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.

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.

Have you ever wondered about your share in the total U.S. population? Who are the single parents in our society? Is the general perception of the low income, isolated single parent accurate? How many single parents are there? How much money do they earn? What are the average child support payments?

These are just a few questions not only Lisa and I may have been wondering about. The bad news here is that there are virtually no easily accessible sources to get straight-forward answers to these questions. The good news, however, is that answers are available, if you are willing to dig deep into databases and if you are willing to spend some time researching. We have started that research and examined the most recent public data.