As a parent, you have certain rights and responsibilities in the care and upbringing of your children. Sometimes those rights are challenged, and you need to know what to do if that happens. Unmarried Parents' Rights (and Responsibilities) contains detailed information on the issues single parents and divorced parents face. It provides a step-by-step guide to taking legal action. This book helps you take control of situations and provide for your children in the best possible way. Find valuable shortcuts to get to the heart of your matter. Look for: -Tip boxes on subjects like how courts determine custody, visitation time and child support -Extensive references to websites, organizations and agencies that can be contacted for information and assistance -Sample legal forms to speed you through the court process Being a single parent is hard-Unmarried Parents' Rights (and Responsibilities) makes it a little easier.

About one-third of births in the United States occur to unmarried parents. Evidence suggests that children who grow up in families headed by single parents have worse socioeconomic outcomes than those raised by married parents. "Fatherlessness" has become a byword in public debate and policymaking, yet fundamental questions about unmarried parents and their ideas of paternal responsibility remain unanswered.In My Baby's Father, Maureen R. Waller draws on interviews with unmarried parents whose children receive welfare to address several basic, vital questions: How do low-income mothers and fathers define the father's obligation to his children and explain irresponsible behavior among fathers? How do they negotiate private arrangements of paternal acknowledgment and support? And how do these informal practices interact with mandatory welfare and child-support regulations?The majority of research on low-income families focuses on single mothers. Waller's book also gives a voice to the fathers, historically either excluded from academic and policy discussions or simply characterized as "deadbeat dads" with no sense of paternal responsibility. By documenting the experiences of African-American and white parents simultaneously, Waller illustrates the extent to which beliefs and practices are likely to cut across racial lines. She also shifts the focus from teenagers to adults, who constitute the largest group of unmarried parents.My Baby's Father provides honest glimpses into the lives of unmarried parents. In addition, it offers specific recommendations for social policies that are both better suited to unmarried parents' socioeconomic situations and more responsive to the practices of responsible fatherhood in low-income families.

As unmarried parents, you face many unique legal, financial, and child-rearing challenges that married couples do not. How do I explain this situation to my child? Can I leave the paternity or maternity section blank on a birth certificate? How much do I need to tell my child's teacher? Award-winning author and attorney Brette McWhorter Sember provides real-life scenarios and resources to help guide you through the myriad issues that face unmarried singles and couples today. This first-of-its-kind parenting manual covers these and other important topics, including: Custody concerns Paternity issues Adoption laws Children's rights Unmarried with Children has answers to all your questions that have gone unanswered-until now. Brette McWhorter Sember, J.D. is an award-winning author, mother of two, former attorney, and freelancer whose writing career began eight years ago when she left her law practice to stay home after the birth of her second child. The recipient of the Mothers at Home 1999 Media Award, she has written more than twenty books, including The Everything Pregnancy over 35 Book, How to Parent with Your Ex, and Gay and Lesbian Parenting Choices. Her freelance work has appeared in more than 130 publications, including American Baby, Child, ePregnancy, Writer's Digest, Personal Journaling, Divorce Magazine, Home Business Journal, Pregnancy and Conceive. Technical Reviewer:Dr. Phil S. Hall, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and licensed school psychologist, and is the principal author of two nonfiction books on children, Educating Oppositional and Defiant Children and the upcoming Parenting Your Defiant Child. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Montana. Dr. Hall currently specializes in working with behaviorally challenged children and adults on American Indian Reservations and for various Plains States school systems.

Today, a third of American children are born outside of marriage, up from one child in twenty in the 1950s, and rates are even higher among low-income Americans. Many herald this trend as one of the most troubling of our time. But the decline in marriage does not necessarily signal the demise of the two parent family—over 80 percent of unmarried couples are still romantically involved when their child is born and nearly half are living together. Most claim they plan to marry eventually. Yet half have broken up by their child's third birthday. What keeps some couples together and what tears others apart? After a breakup, how do fathers so often disappear from their children's lives? An intimate portrait of the challenges of partnering and parenting in these families, Unmarried Couples with Children presents a variety of unique findings. Most of the pregnancies were not explicitly planned, but some couples feel having a child is the natural course of a serious relationship. Many of the parents are living with their child plus the mother's child from a previous relationship. When the father also has children from a previous relationship, his visits to see them at their mother's house often cause his current partner to be jealous. Breakups are more often driven by sexual infidelity or conflict than economic problems. After couples break up, many fathers complain they are shut out, especially when the mother has a new partner. For their part, mothers claim to limit dads' access to their children because of their involvement with crime, drugs, or other dangers. For couples living together with their child several years after the birth, marriage remains an aspiration, but something couples are resolutely unwilling to enter without the financial stability they see as a sine qua non of marriage. They also hold marriage to a high relational standard, and not enough emotional attention from their partners is women's number one complaint. Unmarried Couples with Children is a landmark study of the family lives of nearly fifty American children born outside of a marital union at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Based on personal narratives gathered from both mothers and fathers over the first four years of their children's lives, and told partly in the couples' own words, the story begins before the child is conceived, takes the reader through the tumultuous months of pregnancy to the moment of birth, and on through the child's fourth birthday. It captures in rich detail the complex relationship dynamics and powerful social forces that derail the plans of so many unmarried parents. The volume injects some much-needed reality into the national discussion about family values, and reveals that the issues are more complex than our political discourse suggests.

Sheila Tofield tells her moving true story about being a single mother in 1950s Britain, in The Unmarried Mother. 'A searing, honest testimony' Lesley Pearse Sheila grew up in Rotherham, the daughter of an uncaring mother who made her believe she was useless, stupid and - most painfully of all - unlovable. As a young woman, her worst childhood fears were confirmed when her fiancé broke off their engagement without an explanation. Heartbroken and vulnerable, Sheila was easy prey to the worst type of man - a man who turned his back on her when she told him she was carrying his child. In Fifties Britain, an unmarried, pregnant girl received,not sympathy but censure and contempt. Shunned by most of her family, Sheila ended up in a Church of England home for unmarried mothers, with no apparent alternative than to give up her child for adoption. But when she held her newborn daughter in her arms for the first time, Sheila knew she had to do the unthinkable: bring up her baby on her own in a society that would condemn her for it. Sheila Tofield is a proud grandmother living in Chichester and The Unmarried Mother is her first book. Her touching story was picked up by Penguin when she entered the hugely successful life story competition with Saga Magazine.

This book presents state-of-the-art findings of research on fatherhood programs, funded by the Fatherhood Research and Practice Network (FRPN), which advance knowledge and practice in the fathering field. New Research on Parenting Programs for Low-Income Fathers includes research on how to engage mothers to support father–child contact and to successfully employ social media and online technology for practice. It offers findings on how to increase paternal engagement and parenting skills and to include fathers in policies and programs for children and families. It discusses the importance of providing staff training and resources to practitioners who work directly with fathers. Chapters also provide summaries of key implications for evidence-based practice and future directions for research that encourage effective fatherhood practice. This book is an excellent resource for therapists, social workers, fatherhood educators, fatherhood practitioners, researchers, and policy makers on how to inspire positive father engagement with children and healthy coparenting relationships.

Self-help law kit with forms.