LJ: what's in a family by any other name?
I finally had some time to go over the Pew Research Center's survey (The Decline of Marriage And Rise of New Families) documenting views in the U.S. on family and marriage. As they say:The transformative trends of the past 50 years that have led to a sharp decline in marriage and a rise of new family forms have been shaped by attitudes and behaviors that differ by class, age and race, according to a new Pew Research Center nationwide survey, done in association with TIME, complemented by an analysis of demographic and economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
While the broad trends are, I think, pretty well known (fewer people marrying, an increase in "non traditional" families), a more thorough breakdown of what is happening, to whom, and how people view these changes, resulted in more than a few eye openers.
The big surprise for me was the appearance of the socio-economic divide:Marriage, while declining among all groups, remains the norm for adults with a college education and good income but is now markedly less prevalent among those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder.
I think it's obvious people are marrying later: it was common for people in my mother's generation to marry out of high school; that certainly didn't happen often by the time I graduated high school and it's even less so now. I catch myself thinking that 25 is too young to marry, which is kind of crazy on a number of levels if you stop and think about it. (But I base that on how much people change between 20-25 -- you'd barely know yourself let alone someone else.) Anyway, they confirm that: In 1960, 68% of all twenty-somethings were married; in 2008, just 26% were. The overall number of married adults was 72% in 1960, dropping to 52% in 2008. Divorce went from 5% in 1960 to 14% in 2008; the average age at marriage rose by 5 years in that time. Those are huge changes in just two generations.
Of course this is paired with a higher trend of single parenting (usually single women) which we generally frown on. Interestingly, if the situation is an alternative family setup (rather than just the single parent), people are happier about that. At best, this represents a recognition that raising a child is a huge job, too much for any one person; at worst this is thinly disguised slut shaming of the woman for having sex and being burdened with a child she's then going to mess up and/or gender-policing anxiety that boys in such a situation won't grow up manly enough. Seven-in-ten (69%) say the trend toward more single women having children is bad for society, and 61% say that a child needs both a mother and father to grow up happily. On the more accepting side, only a minority say the trends toward more cohabitation without marriage (43%), more unmarried couples raising children (43%), more gay couples raising children (43%) and more people of different races marrying (14%) are bad for society.
I find it encouraging that cohabitating/unmarried couples (just what is the difference there?) and gay couples are viewed roughly equivalently. The huge drop on mixed race marriage is very promising if the past debate on mixed marriage can be considered a precursor to the present debate on gay marriage, as some argue.
Age, religion, and politics (no surprise) are definitely factors: The young are more accepting than the old of the emerging arrangements; the secular are more accepting than the religious; liberals are more accepting than conservatives; the unmarried are more accepting than the married; and, in most cases, blacks are more accepting than whites.
Or to break it down more finely: Nearly nine-in-ten Americans (88%) say a childless married couple is a family, and nearly as many say a single parent raising at least one child (86%) and an unmarried couple with children (80%) are families. A smaller majority say a gay or lesbian couple raising at least one child is a family (63%).
In contrast, same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couples without children are not as commonly regarded as full-fledged families. There's equality of a sort *wry grin*.
The definition of "family" seems to hinge on the presence of children and/or the presence of a legally sanctioned marriage. Fully 86% say a single parent and child constitute a family; nearly as many (80%) say an unmarried couple living together with a child is a family; and 63% say a gay or lesbian couple raising a child is a family. The presence of children clearly matters in these definitions. If a cohabiting couple has no children, a majority of the public says they are not a family. Marriage matters, too. If a childless couple is married, 88% consider them to be a family.
Returning to the socio-economic split that has appeared, [m]arriage rates are now more strongly linked to education than they have been in the past, with college graduates (64%) much more likely to be married than those who have never attended college (48%).
This difference shows up in the economic advantage of married couples: As the country shifts away from marriage, a smaller proportion of adults are experiencing the economic gains that typically accrue from marriage. In 2008, the median household income of married adults was 41% greater than that of unmarried adults, even after controlling for differences in household size. In 1960, this gap was only 12%. The widening of the gap is explained partly by the increased share of wives in the workforce (61% in 2008 versus 32% in 1960) and partly by the increased differential in the educational attainment of the married and the unmarried.
I wonder what the long term implications are if a "proper, legal" marriage is increasingly regarded as a "rich person's" setup? At the least, I would think more of the legal benefits that are automatically conferred with marriage will become increasingly easier to set up between two (or more?) adults without cover of legal marriage and the corresponding increase in non-traditional arrangments (including, yes, polyamorous setups among other configurations*). In fact, perhaps those religious and conservative nutjobs should be looking at ways to keep marriage accessible for all -- I'd think the easier it is to confer the legal benefits of a formalized relationship, the further drops we'd see in actual marriage rates. Of course the conservative contingent seem to think only rich and well off people should be living, you know, actual lives...
This next statistic caught me by surprise, primarily for the rapid shift it represents. I wonder if dragging the issue out in the open, kicking and screaming as it were, made the difference? When I think of what this sort of topic would have been like in the 80's... the word that comes to mind is just literally "unthinkable" (ditto coming out at 15 to one's peers at school -- which continues to shock and delight me when I contemplate that): Recent analysis by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that acceptance of same-sex marriage has grown significantly in the past year, and for the first time in 15 years of polling on the issue, less than half of the public opposes allowing gays and lesbians to marry each other.
Less than half. This is quite a milestone, and I think gay marriage and other equalities under the law are only a matter of time. Especially as the younger the demographic, the more accepting they are of gay marriage & other rights. (Take that, you religious and political bigots.)
In that vein, the differences between religious and secular, and conservative and liberal are striking. You have to realize, there was never any official Republican "stance" on GLBT issues until Reagan insisted on adding anti-gay issues to the Republican plank when he became the Republican presidential nominee. That and abortion -- this is why you can find a "flip flop" on the part of George Bush père when he became the VP nominee. Prior to this the differences were relatively minimal (mostly negative, of course). One wonders if we would have come along further and faster without the Reagan era that disrupted so much progress in the progressive arena. However, these days: The biggest partisan gap is on the trend toward more gay and lesbian couples raising children. By a better than two-to-one margin, more Republicans (65%) than Democrats (30%) say this trend is bad for society. There are similarly large gaps in attitudes about more single women having children (83% of Republicans vs. 61% of Democrats say this is bad for society) and people living together without being married (63% of Republicans vs. 32% of Democrats say this is bad for society).
It goes on: when asked whether a gay or lesbian couple living together with one or more children is a family, 46% of Republicans say it is, compared with 73% of Democrats. Similarly, while 32% of Republicans say a gay or lesbian couple living together with no children is a family, 56% of Democrats say the same. And one-in-four Republicans, compared with more than half of Democrats (54%), consider a cohabiting couple with no children to be a family.
If this hadn't become a partisan issue from the Reagan era and thus mired in endless wrangling, perhaps we would have progressed even faster along these lines. I suppose it's fruitless to speculate too much, but I do wonder.
And I'm going to pop this last one in, with the comment this is no fucking surprise: Regardless of whether they are divorced or widowed, men are more likely than women to say that they want to get married again. About one-third (32%) of divorced or widowed men say this, twice the share of their female counterparts (16%).
Yup. The inequities in a marriage arrangement become blindingly clear after the marriage is over. I have to say, I thought I had a pretty well balanced marriage (and no doubt in comparison with many, it was) but after it was over, I was suddenly aware of so many differences that went away with it, expectations and pressures I had not quite noticed until they were gone. I can't be the only one to have that sort of realization afterwards, and these numbers argue that I'm not.
I, for one, can't wait to see what's in store another twenty years down the road...
*thanks to maymay, who tweeted this while I was in the middle of writing this up. Serendipity.
While the broad trends are, I think, pretty well known (fewer people marrying, an increase in "non traditional" families), a more thorough breakdown of what is happening, to whom, and how people view these changes, resulted in more than a few eye openers.
The big surprise for me was the appearance of the socio-economic divide:Marriage, while declining among all groups, remains the norm for adults with a college education and good income but is now markedly less prevalent among those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder.
I think it's obvious people are marrying later: it was common for people in my mother's generation to marry out of high school; that certainly didn't happen often by the time I graduated high school and it's even less so now. I catch myself thinking that 25 is too young to marry, which is kind of crazy on a number of levels if you stop and think about it. (But I base that on how much people change between 20-25 -- you'd barely know yourself let alone someone else.) Anyway, they confirm that: In 1960, 68% of all twenty-somethings were married; in 2008, just 26% were. The overall number of married adults was 72% in 1960, dropping to 52% in 2008. Divorce went from 5% in 1960 to 14% in 2008; the average age at marriage rose by 5 years in that time. Those are huge changes in just two generations.
Of course this is paired with a higher trend of single parenting (usually single women) which we generally frown on. Interestingly, if the situation is an alternative family setup (rather than just the single parent), people are happier about that. At best, this represents a recognition that raising a child is a huge job, too much for any one person; at worst this is thinly disguised slut shaming of the woman for having sex and being burdened with a child she's then going to mess up and/or gender-policing anxiety that boys in such a situation won't grow up manly enough. Seven-in-ten (69%) say the trend toward more single women having children is bad for society, and 61% say that a child needs both a mother and father to grow up happily. On the more accepting side, only a minority say the trends toward more cohabitation without marriage (43%), more unmarried couples raising children (43%), more gay couples raising children (43%) and more people of different races marrying (14%) are bad for society.
I find it encouraging that cohabitating/unmarried couples (just what is the difference there?) and gay couples are viewed roughly equivalently. The huge drop on mixed race marriage is very promising if the past debate on mixed marriage can be considered a precursor to the present debate on gay marriage, as some argue.
Age, religion, and politics (no surprise) are definitely factors: The young are more accepting than the old of the emerging arrangements; the secular are more accepting than the religious; liberals are more accepting than conservatives; the unmarried are more accepting than the married; and, in most cases, blacks are more accepting than whites.
Or to break it down more finely: Nearly nine-in-ten Americans (88%) say a childless married couple is a family, and nearly as many say a single parent raising at least one child (86%) and an unmarried couple with children (80%) are families. A smaller majority say a gay or lesbian couple raising at least one child is a family (63%).
In contrast, same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couples without children are not as commonly regarded as full-fledged families. There's equality of a sort *wry grin*.
The definition of "family" seems to hinge on the presence of children and/or the presence of a legally sanctioned marriage. Fully 86% say a single parent and child constitute a family; nearly as many (80%) say an unmarried couple living together with a child is a family; and 63% say a gay or lesbian couple raising a child is a family. The presence of children clearly matters in these definitions. If a cohabiting couple has no children, a majority of the public says they are not a family. Marriage matters, too. If a childless couple is married, 88% consider them to be a family.
Returning to the socio-economic split that has appeared, [m]arriage rates are now more strongly linked to education than they have been in the past, with college graduates (64%) much more likely to be married than those who have never attended college (48%).
This difference shows up in the economic advantage of married couples: As the country shifts away from marriage, a smaller proportion of adults are experiencing the economic gains that typically accrue from marriage. In 2008, the median household income of married adults was 41% greater than that of unmarried adults, even after controlling for differences in household size. In 1960, this gap was only 12%. The widening of the gap is explained partly by the increased share of wives in the workforce (61% in 2008 versus 32% in 1960) and partly by the increased differential in the educational attainment of the married and the unmarried.
I wonder what the long term implications are if a "proper, legal" marriage is increasingly regarded as a "rich person's" setup? At the least, I would think more of the legal benefits that are automatically conferred with marriage will become increasingly easier to set up between two (or more?) adults without cover of legal marriage and the corresponding increase in non-traditional arrangments (including, yes, polyamorous setups among other configurations*). In fact, perhaps those religious and conservative nutjobs should be looking at ways to keep marriage accessible for all -- I'd think the easier it is to confer the legal benefits of a formalized relationship, the further drops we'd see in actual marriage rates. Of course the conservative contingent seem to think only rich and well off people should be living, you know, actual lives...
This next statistic caught me by surprise, primarily for the rapid shift it represents. I wonder if dragging the issue out in the open, kicking and screaming as it were, made the difference? When I think of what this sort of topic would have been like in the 80's... the word that comes to mind is just literally "unthinkable" (ditto coming out at 15 to one's peers at school -- which continues to shock and delight me when I contemplate that): Recent analysis by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that acceptance of same-sex marriage has grown significantly in the past year, and for the first time in 15 years of polling on the issue, less than half of the public opposes allowing gays and lesbians to marry each other.
Less than half. This is quite a milestone, and I think gay marriage and other equalities under the law are only a matter of time. Especially as the younger the demographic, the more accepting they are of gay marriage & other rights. (Take that, you religious and political bigots.)
In that vein, the differences between religious and secular, and conservative and liberal are striking. You have to realize, there was never any official Republican "stance" on GLBT issues until Reagan insisted on adding anti-gay issues to the Republican plank when he became the Republican presidential nominee. That and abortion -- this is why you can find a "flip flop" on the part of George Bush père when he became the VP nominee. Prior to this the differences were relatively minimal (mostly negative, of course). One wonders if we would have come along further and faster without the Reagan era that disrupted so much progress in the progressive arena. However, these days: The biggest partisan gap is on the trend toward more gay and lesbian couples raising children. By a better than two-to-one margin, more Republicans (65%) than Democrats (30%) say this trend is bad for society. There are similarly large gaps in attitudes about more single women having children (83% of Republicans vs. 61% of Democrats say this is bad for society) and people living together without being married (63% of Republicans vs. 32% of Democrats say this is bad for society).
It goes on: when asked whether a gay or lesbian couple living together with one or more children is a family, 46% of Republicans say it is, compared with 73% of Democrats. Similarly, while 32% of Republicans say a gay or lesbian couple living together with no children is a family, 56% of Democrats say the same. And one-in-four Republicans, compared with more than half of Democrats (54%), consider a cohabiting couple with no children to be a family.
If this hadn't become a partisan issue from the Reagan era and thus mired in endless wrangling, perhaps we would have progressed even faster along these lines. I suppose it's fruitless to speculate too much, but I do wonder.
And I'm going to pop this last one in, with the comment this is no fucking surprise: Regardless of whether they are divorced or widowed, men are more likely than women to say that they want to get married again. About one-third (32%) of divorced or widowed men say this, twice the share of their female counterparts (16%).
Yup. The inequities in a marriage arrangement become blindingly clear after the marriage is over. I have to say, I thought I had a pretty well balanced marriage (and no doubt in comparison with many, it was) but after it was over, I was suddenly aware of so many differences that went away with it, expectations and pressures I had not quite noticed until they were gone. I can't be the only one to have that sort of realization afterwards, and these numbers argue that I'm not.
I, for one, can't wait to see what's in store another twenty years down the road...
*thanks to maymay, who tweeted this while I was in the middle of writing this up. Serendipity.