Family Life and Current Trends ... distressing

The National Marriage Project
The National Marriage Project is a nonpartisan, nonsectarian and interdisciplinary initiative located at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Each year, a report is issued on the heath of marriage in America.

In July of 2005, the report, ‘The State of Our Unions’ was issued and can be found on their web site – www.marriage.rutgers.edu

The following are extracted from the full report.

1. The marriage rate, the number of marriages per 1000 unmarried women, has dropped from 76.5 in 1970 to 39.9 in 2004.

2. The percentage of children under the age of 18 who live with both biological parents is 63 in the US, the lowest among Western industrialized nations.

3. In Sweden, virtually all couples live together before marriage, compared to two-thirds of couples currently in America.

4. Between 1960 and 2004, the number of unmarried couples in America increased by nearly 1200 percent. It is estimated that about a quarter of unmarried women age 25 to 39 are currently living with a partner and an additional quarter have lived with a partner at some time in the past.

5. Over half of all first marriages are now preceded by living together, compared to virtually none 50 years ago

6. While in 1960 only nine percent of all children lived in single-parent families, by 2004 thee percentage had jumped to 28%.

7. Since 1960, the percentage of babies born to unwed mothers has increased more than six fold. More than a third of all births and more than two-thirds of black births were out-of-wedlock.

8. An estimated 40 percent of all children are expected to spend some time in a cohabitating household during their growing up years.

9. Less than a third of the girls and only slightly more than a third of the boys (High School seniors in a survey) seem to believe that marriage is more beneficial to individuals than alternatives.