State Overview and Findings

Children in their families

Families nurture the future, providing Oklahoma children their primary relationships, often biological, always social, emotional and economic. Families are expected to meet their children’s needs for food, shelter and intimacy. Families are where children are motivated, learn respect and develop resiliency. Children carry their family traditions and cultures into Oklahoma’s future. Oklahoma families are facing new realities. A narrow definition of family – a breadwinning father, a caretaking mother and two or more children – no longer fits Oklahoma families. Longer life spans, effective birth control, participation of women in the work force, skyrocketing divorce rates, social problems and economic realities have converged to reshape family life in Oklahoma. Today, a majority 52.4% of Oklahoma families have no children living in their home. Today’s Oklahoma families with children come in all shapes and sizes. They might be headed by married couples, single mothers and fathers, grandparents or other relatives. As these Oklahoma families suffer or prosper, Oklahoma children will suffer or prosper.

(A pdf file with this narrative, plus graphic maps and charts, is available for download.)

This section of the Oklahoma KIDS COUNT Factbook examines Census 2000 income comparisons to display the well-being of children in Oklahoma families. The following review of family experience focuses on household composition, displaying numbers and rates of children living in families without two parents or being raised by their grandparents.

Children do best when they live in families that earn enough to meet their needs. With half of Oklahoma’s families with children living above the median and half living below it, median annual income measures the economic security of children by looking at the family wage earner’s ability to earn a decent living. Oklahoma’s median annual income of $38,579 for families with children is almost ten thousand dollars below the median income for the United States ($48,196), placing Oklahoma near the bottom (45th) of the national rankings. Only families with children in Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico, Mississippi and West Virginia live on less income than such families earn in Oklahoma. Varying dramatically by county, median incomes for families with children are the lowest and worst in Harmon County ($24,688) with an amount which is less than half that found in the highest and best in Rogers County ($50,983). Family income is lower for Oklahoma families with children ($38,579) than it is for those without ($42,414). Children living with a single parent do not fare well economically. Median family income for a male-headed single parent family with children is almost half ($24,745) that for a married couple family with children ($47,652). If the single parent family with children is headed by a female, the median family income plummets to only $16,657 each year.

It is generally accepted and research confirms that children do best when they live in supportive two-parent families. Half of Oklahoma’s children will spend some part of their childhood living with a single parent. Matching the rate for the United States as a whole (27.1%), more than one in four (119,914, or 27.1%) Oklahoma families with children are headed by a single parent, placing Oklahoma near the middle (30th) of all states in its share of families in which children live with only one parent. Across Oklahoma counties the proportion of families with children who live with only one parent ranges from the lowest and best rate of just under twelve percent (11.9%) in Dewey County to a rate more than three times higher in Latimer County (34.8%). While the large majority (72.9%) of Oklahoma families with children live with two parents, more than three-quarters (75.8%) of Oklahoma’s single parent households with children are headed by females.

For the first time Census 2000 formally counted the number of grandparents with primary responsibility for raising their own grandchildren. Oklahomans take care of their own. Almost sixty percent (58.5%) of Oklahoma grandparents who live with their own grandchild assume the primary responsibility for raising that grandchild, placing Oklahoma second only to Wyoming (58.6%). An Oklahoma grandparent is raising their own grandchild in almost forty thousand (39,279) Oklahoma households. The increasing number of grandparents having to raise their own grandchildren may be fueled by teen pregnancy, out-of-wedlock birth, substance abuse, death, disability, mental illness, imprisonment or poverty among the birthparents. Few are temporary arrangements. Most (52.9%) of these households find the grandparent having assumed primary responsibility for their grandchild for three years or longer. Compared to only 1.5% nationally, more than two percent (2.1%) of all Oklahomans age thirty (30) and over living in a household is a grandparent raising their own grandchild. Comparable county rates range from under one percent (0.7%) in Ellis County to almost four percent (3.7%) in Adair County.

Children in their Neighborhoods