Problems with data are immediately encountered when trying to answer the question of how common single or lone parenting really is. Statistics that bear most closely on the issue of parenting relate variously to marital status of parent (s), residence, and head of household, although recourse to these or some combination of them immediately conflates the notion of family with that of household and of household with that of common residence.4 Comparisons across time or place also suffer from both yawning gaps in the data and a lack of consensus on definitions of key terms, multiplying the hazards of attempting generalizations or presuming to provide a comprehensive picture.
Acknowledging but not attempting to resolve these issues, Table 4.1 has been constructed to highlight some of the diversity in measures bearing on parenting, family formation and household situation. Cases have been chosen in an attempt to illustrate variation both within and across regions. But because the selection is partly a function of data availability, they should not be seen as exemplars of anything so finely defined as a regional or sub-regional type. Moreover, lack of data has prevented the inclusion of cases from large geographical areas, such as Africa and the Near East, and has left a partial picture for Bangladesh, Argentina and Barbados. More recent comparative data on household heads are not widely available beyond those drawn from census returns of 1980 and 1981 as collated in the special
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Table 4.1 Measures relating to diversity of parenting for selected countries
Note: Dates in parentheses Source: Compiled from United Nations (1989, 1992), Demographic Yearbooks for 1987 and 1991. |
supplement on households and family in the UN Demographic Yearbook for 1987.5 Such figures in any case can only imperfectly yield generalizations about lone parenthood given that data on household heads refer only to marital status not to parenthood.6 Despite these caveats, the data do illustrate the range of variability pertaining to some aspects of marriage, childbearing and household type. Supplemented with information from other sources, they enable certain broad contrasts and comparisons to be drawn.
It is evident from Table 4.1 that there are substantial differences between countries in the age at which marriage occurs and when mothers have their first child. Households headed by females can be found across the board, but their composition as exemplified by the marital status of the head, as well as their relative prevalence, varies considerably. While households headed by single (never-married) women were common in Barbados in the early eighties, for example, in Bangladesh they were exceedingly rare. Such differences are important both for understanding the phenomenon of single parenthood or single household headship and for designing policy responses. A closer examination of some of these cases reveals more of the detail of diversity.