According to preliminary results from the Microcensus released by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on Thursday, approximately 1.62 million single-parent households existed in Germany in 2025. This means that nearly one in five (19.4%) families with children under the age of 18 had only one parent. This figure marks a slight decrease compared to 2015, when there were 1.65 million single-parent families, representing 20.5% of all families with minor children.
The majority of single parents remain women. In 2025, there were 1.37 million single mothers, meaning over four out of five (84.4%) single parents with children under 18 were female. Ten years earlier, this proportion was 88.9%. Consequently, the share of single fathers among single parents increased: rising from 11.1% in 2015 to 15.6% in 2025. A total of 253,000 single fathers were living with their minor children in a household.
Overall, 2.36 million children under the age of 18 lived with only one parent in 2025, which accounted for 16.8% of all minors in Germany.
The dynamics of employment differ between parents. Single mothers are more likely to work full-time than mothers with a partner, whereas this trend is reversed for single fathers. In 2025, 38.6% of the 956,000 working single mothers with children under 18 were employed full-time. This compares to 30.7% of mothers living in marriage or a partnership. Conversely, the share of working single fathers with minor children employed full-time was 83.8%, which is lower than the rate for fathers in a partnership (91.5%). Overall, the employment rate among single parents with children under 18 was 71.8% last year, with fathers (82.8%) being more likely to be employed than mothers (69.8%).
In terms of financial stability, single parents and their children are particularly vulnerable to poverty. According to the 2025 survey on income and living conditions (EU-SILC), 28.9% of individuals in single-parent households had an income below the poverty threshold. This makes the risk of poverty for people in single-parent households more than twice as high as for people in households with two parents and one or more children (12.0%). For context, across all household types, 16.1% of the population was at risk of poverty.
Separately, a proposed reform of the childcare allowance (Unterhaltsvorschuss) suggests that the benefit should only be granted to children under the age of 16, rather than the current limit of 18 years. In 2025, 15.8% of minors in single-parent households were 16 or 17 years old, totaling 373,000 young people. This reform would affect 21.2% of single-parent families.
