What percentage of U.S. mothers are single moms?
Single parent
In the United States, 83% of single parents are mothers.[31][32] Among this percentage of single mothers: 45% of single mothers are currently divorced or separated, 1.7% are widowed, 34% of single mothers never have been married.[33][34] Although decades ago, having a child outside of marriage and/or being a single mother was not prominent. Census information from 1960 tells us that in that year, only nine percent of children lived in single parent families.[35] Today four out of every ten children are born to an unwed mother.[36]
Gender role
One major concern of feminism, is that women occupy lower-ranking job positions than men, and do most of the housework. A recent (October 2009) report from the Center for American Progress, "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything" tells us that women now make up 48% of the US workforce and "mothers are breadwinners or co-breadwinners in a majority of families" (63.3%, see figure 2, page 19 of the Executive Summary of The Shriver Report).
Another recent article in "The New York Times" indicates that young women today are closing the pay gap. Luisita Lopez Torregrosa has noted, "Women are ahead of men in education (last year, 55 percent of U.S. college graduates were female). And a study shows that in most U.S. cities, single, childless women under 30 are making an average of 8 percent more money than their male counterparts, with Atlanta and Miami in the lead at 20 percent.". While this study concerned American cities, a global trend is developing, and has now been termed "the reverse gender gap."