Nancy Folbre sums up the latest research that might explain why there is a rise in single mothers. She says that that the economy has hit men very hard. They have been "humiliated" by the bad economy. Men also have a different reaction to adversity than women. They have a "fight or flight" response. She discounts other theories, including single women are stupid and single women don't want to get married.
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Apt. 11d 
The social psychologist Shelley Taylor asserts persuasively that men and women have evolved different responses to stress.
I am always dubious of explanations that rely on overly biological “evolved” responses. Has the relevant genetic mutation emerged since the 25% unemployment rates of the 1930s? Is there a reason that our hunter-gatherer ancestors in the Ugandan savannah evolved so that there are more single mother homes in the United States, but not in (higher unemployment) European countries?
Unless you want to argue that Europeans are a distinct species (not so far-fetched sometimes), you can’t come up with an evolutionary-psychology argument that only works on one side of the Atlantic.
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