The Future Is Later

It is true that families headed by single females are disproportionately poorer than families with an adult male present… But this correlation does not prove that single motherhood causes poverty. Nor can it predict that marriage or paternal child support will ensure children’s financial well-being. Even researchers who find some causal connections between child poverty and family structure attribute only 10 to 20 percent of poverty to the rise of female-headed households. Rather, children’s poverty results from inadequate family income, due to the declining ability of one parent — especially the mother — to earn enough to stay away the poverty line. This problem is exacerbated by working conditions that make it virtually impossible for mothers to combine low-wage jobs with child-raising.