Current American divorce rates are far higher than those of previous generations. The number of divorced individuals nearly quadrupled between 1970 and the mid 1990s.While American divorce rates are no longer increasing they remain the highest of any industrial nation in the world. Children today have a greater chance of growing up in a family split by divorce than in any other period in American history. As recently as 1960 four-fifths of all American children were living with both their natural parents, but today’s children have only a 50-50 chance of getting through childhood with both parents. Fatherless families now constitute One-quarter of all white families with children, two-thirds of black families with children, and over one-third of Hispanic families with children. Daniel Patrick Moynihan observes that we may be the first society in history where children are worse off than adults.