The Scouting Report: A weekly digest

Single parents, tagging cattle, Democratic cities, Family friendly swamp rat

The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 Current Population Survey estimated that 10.6 million households in the United States are run by single parents. That’s up from 1.5 million in 1950.

The Bureau released the data on March 21, which happened to be National Single Parent Day.

Of those 10.6 million households, 7.9 million are headed by mothers and 2.7 million by fathers.

The number of one-parent households has been decreasing since hitting a high in 2006. But that is also true of all families with children under 18.

A 2019 study by Pew Research Center found that nearly a quarter of children in the United States live in one-parent households. That was three times greater than 129 other nations. Just 3 percent of children in China, 4 percent in Nigeria and 5 percent in India lived in single-parent households. 

A deadline to submit comments on a proposal from the United States Department of Agriculture to require the use of radio frequency identification tags for some cattle and bison producers passed on March 20. Now, for producers who support or oppose the new rules, it’s a question of waiting to see what new regulations are coming. 

The electronic tags can be read with a scanner, making identification of cattle faster than metal ear tags that are currently used. That, in turn, can make it faster to identify animals who have been exposed to disease outbreaks, which could help the industry isolate outbreaks.

The rule, if adopted, would apply to dairy cattle and some beef cattle.