Families and Early Childhood (continued)

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• When fathers are involved with the children and interact with their children, do better in school.
• When fathers are involved with their children’s cognitive development (reading to children, helping with school work, etc.), it helps counteract the negative effects of limited family and school resources. In other words, father involvement does, to some extent, make up for poor schools, poor neighborhoods, and low socioeconomic status.
• The positive effects of father involvement are not confined only to biological dads. When other adult males, such as adoptive fathers, grandfathers, and significant other males in the household, are involved, the same positive developmental outcomes and school-related benefits hold true.⁸

As you can see, helping fathers be involved with their children benefits children, families, schools, and society. The Program in Action feature illustrates how one father initiative encourages and supports father involvement with children.

Men are becoming single parents through adoption and surrogate childbearing. Also increasing in number are stay-at-home dads. Estimates of the number of fathers who stay home with their children are just over one million.⁹ Fathers are also receiving some of the employment benefits that have traditionally gone only to women, such as paternity leaves, flexible work schedules, and sick leave for family illness.

Single Parents

The number of one-parent families, both male and female, continues to increase. Certain ethnic groups are disproportionately represented in single-parent families. These increases are due to several factors. First, pregnancy rates are higher among lower socioeconomic groups. Second, teenage pregnancy rates in poor white, Hispanic, and African American populations are sometimes higher because of lower education levels, economic constraints, and fewer life opportunities.¹⁰ In 2004, 80 percent of single-parent families were headed by females and 20 percent were headed by males.¹¹

The reality is that more women are having children without marrying. In fact, 35.7 percent of all births in 2004 were to unmarried women.¹²

Teenage Parents

Although teenage pregnancies have declined during the past several years, they still continue to be a societal problem. Each year, one out of ten, or 1.1 million, teenagers becomes pregnant. In addition: in 2004, there were 41 pregnancies for 1,000 teenagers, down from 75 pregnancies per 1,000 in 2002.

• As a group, Latino teenagers have the highest birthrate, with 82.6 births per 1,000, up from 82.3 per 1,000 in 2003.
• Among states, New Mexico and Mississippi have the highest birthrates, with 61 and 62 births in 1,000, respectively, to mothers fifteen to nineteen years of age.¹³

Concerned legislators, public policy developers, and national leaders view teenage pregnancy as a loss of potential for young mothers and their children. From an early childhood point of view, teenage pregnancies create greater demand for infant and toddler child care and for programs to help teenagers learn how to be good parents.