Current American divorce rates are far higher than those of previous genera tions. 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.