There are eight specific trends in marriage that have made a significant shift in the way families currently are vs. how they used to be. These trends are changing the family and the purpose of marriage, which was once for procreation and raising children. These are what the trends are becoming:
1. Delying marriage. Between the 1950s and '70s the majority of women married by age 20.5, and men by age 22.5. In 2007 the age for both women and men were 6 years older than previously at ages 26 and 28, respectively.
2. Cohabitation (un-married couples living together). By 2008 there were over 6.1 million couples cohabiting, this is an extreme rise from the 430,000 in 1960. Most of the couples cohabiting have children together, and some plan to eventually marry. There is a myth that cohabiting can test the compatability of a couple for marriage, trying to prevent divorce. I will explain more about this myth in a later post.
3. Birth rates have dropped by half between 1954 and 2008. There are some women delying their first child until their mid- to late 30s. This makes it harder for the woman to get pregnant because the capacity decreases with age. This rate is below the necessary natural replacement of a population, meaning that the population will begin to decline.
4. Non-marital births. Only 10% of women born in 1925-'29 had children before marriage, compared to over 25%of women born in 1965-'69.
5. Employed mothers. This increased from 23.8% in 1950 to 62.6% in 2007. The greatest increase was among women with children age 6 and older (school age).
6. Divorce has risen dramatically since 1970 when the no-fault divorce law was first enacted in the U.S.
7. Living alone, remaining single is a choice that more people are making. In 2009, 31.7 people lived alone. This is also in relation to the increase of cohabitation, which is unstable, therefore the separation causes people to live alone.
8. Household size. This correlates with low birth rates, divorce, and living alone. The household size dropped from 5.8 to 3.3 to 2.5 people from 1790 to 1960 to 2008.
2 comments:
You know... I have heard many times about the numbers 1-7 however I find it very interesting #8. That is something that I believe most people do not think about when they compare marriage now to then.
I find the statistical analysis very interesting, from then till now. I wonder how many people our aware of the differences? I also wonder if people understand that many of the reasons they are waiting to have children or believe in decline in population, realize what they are doing?
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