New Census Data Shows the Changing Makeup of American Families

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau finds that in 2017, nearly 20 million children under the age of 18 live with only one parent. This was 27.1 percent of all children.

In 2017, 16.1 percent of all children in the United States were living in a one-parent home headed by their father. This was up from 12.5 percent in 2005. For children who lived only with their father, the most common marital status of the father was divorced. For children who lived in one-parent homes led by their mother, the most common marital status was “never married.”

Married-couple families make up 69 percent of all families with children in 2017. In 1950, married-couple families were 93 percent of all families with children. Over a quarter of married-couple families in 2017 had a stay-at-home mother. Only 1 percent had a stay-at-home father.

In 2017, there were 7.8 million unmarried, opposite-sex couples households in the United States. Of these, 37 percent had children under the age of 18.