The Fisher DeBerry Foundation is a tax exempt, nonprofit organization dedicated to the support and education of single moms and their children, as well as other charitable causes.
Founded by legendary and all-time winningest United States Air Force Academy Head Football Coach Fisher DeBerry and his wife Lu Ann, The Fisher DeBerry Foundation provides support for parenting development, mentoring programs, after school activities and funding for academic scholarships.
Since 2003, the Fisher DeBerry Foundation has awarded more than $1.2 million to support children of single-parent families. It has also sent over 3,000 single-parent kids to Fellowship of Christian Athletes summer camps across the country.
The aim of the Fisher DeBerry Foundation is to provide opportunities to these kids that they otherwise would not have. However, the need is far greater than what the Foundation can do. Here are single-parent household statistics in the United States today:
Today 1 in 4 children under the age of 18 — a total of about 17.2 million — are being raised without a father and almost half 40% live below the poverty line.
7 in 10 children living with a single mother are poor or low income, compared with less than a third of children living in other types of families.
24% of the 75 million children under the age of 18 live in a single-mother family.
The United States has the highest percentage of single-parent households.
Of all single-parent families, the most common are those headed by divorced or separated mothers (58%) followed by never-married mothers (24%)
More than 40 percent of births occurring in the U.S. have been to unmarried women — that’s more than 1.6 million annually.
In the United States, 80.6% of single parents are mothers.
In the United States, nearly half (45%) of single mothers and their children live below the poverty line; also referred to as the poverty threshold.
Adults and children in single-parent households are at risk for adverse health outcomes, including mental illness (e.g. substance abuse, depression, suicide)and unhealthy behaviors (e.g. smoking, excessive alcohol use).
In the United States today, there are nearly 13.6 million single parents raising over 21 million children. Single fathers are far less common than singlemothers, constituting 16% of single-parent families.
