
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 10, 1995                   TAG: 9501100096
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                  LENGTH: Medium

SINGLE-PARENT NUMBERS UP

Vickie Gordy remembers how lonely and weary she sometimes felt, raising a teen-age daughter by herself. ``It takes two strong people to raise a child today,'' she said.

So it was with sadness and surprise that she heard of a Census Bureau report Monday listing her hometown of Albany, Ga., as the metropolitan area with the highest percentage of single-parent households in the nation.

``I am stunned that we're even higher than New York,'' said Gordy, an elementary school principal. New York City ranked second.

The Albany area - population 112,500, 46 percent of them black, and in the heart of the Peanut Belt, only 40 miles from Jimmy Carter's hometown of Plains - seems a world away from New York, a metropolitan area of 8.5 million.

But single parents are becoming commonplace across the country.

Thirty percent of all American families - and 63 percent of the nation's black families - are headed by single parents, the Census Bureau says. The last census, in 1990, found more than 7 million single-parent families.

Among Albany's families with children under 18 living in their own homes - as opposed to living with relatives or roommates - 37.3 percent were headed by single parents, said the Census Bureau report, which was based on 1990 figures.

In New York City's metropolitan area, the figure was 35.9 percent, followed by Flint, Mich., with 35.3 percent; Jersey City, N.J., 34.3 percent; and New Orleans, 33.6 percent.

The Provo-Orem area in Utah had the smallest percentage of single parents, 12 percent.

The single-family statistics included mothers and fathers who were divorced, separated, widowed or never married.

by CNB