Many of the changes that took place in society during this time can help to explain this increased rate of divorce. For example, legally there was a shift from fault to no-fault divorce, a change which some argue eliminated the "legal support for norms of lifetime obligation"(footnote 4) for spouses. No-fault divorce was a legal change that made it less costly and problematic legally to obtain a divorce, therefore more people saw it as a feasible option. Many believe that this legal change led couples away from feeling responsible for fulfilling "normative roles"(footnote 5) , thus leading them to divorce more often.

Another reason stated for the climbing divorce rates at this time was the shift from a pre industrial to a post-industrial society. This shift was "marked by development of institutions outside of the family that provided alternative sources of financial security, personal services, satisfaction, and leisure"(footnote 6) thus making family and family stability seem less important. Finally, in general, American society was experiencing a remarkable decline of community at this time as well as a substantial rise of individualism. These were just a few of the factors that played a part in the increase in the divorce rates at this time.

The traditional female roles of mother and housewife have made women dependent on the male for economic support within society. Women who are the most economically dependent are those who participate most fully in a "paternalistic and patriarchal gender ideology"(footnote 8) and devote themselves full-time to caring for their families. Any previous investment they have made in education, training, or employment loses its value as they concentrate on their family and lack the benefits gained by longtime experience in the labor market.

The ideology behind social policies in the United States have placed women in a precarious economic position over the years. Social policies assume that women are primary caregivers (footnote 9) and therefore dependent on someone else for income. This means that there is little public assistance available to women who earn the income for a household as well as take on full responsibility for the care of that household. Social policy dictates that women should be financially dependent either on a man or on the state (footnote 10), and leaves no room for women who take on the "double burden" (footnote 11) of mother and breadwinner for the family. The reality is that the majority of the women in the United States were participants in the work force by the late 1980's.

Divorce can be cited as one of the main events that has caused the escalation of poverty among women. Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau show that in 1983 more than one-fourth of all divorced and separated women were on welfare. Thirty seven percent of single mothers with one child and eighty-five percent of single mothers with four children were poor by U.S. Census standards (footnote 12).

However, it is important to note the differences between divorced and never-married women who are heads-of-household. In 1987 the poverty rate for divorced female family householders was 25 percent, while it was a much higher 55.1 percent for never-married female heads-of-household (footnote 13). This illustrates an important distinction betweeen the two groups of women that can be explained when looking at the fact that divorced mothers tend to be older, better educated, and more likely to have some amount of work experience at the time of their divorce. Divorced women also have a higher chance of receiving child support than women who bear children out of wedlock because the laws use a man's former legal bind to his children as grounds for payment of child support to his ex-wife. Therefore, women who bear children out of wedlock do not have the legal advantages that women who have been legally married do with regard to financial support from the father of the children.

Statistically, mother-only families have grown over the past few decades from 9 percent of all families with children in 1960 to over 20 percent of all families with children in 1987 (footnote 14). Fifty percent of women and children in mother-only families lived in poverty according to the 1988 U.S. Census. Children raised in mother-only families have been shown to be more likely to drop out of high school, form single-parent families themselves, and live in poverty as adults (footnote 15). This statistic shows the extent to which the economic hardships of living in mother-only families affects children and perpetuates the cycle of poverty, especially among females.

After divorce, women experience a remarkable decline in income and measures of economic status that take into account family size. Males, however, experience minimal income loss, and often their economic status improves (footnote 16). This is due largely to the fact that most women do not have jobs that pay living wages or the employment experience to obtain these jobs, as well as the fact that most women assume physical custody of their children after divorce. These two factors play a large part in what often eventually leads to poverty for most women and children in female-headed households.

The changes over these two decades for African American families were similar to those experienced by the rest of the poulation of the United States at this time. These changes included large declines in marriage, increases in divorce and separation, and changes in the fertility of married and unmarried women.

By 1988, over 60 percent of black children born were born to a divorced, widowed, or never-married mother (footnote 18). This figure was due not to increases in birthrates of unmarried women, but rather to a decline in marriage and childbearing of married women. The percentage of white women aged 15 to 44 who were married also declined from 69 percent to 55 percent between 1960 and 1988. However, for white women this statistic was largely based on an increase in divorce and separation among couples, while for blacks it was an overall decline in marriage.

These racial differences among marriage patterns for whites and blacks can be accounted for by examining the differences between the races with regard to their beliefs about family structure. One of the apparent differences is that blacks are most often slow to marry, have high marriage dissolution rates, but also are more likely to become parents than are whites (footnote 19). One of the factors leading to this is that, in general, "blacks have less negative attitudes toward nonmarital pregnancy and parenthood" than do whites and other races (footnote 20).

Overall, blacks have had relatively high rates of marital dissolution. Several variables play into this, such as unstable economic conditions and their own family disruption in childhood. Throughout history in the United States, the black family has experienced "consistent and persistent economic strain," (footnote 21) which has often led them to live within an extended family so as to pool their economic resources and share childrearing tasks. This tactic differs greatly from that among white communities, where most often it is only the father, the mother, and formal child care centers who share childrearing tasks.

One of the reasons divorced men give for this lack of involvement in childrearing is that many see "absence as action" (footnote 23), an active way for them to avoid their ex-wife and children of the marriage. Regarding the failure of many divorced fathers to pay child support, many of the men surveyed say that because they do not live with the children they do not have anything to do with them or any feel any responsibility towards them, and this is why they do not pay the child support requested of them.

Many of the divorced fathers surveyed also thought that the stepfather, if there is one involved, should pay instead of themselves, since he is the one living with the children. Other divorced fathers surveyed believe their ex-wives are spending the money on themselves instead of their children. A few of the men surveyed mentioned their reason for not paying child support to be because they did not want their daughters to get the impression that men would always be paying their way in life and supporting them financially.

This marked absence of many fathers in the lives of their children after a divorce or separation has had an influence not only on the financial well-being of the family, but also on the family's emotional well-being, especially for the children who are involved. The instability of the family's economic situation also places additional stress upon the mother who must juggle not only a job, but she must also make sure that her children are being watched and cared for while she is at work.

Considering these three factors, it became very important for many parents to find adequate child care for their children since they could not provide it themselves. For the most part, parents who could afford it looked to part-or full-time help in their homes or child care facilities outside of their homes. However, not all parents could afford this kind of care for their children, especially mothers who were single heads of households. For these mothers, often there were no relatives available to care for their children, so they turned to leaving their children in the care of slightly older siblings, or even leaving them alone for a few hours after school until the parent was able to arrive home from work. This classification of children is known as latchkey kids, children who are left in the home on a daily basis without supervision by an adult. (More?)

These changes in child-rearing practices have many societal implications for the direction in which the United States is heading with regard to how children are being raised. (More?) More and more often, either for economic reasons or just for reasons of the lack of free time that many adults have, children are being left in the care of others. This occurs in schools as well as in child-care facilities.

This trend can be related to the decline in community and rise in individualism seen in the United States which was mentioned earlier in the article by Tim Heaton and Cardell Jacobson, entitled "Race Differences in Changing Family Demographics in the 1980's."

The changes in family demographics across all races that began to occur in the 1960's and 1970's and stabilized somewhat in the 1980's has had significant impact on all aspects of society, from traditional gender roles to the care and upbringing of children. Divorce and the emergence of the female-headed household were two of the changes that brought about the most significant impact upon the family structure as a whole.

Bibliography

3.) Arendell, Terry J., "Women and the Economics of Divorce in the Contemporary United States" Signs v. 13, n. 1. p. 126

4.) White, Lynn, "Determinants of Divorce: A Review of Research in the Eighties" Journal of Marriage and the Family v. 52 p. 904

5.) White, L. p. 904

6.) White, L. p. 905

7.) Sapiro, Virginia. "The Gender Basis of American Social Policy" Political Science Quarterly v. 101, n. 2, p. 236

8.) Sapiro, p. 223

9.) Sapiro, p. 224

10.) Sapiro p. 224

11.) Sapiro, p. 232

12.) These statistics come from Sapiro's article, page 236.

13.) Scanlan, James. "Sex Differences in Poverty: 1950-1980" Signs v. 16, n. 2, p. 410.

14.) Smock, Pamela J. "Gender and the Short-Run Economic Consequences of Marital Disruption" Social Forces v. 73, n. 1, p. 243.

15.) Smock, p. 245

16.) Smock, p. 248

17.) Crane, Jonathan and Ellwood, David "Family Change Among Black Americans: What Do We Know?" Journal of Economic Perspectives v. 4, n. 4, p. 66

18.) Crane and Ellwood, p. 71

19.) Heaton, Tim B. and Jacobson, Cardell K. "Race Differences in Changing Family Demographics in the 1980's" Journal of Family Issues v. 15, n. 2 p. 291

20.) Heaton and Jacobson, p. 295

21.) Heaton and Jacobson, p. 304

22.) Arendell, Terry "After Divorce: Investigations into Father Absence" Gender and Society v. 6, n. 4 p. 563

23.) Arendell, p. 569

24.) Easterlin, Richard A. "The Changing Circumstances of Child-Rearing" Journal of Communication Summer 1982 p. 86