraught with personal convictions, and its implications extend to more than 10 million Americans, cookie-cutter solutions just won’t do.
Yet, according to the experts, there are ways to minimize the single-parent stigma in the interim. Remembering that context matters, eliminating the unhelpful stereotypes, and celebrating the experiences of all kinds of single-parent families are just some of the many ways society can help households across America thrive.
And, perhaps even more importantly, we can do that while recognizing that definitions of the family “ideal” are not mutually exclusive. To many Americans, the paragon of family structure will always be the two-parent household, but that doesn’t mean we need to be oblivious to the reality that single-parent households are sometimes just as necessary as they are inevitable. Often, they’re even beneficial.
