The slight dip in the divorce rate in recent years has caused some
prognosticators to predict that younger people, particularly those who've
experienced the pain of growing up in broken homes, are increasingly
committed to making marriage stick. Others, more persuasively, predict
the opposite, that the present lull precedes a storm in which the divorce
rate will soar to 60 percent or higher.
Increasing Cohabitation
The rate of cohabitation--living together without legal
marriage--has been growing since 1970 and will accelerate in the next two
decades. There were under half a million cohabiting couple in 1970; today
there are more than 2.5. The trend for the postindustrial world is very
clear: less marriage, more cohabitation, easier and--if Sweden is any
indication--less stressful separation. Those who divorce will be less
likely to remarry, more likely to cohabit. And in the United States,
cohabitation will increasingly gather about it both the cultural
acceptance and the legal protection now afforded marriage.
More Single-Parent Families and Planned Single Parenthood
The United States has one of the highest proportions of children
growing up in single-parent families. More than one in five births in the
United States is outside of marriage--and three quarters of those births
are to women who are not in consensual unions.
What is significant about the singleparent trend is the finding
that many single women with children now prefer to remain single. The
rush to the altar of unwed mothers, so much a part of American life in
earlier decades, is now, if anything, a slow and grudging shuffle. The
stigma of single parenthood is largely a thing of the past--and the
economic realities, unsatisfactory though they are, sometimes favor
single parenthood. In any case, women have more choices today than they
had even 10 years ago; they are choosing the psychological freedom of
single parenthood over the financial security (increasingly illusory, in
any event) of marriage.
More Couples Childless by Choice
In the topsy-turvy 1990s, with more single people wanting children,
it shouldn't surprise us that more married couples don't want children.
What the trend really comes down to is increased freedom of choice. One
reason for increasing childlessness among couples has to do with the
aging of the population, but many of the reasons are more purely
psychological.
With a strong trend toward later marriage, many couples feel they
are "too old" to have children. Others admit they like the economic
advantages and relative freedom of being childless. Often both have
careers they do not want to jeopardize by having children. In addition, a
growing number of couples cite the need for lower population density,
crime rates, and environmental concerns as reasons for not wanting
children. The old idea that "there must be something wrong with them" if
a couple does not reproduce is fast waning.
The One-Person Household
This is the fastest growing household category in the Western
world. It has grown in the United States from about 10 percent in the
1950s to more than 25 percent of all households today. This is a trend
that still has a long way to go. In Sweden, nearly 40 percent of all
households are now single person.
"Mr. Mom" a Reality at Last?
When women began pouring into the work force in the late 1970s,
expectations were high that a real equality of the sexes was at hand and
that men, at last, would begin to shoulder more of the household duties,
including spending more time at home taking care of the kids. Many women
now regard the concept of "Mr. Mom" as a cruel hoax; but, in fact, Mr.
Mom is slowly emerging.
Men are showing more interest in the home and in parenting. Surveys
make clear there is a continuing trend in that direction. Granted, part
of the impetus for this is not so much a love of domestic work as it is a
distaste for work outside the home. But there is also, among many men, a
genuine desire to play a larger role in the lives of their children.
These men say they feel " cheated" by having to work outside the home so
much, cheated of the experience of seeing their children grow up.
As the trend toward more equal pay for women creeps along, gender
roles in the home can be expected to undergo further change. Men will
feel less pressure to take on more work and will feel more freedom to
spend increased time with their families.
More Interracial Families
There are now about 600,000 interracial marriages annually in the
United States, a third of these are black-white, nearly triple the number
in 1970, when 40 percent of the white population was of the opinion that
such marriages should be illegal. Today 20 percent hold that belief.
There is every reason to expect that both the acceptance of and the
number of interracial unions will continue to increase into the
foreseeable future.
Recognition of Same-Sex Families
Family formation by gay and lesbian couples, with or without
children, is often referenced by the media as a leading-edge signifier of
just how far society has moved in the direction of diversity and
individual choice in the family realm. The number of same-sex couples has
steadily increased and now stands at 1.6 million such couples. There are
an estimated 2 million gay parents in the Unites States.
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