Fathers are an integral--and often missing--part of urban and inner-city families, five experts who deal with the problem of family breakdown told an audience of nearly 100 at the Kennedy School of Government's ARCO Forum last night.

Panelists warned that single families are becoming increasingly prevalent in America, with a quarter of all families having only one parent. If current trends continue, one half of all children will experience part of their childhood in families with only one parent, they said.

While Massachusetts has one of the lowest rates of out-of-wedlock births and divorce in the country, 14,000 children see their parents separate, and 20,000 children are born out of wedlock in an average year in the state, according to panelist Marilyn Ray Smith, a legal counsel for the state's Child Support Enforcement Division.

States have focused more on the issues surrounding poor urban separated families since the passage of the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, better known as the "Welfare Reform Act."

Among the many provisions of the act was a provision requiring state child support offices to establish paternity in the birth of out-of-wedlock children receiving welfare. States must make progress towards establishing the father in 90 percent of these children, or else lose massive amounts of federal welfare money paid out in block grants.

Before the establishment of this act, child support offices had little reason to establish paternity for children in poor urban areas, said Ronald B. Mincy '74 a senior program officer with the Ford Foundation, which is supporting study of the issue.

Because there was little chance the absent father had any means to pay child support, departments decided to focus on middle-class families, where significant money could be recovered, he said.

Now, child support departments are encountering a new sort of fathers, ones who often lack education, employment skills and have criminal records.