Posted on: Sunday, June 19, 2005

Father's Day goes way back — to 1910

Advertiser News Services

Today is Father's Day, and in its honor, the Census Bureau has released some facts about the day dedicated to Dad.

The idea of Father's Day was conceived by Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Wash., while she listened to a Mother's Day sermon in 1909. Dodd wanted a special day to honor her father, William Smart, a widowed Civil War veteran who raised his six children by himself on a rural farm.

June was chosen for the first Father's Day celebration — proclaimed for June 19, 1910, by Spokane's mayor — because it was the month of William Smart's birth. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson designated the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. Father's Day has been celebrated annually since 1972, when President Richard Nixon signed the public law that made it permanent.

The Census Bureau estimates that there are 66.4 million fathers across the nation today. Of these, 98,000 are estimated to be "stay-at-home" dads — married fathers with children under 15 years old who have remained out of the labor force for more than a year to care for the family while their wives work outside the home.

About 26.5 million fathers are part of married-couple families with children under 18. And about 2.3 million are single fathers, up from 393,000 in 1970. Among single parents living with their children, 18 percent are men.

Among divorced parents, 84 percent of child-support providers are men, making median payments of $3,600 annually.