There are more same-sex couples these days. Also, because of unemployment and the cost of repaying student loans, children leave home later. One in 5 adults over age 24 returns to live with parents. Poor children are twice as likely to have ongoing health problems, school problems, behaviour and emotional problems. The child of a mother with no partner is 6 times more likely to live below the poverty line than a child with two parents.
Younger parents are twice as likely to be poor, and have to work harder to avoid poverty.
As a result, when their children are growing up, parents' time and energy are more often taken up by work and financial demands. But a single parent with a child has to work 75 hours a week at minimum wage just to avoid poverty. The parenting crunch is caused by the shrinking amount of time and energy that parents have to spend with their children. This is not related to income. With so many single parent families and so many others where both parents have to work, the pressures of jobs, household work and family life cut into the time and energy needed for good parenting.