The liberal media is delightfully reporting that for the first time in history, married couples have dropped below half of all households in the nation. The New York Times gleefully emphasizes "the evolution of the American family toward less traditional forms."
For background, read Defeating Marriage & Destroying Family: Survey and also read Marriage Obsolete: American Poll
UPDATE 4/5/13: More Women Shack Up & Give Birth; Marriage Rare
-- From "Fewer than half of U.S. households are married couples, census says" by David Ariosto, CNN 5/26/11
Married couples have dropped below half of all U.S households, marking a historic shift in what constitutes the traditional American family, according to census data released Thursday.
Those who have tied the knot represent roughly 48% of all American households, steadily dropping from 1990 and 2000 but falling off sharply from 78% in 1950.
In 1950, 43% of American households were married couples with at least one child under the age of 18.
That number has plummeted to about one-fifth of all U.S. households.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "Fewer couples embrace marriage; more live together" By Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, USA TODAY 5/26/11
Unmarried couples made up 12% of U.S. couples in 2010, a 25% increase in 10 years, according to Census data out today.
In Camden, N.J., 35% of couples are not married, up from 28% in 2000 and the highest of any city with at least 50,000 people. Other cities where more couples are choosing not to marry: Rochester, N.Y., 33%, up from 26%; Flint, Mich., 29%, up from 21%; Cleveland, 27%, up from 20%.
"These are places with flexibility about what constitutes a family so that even those with more prosperity may elect to have non-married families and lives," says Virginia Rutter, sociology professor at Framingham State University in Massachusetts.
Couples at both ends of the economic spectrum are opting to live together rather than marry, largely because women increasingly rely less on men to take care of them financially.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "Married Couples Are No Longer a Majority, Census Finds" by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times 5/26/11
In recent history, the marriage rate among Americans was at its highest in the 1950s, when the institution defined gender roles, family life and a person’s place in society. But as women moved into the work force, cohabitation lost its taboo label, and as society grew more secular, marriage lost some of its central authority.
Today, traditional patterns have been turned upside down. Women with college degrees are now more likely to marry than those with just high school diplomas, the reverse of several decades ago, said June Carbone, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and co-author of “Red Families v. Blue Families.”
W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, argues that the retreat from marriage is bad for society because it means less security for children. “It’s troubling because those kids are much more likely to be exposed to instability, complex family relations and poverty,” he said.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
Also read Fewer Get Married, but Stay Married: Census