The Changing Face of Marriage in America
While 80 to 90 percent of Americans will be married at some point in their lives, the paths that they take to get there can be very different and are often dependent on education and wealth. That's the finding of Johns Hopkins sociologist Andrew Cherlin in his new book, Public and Private Families: An Introduction.
As the blog for the senior dating site ErosOver40 explains:
Individuals from the middle or upper class traditionally get an education, become employed, meet someone or several people, get married and raise a family. People with a lower income value marriage but often postpone it because the men often times do not have steady employment. This in turn causes women with the same socioeconomic background to have children before they marry from the fear of waiting too long. Having children outside of marriage is often considered acceptable in lower income communities.
Changing attitudes about marriage may also be affecting the way people think about starting a family. A recent national survey shows that children "rank as the highest source of personal fulfillment for their parents, but have dropped to one of the least-cited factors in a successful marriage," The Washington Post reports. The survey for the Pew Research Center also shows young people attach "far less moral stigma than do their elders to out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation without marriage."
Celeste Headlee reports on Day to Day that while the stats do show that marriage is declining among Americans, it's still seen as an important institution. One expert points out that children from two-parent families do better in school and social situations.
4:56 PM ET | 07- 6-2007 | permalink
