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Community Corner

Father's Day: Fast Facts about Fathers

Patch offers some interesting facts that you might not have known about our nation's fathers.

Father's Day started in 1909 when Sonora Dodd listened to a Mother's Day sermon and decided that fathers needed a special day, too.

Dodd's father was a Civil War veteran who raised six children by himself after his wife's death. A date in June 1910 was chosen because Dodd's father was born in June.

In 1966,  President Lyndon Johnson designated the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day, and in 1972, President Richard Nixon signed Father’s Day into law.

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  • There are estimated to be 70.1 million fathers in the US. 
  • 25.3 million fathers were were part of married-couple families with childrenyounger than 18 in 2010.
  • There were 1.8 million single fathers in 2010, and that means that  15 percent of single parents were men.
  • It is estimated that there were 154,000 stay-at-home dads in 2010. These married fathers cared for 287,000 children for at least one year while their wives worked outside the home.
  • $2.8 billion in child support was received by custodial fathers in 2007 (They were due $4.3 billion. In contrast, custodial mothers received $18.6 billion of the $29.8 billion in support that was due.)
  • 53 percent of children younger than six years ate breakfast with their father; 71 percent ate dinner with Dad in 2006. 
  • 36 percent of children younger than six years had 15 or more outings with their father in the last month, as of 2006. 
  • On the average, children ages 3 to 5 were read to by their fathers six times in the past week, as of 2006.
  •  66 percent of children younger than six years old were praised three or more times a day by their fathers.
  • And finally, there were 8,111 men’s clothing stores, 16010 hardware stores and 7009 home centers across the county in 2008, so there are plenty of places to run out any buy Dad a new tie or set of screwdrivers—but you'd better hurry!

Sources:

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