Description
Book SynopsisIn 1980, single mother families were five times more likely than two-parent families to be poor. Forty years later, single-mother families are still five times more likely to be poor. How can this be given the vast increases in education and employment achieved by American women over this period? In Thanks for Nothing, Nicholas H. Wolfinger and Matthew McKeever explore the contradictions that lie at the heart of single motherhood. Drawing on forty years of data from two large national surveys, they find that the mystery of single mothers'' economic stagnation can be explained by changes in the kind of women most likely to become single mothers. In 1980, most single mothers were divorced women; forty years later, the majority are mothers who gave birth out of wedlock. On paper, divorced women look a lot like their married contemporaries, but with one income instead of two. Never-married mothers are a completely different population--they have less education, work less, and receive lower
