The number of single mothers has been on a steady rise over the past decades. According to a recent press release by the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 9.88 million single mothers in the U.S. in 2007, which is up from 3.4 million in 1970.

As a single parent, how much money do you need to make to be able to cover your expenses all by yourself, without public aid? It turns out that it is quite a bit, at least in Massachusetts. The Crittenton Women’s Union (CWU), a Boston-based nonprofit group, said that you will need to make somewhere around $30 per hour and hold a full-time job, just to get by.

The Baltimore Sun is running an interview with a private investigator and book author on the reasons of cheating and his experience with presumably affected clients. And according to Bill Mitchell it seems that opportunity is the key catalyst for infidelity and extramarital affairs that may ultimately turn married parents into single parents. And, males and females cheat for very different reasons.

Yes, lots of cell phone news today and we promise we won’t have quite as many tomorrow. This one is especially noteworthy – Google is expected to introduce its idea of an iPhone (well, it won’t be called iPhone, of course) on January 5, if we believe industry rumors.

The rumors started flying when Google began inviting journalists to a mysterious press conference shortly before the opening of the Consumer Electronics Show, the annual Disneyland gadget spectacle for geeks in Las Vegas.

A German security expert announced that the encryption technology protecting certain cell phone calls from interception has been cracked. The tools necessary to intercept cell phone calls are available free of charge on the Internet and information detailing the vulnerability of cell phone voice call and data (such as text messages) encryption has been released.

The newly raised concern affects only GSM networks, which are used by about 4 billion cell phone users around the globe and by AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S. There were previous reports indicating that GSM might be insecure, but no one was able to show evidence for that claim until now.

I have to admit that I never really cared about text messaging and even found it quite annoying and useless – before the time of my divorce. Now I am infinitely grateful for this service as it allows me as a single parent to keep contact with my children when they are not with me. But it seems that not only I have gone SMS crazy, but many other people in the U.S. as well. According to the Census Bureau’s most recent data, more than 110.4 billion text messages are sent from U.S., cell phones – every month.

Rant alert – You might think it is common sense to assume that texting while driving could be rather unhealthy, especially if you are typing and miss that red light in front of you. But some things may simply be too inconvenient to believe and to adjust to – and we need to be reminded countless times of potential consequences. So, how many studies and accidents do we need to understand how dangerous texting while driving really is? How many more studies do lawmakers need?

Tiger Woods’ public apology almost sounded that there was reason for hope that his marriage could be strong enough to survive 13 mistresses. Now it seems pretty certain that Woods and Nordegren are aiming for the single parent lane. Nordegren is apparently building her case and sources close to her now say that a divorce is unavoidable.

I don’t like surprises. Not in my job and especially not in my private life. At least not those surprises. I like planned things, even if they rarely turn out the way I expect them to. It gives you a sense of safety and stress relief.
When I was ready to date again, more than 13 years after my last date, it was sort of obvious to me that I would have to learn a thing or two, especially since I have never dated in this country and believe that first dates here should not be called dates. Hey, they are dinners! Not dates! Calling some of those dinners dates is a bit too optimistic for my taste.

A new report from the Census Bureau confirms a long standing cliché – that kids growing up in single parent families generally do not perform as well in school as kids who grow up in a traditional two-parent family environment. But the gap isn’t substantial, at least as far as divorced families are concerned. In fact, the challenge of keeping teenagers on track in school is by far greater.

If we believe a new report published by the Family and Parenting Institute (FPI), today’s common structure of a happy family may be on its way out. The report focuses on families in the UK, but the outlined trend certainly applies to Americans as well.

Business Week is running an interesting and rather controversial article that weighs the pros and cons of whether low income women should get married to improve their financial situation. The debate style article, represented by Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution on the pro-side and by Maria Cancian of the Russell Sage Foundation is an interesting black/white discussion that is worth reading.