On behalf of The Jacks Law Group posted in child custody on Thursday, October 15, 2015.

In 1960, only 7 percent of the households across the United States were led by single fathers. In the 2010s, that number has gone up by only one percent. However, due to the increase in the population, that's actually a huge jump, as there are nine times as many of these households today as there were fifty years ago.

There were under 300,000 single-father households in 1960. As of 2011, there were in excess of 2.6 million.

This is an interesting phenomenon because the amount of single-father homes has been increasing faster than the number of single-mother households. Back in 1960, there were 1.9 million homes with only a single mother, and there were four times as many in 2011, with 8.6 million total. While that is clearly still more than the raw number of single-father homes by a lot, the trends show that single fathers are catching up.

Experts say there are three main reasons for this difference. For one thing, society is much more accepting of fathers in the modern day if they want to be the primary caregivers. On top of that, the divorce rate has been going up in the last 50 years. Finally, parents are more likely to have children today and never get married, meaning they can split up without even going through a divorce.

As society shifts and changes, it's important for mothers and fathers in Nevada to know their child custody rights. People should never make assumptions about the process, such as assuming that the mother is always going to be the primary caregiver, as these studies so clearly show.

Source: The Atlantic, “The Rise of the Single Dad,” Caroline Kitchener, accessed Oct. 15, 2015