Posted: August 26th, 2022

”Discuss the changes that American families are now undergoing”

Changes in American Families

Discuss the changes that American families are now undergoing.”
Generally, family life in the American community is changing. Currently, there has been a noticeable decline in two-parent households, which has been related to divorce, remarriage, and cohabitation purposes Pew Research Center, 2015). The prevalence of single-parent families is at an all-time high, considering the rates of decline in marriages. For many women, parenthood has preceded marriage. For women aged 20to 24 years, the marriage rate declined from 57% to 17%, while 40% of the births in the United States are unmarried women (Lakritz, 2019). Therefore, while in the 1960s, most babies were born within a marriage, currently, four in ten births happen to wipers that are single or have no marital partner.
The families are becoming smaller, with many Americans choosing to have fewer children considering the changes in parenthood circumstances. Many families choose to have an average of two children, yet the rate was above three children in the 1970s (Lakritz, 2019). This has led to the phenomenon of the middle child becoming extinct. Also, The parents today are less likely to be married at earlier ages compared to the past. The present parents are older and have more education. The decline in teenage births has also caused a rise in maternal age. Today mothers ate also far more educated than they were in the past. Also, more women who had children in their younger years are joining the workforce.
Similarly, family structures have also transformed such that the role of mothers has increased beyond the home into the workplace. Considering more mothers have entered the workforce, many have also become breadwinners, which at times means being the primary breadwinners in their families (Lakritz, 2019). As women’s roles are changing, men are also pitching more type of aid in housework and parenting responsibilities, which was unheard of in the nineties. It is prudent that women are still doing most of the housework and parenting, but the number of men involved is also increasing. Therefore, American families are experiencing a gender roles shift. Women are now more focused on their careers before having children, while the millennial males are shifting into housekeeping and parenting responsibilities. A survey has indicated that most young men and women have ideally stated that they want to share earnings and caregiving equivalently with the partners.
Due to the American family’s changes, there is currently no dominant type of family in the United States. Parents are raising their children in increasingly diverse settings, and for many of the children, it is in continually changing family forms (Pew Research Center, 2015). After the Second World War, the dominant family form was one of two married parents. However, currently, the rate is less than 46% living in this kind of setting. Blended families that contain either a stepparent, set sibling, or a half-sibling have increased to 16% from 8% in the 1990s. However, not all remarriages from increased divorce rates will involve blended families (Pew Research Center, 2015). Apart from blended families, same-sex families have been increasing due to same-sex marriage becoming legal in 50 states. The public has increasingly shown support for this marriage. To this effect, the marriages will end up building their families by having children through scientific methods or adoption processes.

References
Pew Research Center. (2015). The American family today. Retrieved 21 November 2020, from https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/17/1-the-american-family-today/#
Lakritz, T. (2019). THEN AND NOW: How American families have changed since the early 1900s. Retrieved 21 November 2020, from https://www.insider.com/how-families-have-changed-then-and-now-america-2019-3

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