Single Parenting: Deviance Over Time

By: Eric Banduch

     Single parenting is not a recent phenomenon. It can be said with certainty that since the beginning of the human race, children have been raised by only one parent. With that being said, in today’s society the norm is for two parents to raise their child together. According to Merton’s Strain Theory, “deviance occurs when a society does not give all its members equal ability to achieve socially goals” (Conley 192). Single parenting is one of the best examples of this theory in action. Since our society is based around a nuclear family that consists of two parents, with one traditionally being more of a breadwinner and the other more of a caregiver, society doesn’t provide the same opportunity to succeed to a parent that has to attend to both of the parental roles. Most of the time single parenting is a burden not asked for, but rather thrown onto the shoulders of the single parent via divorce, death, unexpected pregnancy or other extreme cases. According to the CDC, forty-one percent of all births were to unmarried women. Paying attention to Figure 1 (focusing on the green line), we can see that in 1980 that percentage was closer to seventeen and in 1940 it was all the way down at less than five percent.

Along with this gradual increase of births to single women came a gradual increase in the social acceptance of single parents. Going back even just a few decades single woman were looked down upon by family members, even in cases of unforeseen pregnancies. In terms of degree of deviance, being a single parent has become less and less deviant. Society is also embracing the idea of having single parents participate as major contributors to the workforce. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for single parents averaged 8.2% in 2010. That is an increase of .4% from 2009, but decrease of about 1.8% as recent as 2003. Without delving into the socioeconomic impacts of this, the simple fact that single parents are getting more jobs proves that society is more accepting of them. With this being said there are several deviant acts still associated with homes with single parents. For example, "75% of teenage pregnancies are adolescents from single parent homes", and "63% of suicides are individuals from single parent families" ("Single Parent Statistics"). In conclusion, as the prevalence of single parents will likely continue to increase, so will the social acceptance of being a single parent. Society now provides many programs such as tax relief from the government to allow single parents to survive in today’s society.

Link to several facts about singe parents over the years: http://www.singleparentsuccess.org/stats.html

Works Cited:

"Changing Patterns of Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States." NCHF Data Brief. Center for Disease Control, May 2009. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. <http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db18.pdf>.

"Unemployed Persons by Marital Status, Race, Hispanic or Latino Ethnicity, Age, and Sex." Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2003. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. <ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aa2003/pdf/cpsaat24.pdf>.

"Employment Status of the Population by Sex, Marital Status, and Presence and Age of Own Children under 18, 2009-10 Annual Averages." U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 18 Oct. 2009. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. <http://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.t05.htm>.

"Single Parent Statistics." Providing Support to Single Parents through Higher Education. Single Parent Success Foundation. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. <http://www.singleparentsuccess.org/stats.html>.