Census: Oklahoma has more Mr. Moms and Ms. Dads raising children
He's both. And he's found patching his life back together on the outside has almost made prison look like Sunday school.
“It's been really difficult, being Mr. Mom,” said Duran, 35.
Beyond dealing with his emotions and those of the children after his wife left, Duran has struggled most with getting baby-sitting while he works. In fact, he was temporarily laid off from his construction job of three years when he missed work because he couldn't find affordable, steady care for his children, ages 22 months to 9.
“A month ago, I was stressed out. I didn't know how I was going to pay the bills,” said Duran, who was rehired by his former boss and elder at Newsong Church about three weeks ago.
“There was the possibility of Satan seeping into my life. Satan and I used to have a good relationship, until the Lord stepped into my life,” Duran said.
Without a driver's license for a dozen years because of driving violations, he's seen in Grove pushing 22-month-old Dax in a baby carriage with Javlynn, 4, Devon, 6, Dustin, 7, and Denton , 9, in tow during carefully planned — and budgeted — trips to the store.
Single parents
Similar struggles are common among Oklahoma parents raising their children solo. More than 168,600 single parents raise their children alone in Oklahoma, up nearly 19 percent in the last decade.
Duran represents part of the fastest growing segment of that population: single-father households, which jumped by 40 percent to 45,934. The number is still significantly less than single-mother households, a category that U.S. Census Bureau figures show rose by 12 percent to 122,699.
Some studies indicate the trend may be pushed by more men becoming involved in their children's lives after divorce, more often seeking custody or sharing custody.
Limiting opportunities
But other contributing factors may be the state's great single-parent population and Oklahoma's number one ranking in incarceration of women. And single parents also tend to be short on money, thus limiting children's opportunities, said Linda Terrell , Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy executive director.
“I strongly believe that having as many caring adults in the life of a child on a regular basis is critical for everything from early brain development, to socialization, to emotional skill development, to learning how to be in relations with others. ... As a single parent, you have a limited number of caring adults usually in your life,” Terrell said.
Raising Driving Age - News
Jul 15Geraldine Farmer has raised five children, and now at age 07/17/2011 Number of gay couples raising children still few but growing type of family in Oklahoma, according to the latest census figures. 07/17/2011 At 65 years old, Geraldine Farmer
The biggest proportion of distracted drivers was the under-20 age group – 16 percent of all drivers younger than 20 involved in fatal crashes were reported to have been distracted while driving. The agency says there are three main types of distraction
In line with its initiatives in raising awareness and promoting ePayment facilities, the eGovernment Authority has recently launched summer awareness campaign at the Bahrain City Center that will continue until August 2011 to facilitate public online
The Bank of Japan (BoJ) for instance, has succeeded in driving the yield on Japan's 10-year government bond (JGB) to as low as 1.05% this week, even though the supply of Japan's debt, has mushroomed to 230% of Japan's GDP, - and its debt rating has
Most parents well know the costs a child or two can bring at any age — buying diapers for newborns, paying for field trips and summer camps for adolescents, car insurance for newly driving teenagers and the cost of food and clothes for growing
Raise The Driving Age To 18? | Eric Peters Autos
Get into more than their fair share of wrecks. But is this due to their age – or their lack of training/experience?
There are some very young professional race car drivers – from NHRA to NASCAR. Maybe not sixteen-year-olds, but not far removed. At 15 or 16, some of these kids are already better drivers than most of us will ever be.
Granted, these are exceptional kids – but the point’s not invalid: Experience and training probably matter at least as much as the driver’s age.
Will merely raising the age of eligibility for that first license to 17 or 18 give a kid more experience – or less , not raised.
Consider: Does it make more – or less – sense to toss a kid with zero hours behind the wheel a set of car keys at 17 or 18, when he is inches way from being legally free of any parental oversight whatsoever?
Maybe it would be smarter to begin teaching kids how to drive around 14 or 15 – easing them into it gradually, and with years of parental or other adult supervision – so that by the time they are 17 or 18 they have three or four years of real-world driving experience behind them. That experience would arguably make them better – and thus, safer That’s actually the way it used to be done, too – until institutions such as public skools took over from parents and the whole process became bureaucratized, officialized – and not surprisingly if you follow the natural course of such things – utterly incompetent and counterproductive, too. Driving is, after all, a learned skill like any other. It is not mastered overnight – or after a few weeks of classroom instruction by a public skool hack and a couple of hours in the seat – most of that spent driving around cones in the parking lot. Logic says: Start them sooner , not later. But that would make sense – and making sense is what IIHS is not all about. It exists to harp over problems often directly ginned up by its own propaganda. Mandatory buckle-up laws are an example of this. Ditto the neo-Prohibitionist crusade that has gone way beyond a legitimate effort to deal with drunk drivers that now mercilessly prosecutes people with negligible amounts of alcohol in their system – as little as .06 or even .04 BAC, levels that have little if any correlation with actual accidents . What would make some sense when it comes to stacking the deck in favor of new/teenage drivers is proper instruction. What we do in this country – for the most part – is woefully inadequate. Many parents set poor examples – or are simply ill-equipped to properly instruct their kids in safe/competent driving. Ditto the so-called “schools” (especially those offered by the public skools) and the at-best cursory testing done by most DMVs before that first license is issued.
Raising of the Driving Age Sought - -
Raising of the Driving Age Sought - - 
Raising of the Driving Age Sought - -
Raising of the Driving Age Sought - - 
Raising of the Driving Age Sought: Raising Driving Age - Bookshelf
Statistics, Making Sense of Data
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Report makes a case for raising driving age - USATODAY.com
Sixteen-year-old drivers are the most likely to crash, so raising the age at which teens could get their license would save many lives, a report from the Insurance ...
Group: States should raise driving age - US news - Life ...
Taking aim at a longstanding rite of passage for 16-year-olds, an influential auto safety group is calling on states to raise the age for getting a driver's license ...
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Senator wants to raise legal driving age " Naples Daily News
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The minimum driving age should be raised to 18
Young drivers, and even older ones, cause many fatal accidents; raising the minimum age at which people can drive might reduce this, but is it a benefit to society, ...