Quick Answer
What percentage of mothers get custody in 2025?
Out of all the 13 million custodial parents in the United States, 82.3% are mothers. This means five in every six custodial parents are women.
Although it may seem like mothers always get full guardianship of their children, it is not always the case.
The decision of the legal counsel will always depend on the appropriateness of the mother to fulfill that role.
Let’s find out the interesting facts about child custody in this article.
What Percentage of Mothers Get Custody in 2025?
Out of all the 13 million custodial parents in the United States, 82.3% are mothers.
This means five in every six custodial parents are women.
Despite them having an aggregate advantage in terms of percentage, there are more custodial mothers whose income falls below the poverty line than their male counterparts.
According to a 2013 study, 31.2% of all custodial mothers have income below the poverty line compared to 17.4% with that of fathers.
In terms of child support agreements, 52.3% of mothers get either legal or informal support. Meanwhile, fathers get only 31.4%.
Custodial Mothers in Canada
What percentage of mothers get custody in Canada? According to a recent survey, 80.6% of all mothers in the country get exclusive custody of their children, ages 0 to 5 years old.
The number is much lower for those with children aged 6 to 11 years old, which is at 74.0%.
In terms of broken union classification, 84.1% of mothers get exclusive custody in the common law.
74.3% of mothers get exclusive custody in marriage with common law before, while 82.0% get custody in marriage without common law before.
Custodial Mothers in Australia
What percentage of mothers get custody in Australia?
According to a study released in May 2022, 45% of custodial mothers living in the country have sole custody of their children before the law.
Employment Status of US Custodial Mothers
Employment status has a significant role in a parent’s ability to provide for the needs of their child or children in their custody.
Take a look at this data from the US census.gov detailing the employment status of custodial mothers from 2003 to 2013.
- 2003 – 50.5% of all custodial mothers are employed in a full-time job all year round during the year. 29.6% are employed part-time, while 19.9% did not work.
- 2005 – 50.1% of all custodial mothers are employed in a full-time job all year round during the year. 28.5% are employed part-time, while 21.4% did not work.
- 2007 – 49.8% of all custodial mothers are employed in a full-time job all year round during the year. 29.7% are employed part-time, while 20.5% did not work.
- 2009 – 47.1% of all custodial mothers are employed in a full-time job all year round during the year. 28.9% are employed part-time, while 24.0% did not work.
- 2011 – 47.0% of all custodial mothers are employed in a full-time job all year round during the year. 20.8% are employed part-time, while 24.2% did not work.
- 2013 – 45.9% of all custodial mothers are employed in a full-time job all year round during the year. 30.9% are employed part-time, while 23.2% did not work.
Identity of Custodial Mothers in the United States
In the United States, nearly 45% of all mothers who get custody of their children are white women from non-Hispanic backgrounds. 40.4% of which are never married, leaving only 16.3% in a married status.
Meanwhile, 30.1% are divorced, and 11.9% are separated. The remaining one is 3% or widowed.
In terms of age, the majority of custodial mothers, or 58.4%, are below 40 years old.
This leaves the remaining 41.6% to those 40 years old and older.
US Custodial Mothers – Educational Attainment
Below is a piece of information about the educational attainment of custodial mothers in 2018.
- High School Diploma – only 13.1% of all custodial mothers did not complete their High School education. This is a significant improvement compared to more than 20% and the completion rate in 1994.
- Associate Degree – close to 34% of custodial mothers during the year have completed at least an Associate Degree. This is another improvement from the 17.1% result in 1994.
Custody Time
If the agreement does not include an equal distribution of custody time between parents, the female parent normally gets more time compared to the other parent.
Custodial mothers normally get 65% of the entire custody time and leave the remaining 35% to their former partner.
But statistics are different in the United States as each state has its own custody rules.
For example, non-custodial fathers only get 21.8% of their child’s entire year in Tennessee, while Texan fathers are awarded 120.5 days every year with their children.
Meanwhile, states like Pennsylvania, employ the “best interest of the child” standard, which eliminates the automatic granting of the child’s living rights to the mother after a divorce on the ground that the mother is “better for the child” for arbitrary reasons.
Mothers with Exclusive Living Custody
It is worth noting that children living exquisitely with their mothers, meaning the father figure is not in the picture, climbed to 21% in 2020.
This is a 10% hike from its 11% settlement in 1968.
Comparing this with custodial fathers, only 4.5% of children live exclusively with their fathers during the same year. Nevertheless, this figure is already a good improvement from 1% in 1968.
Conclusion
What percentage of mothers get custody?
The rate is more than 80% for countries like the United States and Canada.
Mothers normally are considered at an advantage when it comes to custody rights.
But this has already changed over the years, as evidenced by the improvement in custody time fathers get nowadays.
