Mata, in retrospect, said she would take a different route. I never thought I'd be a single mom. Both women send their children to Ybor City's Helping Hand Day Nursery, a cheery brick house with a canopy of trees shading a serene playground carpeted in wood chips. The nursery was founded in 1924 with a mission of helping care for the children of working-poor single mothers. It offers a sliding fee scale to help families.
Day care is perhaps the biggest expense for a struggling family.
Levine, who heads the Center for Florida's Children, a nonprofit advocacy group, points out that 70 percent of adults over 25 in Florida are from another state or country. He believes that because so many people are from elsewhere, networks of family and social support are weak. There's nothing unique to Florida that causes more divorces, or encourages women to start families alone, said University of Florida sociologist Felix Berardo. Writer Doug Stanley contributed to this report. Doug Stanley, Michael Fechter and Elizabeth Bettendorf are staff writers for The Tampa Tribune.