Some Good News on the Family Front
January 17, 2023
For anyone following trends in the American family in the past half century, it’s been one damn thing after another: a dramatic climb in the percentage of births to unmarried mothers—from 5 percent in 1960 to today’s 40 percent—a divorce revolution that at its height landed half of all marriages in family court, a surge in single-parent homes, fewer fathers involved in kids’ lives, more complex families. I could go on.
Could we finally be getting some relief from this relentless story of family decline? Recent work by the demographer Lyman Stone suggests that this could be the case. Let me stress: could be. For while there’s some good news, it has to be followed with an emphatic “but.”
