Apparently two women Piggs running in different circles have the same experience. Not saying Piggington doesn’t get exposure, but it is limited and here you have two fine examples of what’s out there. Perhaps it is your circle that continues to suffer from this dilemma.[/quote]
[quote=davelj]
Alright, then tell me… give me your best guess… what percentage of women with children under the age of 18 are (1) unmarried, and (2) want no financial support from the father (note: not RECEIVE no financial support, but WANT no financial support)? I’m betting that I can dig up the “receive no financial support” number and then we can back into a reasonable “wants no financial support” number. But, I’m curious, what’s your guess? 60%… 40%…? I’m betting the number is under 10%. And I think I’m giving myself a pretty large margin of error.[/quote]
OK, I’ve gone ahead and done the work for you, UC Gal. It was pretty easy. Disclaimer: I’m not saying the stats on these two sites are exactly correct – I’m merely assuming that they’re somewhere in the ballpark.
So, as of 2000, 28% of children in the US were living in a single-parent household. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that’s increased a bit to 30% as of 2009. Let’s further assume that 10% of these households are headed by the dad, as opposed to the mom. So, we’ve got 27% of households with kids headed by a single mom.
Now, 62% of custodial mothers don’t receive child support. 30% of that group either (a) doesn’t want it, or (b) has never bothered to ask for it. For argument’s sake – and, again, to give you the benefit of the doubt – let’s assume that fully 30% simply don’t want child support (otherwise, I’m guessing they would have asked for it).
So, if we multiply 27% (households headed by a single mom) by 62% (single moms who don’t receive child support) by 30% (single moms who don’t receive child support AND don’t want it) we get to 5%. So, assuming the stats in the article are in the ballpark, roughly 5% of all households are headed by single mothers who don’t want any child support. And, actually, that “seems” about right to me at a gut level (not to be trusted, of course). And since most of us know a hell of a lot more than 20 households – at least on an acquaintance basis – it makes sense that almost everyone would know at least a couple of single moms who fall into this category. Having said that, 5% does not a rule make – it makes an exception. As I’ve been saying all along.
