creasing from 22% in 1960 to 70% in 1996 (McLanahan 5). Most women in the lowest quintile of the population have come from generations of poverty before them and their only hope of survival is to get on their own and try to get education or job training. With the birth of children, these impoverished women now have two or three dependents to support and the cycle of poverty continues. Most of these women do not have families to support them and they are left with only one option – government support. This has contributed a great deal to the rise of single mother households.
             Another contribution to the rise in female-headed households has been the increase in divorces. Sarah McLanahan, a researcher at Princeton University, noted that in 1950, "most people remained married until they or their spouses died, but today over half of all couples end their marriages voluntarily. The divorce rate – the number of divorces each year per 1,000 married women – rose steadily during the first half of the twentieth century and increased dramatically after 1960. Over half of all marriages contracted in the mid-1980's were projected to end in divorce." After the marriages are ended the custody of the children almost always goes to the mother. Now the mother becomes the single provider in her family, facing a job that pays far less than the job her male counterparts have, and on top of that her needs are greater because she has custody of their childr
             ...