The median average income for married couples with children was three times greater and, for the relatively few single-father families, nearly one and a half times greater. Well over a third (38.5%) of single-mother families lived below the poverty threshold. This is more than four and a half times the rate for married couples with children and also considerably higher than the rate for single-father families. About half the single-mother families below the poverty threshold were in “extreme poverty,” i.e., had incomes below 50% of the threshold. Women were a large majority (79.6%) of the adults with children who were in emergency shelters.
It is a reality that today many women cannot stay at home because they have bills to pay. Beyond economic problems, there are other reasons and many benefits that explain why a mother should have a part-time job. Approximately 25% of all women currently work part-time schedules (U.S. Department of Labor, 2009) and a majority of mothers work part-time at some point during their adult years (Budig & England, 2001). In their investigation, Buehler and O’Brien (2011) put the focus on mothers’ part-time employment because it’s a normative experience for U.S. mothers. They defined part-time employment as between 1 and 32 hours of work per week.
In Canada right now: One in ten children is poor. Canada's child poverty rate of 15 percent is three times as high as the rates of Sweden, Norway or Finland. Every month, 770,000 people in Canada use food banks. Forty percent of those relying on food banks are children. These statistics point to a betrayal of Canada's children.
Teen mothers are more likely to drop out of school, remain unmarried, and live in poverty, their children are more likely to be born at low birth weight, grow up poor, live in single-parent households, experience abuse and neglect, and enter the child welfare system. Daughters of teen mothers are more likely to become teen parents themselves and sons of teen mothers are more likely to be incarcerated (Hoffman, 2006). All of this can be linked to the teenager’s lack of access to care, fear and misinformation (Brown, 2010). Demographics Nationwide in 2006, 750,000 women younger than twenty became pregnant. The pregnancy rate was 71.5 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15–19.
The sole provider in a single parent home often does not have the ability to work a full time job or rather obtain a job with a high paying salary. Risman states, “Women who become single mothers are especially likely to have inadequate wages… because the shortage of publicly subsidized child care makes it difficult for them to work full time.” Although single parent households with the provider working full time has a much higher chance of not living in poverty, working full-time, as Thompson states in her article, leaves less time to spend with your child. This leads to my next point. Financial stress can also lead to improper child development, education, and social exposure. To give a hypothetical example,
The United States have the highest rate of teenage pregnancy among 46 developed countries ("U.S. Teenage Pregnancy Statistics National and State Trends and Trends by Race", 2006). Teenage pregnancy and child bearing are societal concerns because of economic and social costs. Childbearing, on average, costs taxpayers in the United States $4,080 per teenager. Moreover, it also affects education, only a third of teen mother earn their high school diploma and only 1.5% have a college degree by
In 1990, 50 percent of White women had incomes below 646 per month, African-American women had incomes below 419 per month, and Hispanic women had incomes below 426 per month. With a poverty line for seniors of 437.91 per month) in 1990, it is clear that many women live near or below the poverty line. Therefore, they are at risk for psychological
At some point, we as women are bound to hit a breaking point. An article by Columbia University describes what happens when women try to balance all of this at once. The article explains that Johnathan Platt, a Ph.D. student in Epidemiology at Columbia University, created a survey and found that when women make less than their male counterparts not only are they two and a half times more likely to experience depression but also as much as four times more likely to deal with anxiety (“Wage”). As if disturbing our mental health is not enough, I believe the gender wage gap also affects our self-confidence as women. For women, we do not need another excuse to feel that we are inadequate, especially because we are told daily; however, the gender wage gap does just that.
Low-income families usually include three or more children, family members with low education levels, the unemployed, young people, students in universities that have not found work, and residents of small towns and rural settlements. Poverty thresholds vary according to the size of the family and ages of the family members. In 2010, poverty thresholds in the United States for people over 18 years old equaled $11,139 for one individual and $14,218 for a two person family (Census Bureau, 2010). The American economy includes the rich and excludes the poor in many ways. Low paying jobs keep the working poor impoverished.
This shows that conjugal roles between partners are becoming more equal.However,these sociologists have been criticized by Ann Oakley. In 1974 Ann Oakley pointed out that included in this figure were husbands who did very little, only had to perform one household chore a week. During the 1970’s she collected information on 40 married women who had one child or more under the age of 5 and were themselves aged between 20 and 30. Half of her sample was working class and half was middle class. She found greater equality for domestic tasks in the middle class than in the working class,