Family Demographics

Part 1:

What struck me the most is the idea of marriage decreasing from 55 to 52 percent during the period of 1995-2010. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not see the importance of, or appreciate the idea of marriage. I can tell this is true just by observing my own family and friends who have chosen to cohabitate rather than marry, for as long as I have been married (12 years) and in some cases much longer.

I don’t think the data/findings are much of a surprise, but they are a bit disturbing. To know that 2 parent households have decreased from 25.2 percent to 20.1 percent tells me that families have been broken up, whether it is due to death of a spouse or divorce. And I would go out on the limb and say that it is due to the latter, and that’s unfortunate. Couples without children and single households seem to be more typical according to the data.

I am currently part of a 2 parent household, and I plan to maintain that until my children grow-up and move out. Hopefully that will be the only cause of my status changing from 2 parents to couple w/out children.

Part 2:

Women today are choosing careers and the single life, which is a great difference from women 40 years ago. Today’s women are choosing to go to college, and gain their degrees, travel the world, and really take in the single life. This “new girl order” has stretched from age 25, all the way into the 30s. Women are choosing to marry after they have experienced life, and obtained their degrees, and that’s if they choose marriage at all. I don’t know if I would say women work less or more according to article. I think the type of work is different. I mean… for some women, maintaining a household is a lot of work, with very little thank you and compensation for it. And then you have the women who have “careers”. But I wouldn’t say today’s woman is working more or less than women of the past.

I have already reached adulthood and as I stated earlier am a part of the 2 parent household dynamics. I married when I was 21. Very young. The responsibilities took on at that age, I don’t think today’s 21 year olds can handle. In the past I have looked back on my decision and thought about what would have happened if I had waited to marry. And that’s a question I will never know the answer to. I do know that at 18 I wasn’t ready for college…I didn’t even want to apply, my mother forced me to…and 2 years later I dropped out. I was never the partying type, I don’t drink, smoke, hang in bars…it’s never been my thing. So I guess this “new girl order” all depends upon “the girl”.

The show I would describe for this assignment is “All of Us". It is no longer on TV, but it was a sitcom loosely related to the life of actor Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith. It highlighted how the husband was embarking on a new relationship with his fiancé while trying to balance his relationship with his ex-wife and sharing custody of his son. This show relates with topics such as "Changing Families and Effects of divorce on spouses and children".

Part 3:

1. According to the Changing Demographics in the U.S. article by Cherlin, the age for men and women to marry has gone into the later 20s. A factor that attributes to this age increase is that individuals have chosen to obtain a higher education. They are also using educational levels as a requirement when choosing a mate. At one point in history religion was the basis for choosing a mate.

There definitely has been an increase of births outside of marriage than that in the 1950's and a rise in childbearing adolescence. This is based on data concerning women who have low levels of education and are not married. Women who choose education and success continue to wait longer to have children. Cohabitation has risen, and it was not much of a concern in the past.

Divorce is on the decline from its peak about 20 years ago.

2. This research has extreme levels of new data from the past. Family life cycle has changed. New family roles and styles are introduced (single-parenting, divorce, cohabitation, same sex couples, and/or remarriage) which has changed the findings of past data and introduce new information and areas of study. Demographics and society are always changing. Keeping up with the information is a challenge but it helps us understand who we are and where we are headed in the future.

3. The author cites Teachman, Tedrow & Crowden (2000