Typical American Families

 

Typical American Families

The discussion focused on the nature of family roles, an overview of the major demographic changes (marriage, cohabitation, non-family households, remarriage, fertility, teen pregnancy, and female employment) affecting the American family in recent decades, and the nature of the impact on women, men, and children.

 Four main trends were identified:

 1) an increased proportion of children living in single-parent families due to high divorce rates and increased births outside of marriage; 

2) an increased share of adults in non-traditional living arrangements;

 3) increased participation of women in the labor force at all stages of the life cycle; and 

4) a decrease in the proportion of children and an increase in the proportion of elderly people in the total population due to declining mortality and fertility rates. 

Starting a family is based on parental and educational roles, the need for society and emotional support, and opportunities for specialization and trade, and economies of scale. The costs of family life can include potential disagreements, conflicts, loss of privacy, and time and money. Several reasons have been identified for not maintaining traditional families consisting of a married couple with children. 

The trends involved later age at marriage: 24.4 years in 1992 for women, increased cohabitation (nearly 50% cohabitation before first marriage in 1985-86), a decline in the number of married couple households, and an increase in the number of adults in non-family households. . 

Divorce rates have risen over the past 100 years with peaks in the 1970s; reasons have been identified as an increase in baby boomers and new marriages, increased labor participation of women and changes in gender roles. The stabilization and slight decline in rates may be due to natural leveling, the likelihood of greater stability in new marriages, and the aging of baby boomers. The expected future increase in the divorce rate was also justified. Remarriage rates varied by sex, age at separation/divorce, presence of children, race/ethnicity, and education.

 Fertility remained stable at 1.8 during the late 1970s and early 1980s, rising slightly to 2.0 in 1989. In 1990, 25% of births were out of wedlock, compared with 5% in 1960. About 12% of births in in 1989 it belonged to teenagers. . There was an increase in female-headed households, whose median income in 1992 was $13,012, or 33% of a married couple's income.