Scary Family Trends to Think About

In the last two weeks of class we have been discussing trends that are becoming more prevalent in today's society. We wrote down a list and linked them all back to the family and why the family is at stake.

• Cohabitation
• Marrying later
• Living alone
• More employed mothers
• Unwed births
• Fertility rates declining
• The trend that "family isn't important "
• "Big families are no longer cool or trendy"
• Pre-marital sex
• Household size

When you look at these separate they don't seem that harmful to the family. But when you lump them together and link them all to the family, you can see that all these trends are the reason why families are dying out.

Let's take marrying later for instance. Since more people are living alone for a lot longer and marrying later in life, they postpone the age of having children. This effects the amount of children they have because they are now older when they marry and have children at a later age. Rather than marrying earlier and having ampule amount of time to have more children. This also effects family history. Parents are having kids at age 30 and sometimes as late into their 40's, which means these kids are not going to know their grandparents or even have their parents around for many years. Grandparents are the best, and the knowledge and wisdom they can give us is remarkable. It is sad to think that these children will not be able to see these generations.

Living alone, or smaller household sized have greatly increased. This is an interesting statistic:

In 1950 the average household size was 900 square feet with 6.1 people.
In 2000 the average household size was 2300 square feet with 2.5 people.

Pretty crazy when you look at those numbers?  Today we are living in larger amounts of space with a lot fewer people. "The myth that the world is too crowded" should look at this statistic. Either have more children per family, or build smaller houses. Problem solved. Or better yet, listen to this one...the whole population of the WORLD could fit into TEXAS. And that's with each family having one acre. Doesn't seem too crowded now huh?

During the baby boom the fertility rate was 3.7. Which seems low for a "BOOM."  If that was the "boom" I can only imagine what the rate is now. This effects family, population, society and especially the government. During the baby boom 13 people were working for one person's social security, now days we have about 3-6 people working for one person's social security, in the future that is going to drop down even more to 2 people working for one person's social security. Pretty soon those that want to support social security won't be able to, there is just not enough people. And why is this so you ask? Because fewer people are having less children, so the population is decreasing.


Pre-marital sex, unwed births and cohabitation, might seem like the "trendy" or cool thing to do, but research shows differently. I did a little of my own searching and found this great article, I highly suggest reading it! According to Smart Marriages and an article entitled "Should We Live Together?" What Young Adults Need to Know about Cohabitation before Marriage. A comprehensive review of recent research by David Poenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. It brought up a lot of things I had never thought of before. It also showed many correlations that I never would have thought would have been the cause of cohabitation. For instance, children in cohabiting relationships are much more likely to experience sexual and physical abuse.

Here are some statistics:
One study in Great Britain did look at the relationship between child abuse and the family structure and marital background of parents, and the results are disturbing. It was found that, compared to children living with married biological parents, children living with cohabiting but unmarried biological parents are 20 times more likely to be subject to child abuse, and those living with a mother and a cohabiting boyfriend who is not the father face an increased risk of 33 times. In contrast, the rate of abuse is 14 times higher if the child lives with a biological mother who lives alone. Indeed, the evidence suggests that the most unsafe of all family environments for children is that in which the mother is living with someone other than the child's biological father.³¹ This is the environment for the majority of children in cohabiting couple households.

In this article they give 4 cautions to cohabitation:

l. Consider not living together at all before marriage
They say that "cohabitation appears not to be helpful and may be harmful as a try-out for marriage. There is no evidence that if you decide to cohabit before marriage you will have a stronger marriage than those who don't live together, and some evidence to suggest that if you live together before marriage, you are more likely to break up after marriage. " I found this interesting.

2. Do not make a habit of cohabiting.
Be aware of the dangers of multiple living together experiences, both for your own sense of well-being and for your chances of establishing a strong lifelong partnership. Contrary to popular wisdom, you do not learn to have better relationships from multiple failed cohabiting relationships. In fact, multiple cohabiting is a strong predictor of the failure of future relationships.

3. Limit cohabitation to the shortest possible period of time. The longer you live together with a partner, the more likely it is that the low-commitment ethic of cohabitation will take hold, the opposite of what is required for a successful marriage.

4. Do not cohabit if children are involved. Children need and should have parents who are committed to staying together over the long term. Cohabiting parents break up at a much higher rate than married parents and the effects of breakup can be devastating and often long lasting. Moreover, children living in cohabiting unions are at higher risk of sexual abuse and physical violence, including lethal violence, than are children living with married parents.

These are just a few of the things this article mentions and goes further into, I suggest reading the whole article. It is very intriguing.

After looking and discussing these trends and the research behind all this it made me alarmed, frightened, and sad. It is sad that more and more trends are leading away from the ideal. The ideal of marrying, having children, and contributing to society. We need strong marriages, families and strong, educated, people with high standards who will contribute to society and make the world go round. We can not afford losing families.Our society, world and well-being depends on it!