MenCare Russia reports that in St. Petersburg, about one in five children is brought up without a father, due to high rates of divorce and children born to single mothers. In the city, more than 20 percent of children are born out of wedlock, and almost half of all marriages end in divorce.
At the International Conference on Family and Child Integration in St. Petersburg on March 26, MenCare Russia’s coordinator Nikolai Eremin discussed the ways in which MenCare programming works to engage men in healthy, active ways in the lives of their children and families. Conference participants considered both the individual and structural factors that impact fathers’ involvement in caregiving and household work.