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\nThe Changing American Family
\nBy Chris Beam
\nIf all you did was watch television commercials for minivans, you might think that the traditional AllAmerican family was still intact — Mom, Dad, dog, and the 2.5 kids buckle up and drive off every day
\non TV. But ads (depending on your perspective) are either selling aspirations or guilt: This is the
\nfamily you’re supposed to have, supposed to want.
\nIn real life, in big cities and in smaller towns, families are single moms, they’re stepfamilies, they’re
\nboyfriends and girlfriends not getting married at the moment, they’re foster parents, they’re two
\ndads or two moms, they’re a village. In real life, in 2005, families are richly diverse.
\nAnd are only getting more so.
\nIn fact, the very definition of “family” is changing dramatically. The year 2000 marked the first time
\nthat less than a quarter (23.5 percent) of American households were made up of a married man and
\nwoman and one or more of their children — a drop from 45 percent in 1960. This number is expected
\nto fall to 20 percent by 2010.
\nWhy the Changes?
\nThe change in the makeup of the American family is the result of two primary factors, says Martin
\nO’Connell, chief of fertility and family statistics at the U.S. Census Bureau, which collects such
\nfigures every 10 years. First, more babies (about a third) are now born out of wedlock, and second,
\ndivorce rates continue to climb so that nearly half of all marriage contracts are broken.
\nThe overall attitude toward relationships and commitment has shifted. More than half of female high
\nschool seniors say that having a child outside of marriage is acceptable, according to a recent poll
\nfrom the University of Michigan Survey Research Center. And census data shows that 26 percent of
\nall households are made up of a single person, living alone (as opposed to 13 percent back in 1960).
\nWhile a good portion of these singles are likely senior citizens, others are younger career folks who
\ndon’t feel yesteryear’s societal pressure to rush into partnerships.
\n“In 2002, the median age for a woman’s first marriage was 27,” says O’Connell. That’s five years
\nolder than it was even in 1980. Sometimes young singles establish their individual identities so
\nsolidly that they never marry, even if they have children. These couples may partner up — but
\nwithout the papers.
\nAdoption, no marriage: Such was the case with Steve Wilson and Erin Mayes, a couple in their mid30s living in Austin, Texas. They’ve been together for 10 years, own a home together, and though
\nthey’ve talked about it, have decided it isn’t necessary to get married. Still, they wanted a family and,
\nlast June, adopted a baby boy.
\nWedding after baby: Another example is Jared and Lori Goldman, of San Mateo, California. Their
\nrelationship was relatively new when Lori got pregnant in 2000. They agreed to raise the child
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\ntogether but didn’t get engaged. But not long after their daughter was born, Jared proposed.
\n“Reverse order worked better for us,” he says. Lori agrees: “Our wedding felt more meaningful
\nhappening on its own time instead of on the traditional schedule. What girl wants a shotgun
\nwedding?”
\nSingle moms on the rise: Of course, because currently one-third of all babies are born out of wedlock,
\nit’s no surprise that many mothers remain single. When she got pregnant, Pam Hansell says her
\nboyfriend initially seemed supportive. Then he began dodging her phone calls and e-mails, and
\neventually cut contact. Deeply hurt but determined to give her child a good life, Hansell moved in
\nwith her parents, outside of Philadelphia, and gave birth to a daughter in March. “When I realized I
\ncouldn’t count on the father, it was devastating. I’m so thankful that family and friends have stepped
\nin,” Hansell says.
\nTwo dads: Finally, Dean Larkin and Paul Park are living out another common-in-today’s-world
\nscenario. They live together in Los Angeles, and Larkin has a 21-year-old daughter from a previous
\nmarriage. Now he and Park are planning a second child, via a surrogate mother. They’d like to marry,
\nbut gay marriage is not legal nationally.
\nReactions from the Trenches
\nPerhaps no one has a better ringside seat to all these untraditional family setups than those involved
\nin the childbirth industry. “I’ve seen unmarried couples come in, lesbian couples, mothers who have
\nbeen here with one father and then come in with a new father — the family dynamics and structures
\nhave changed a lot over the past 25 years,” says Barbara Hotelling, president of Lamaze International
\nand a long-time childbirth instructor.
\nBased in Rochester Hills, Michigan, Hotelling probably sees a good cross section of American
\nfamilies and, while she doesn’t ask the marital status of her students, estimates that around 20
\npercent are unmarried, compared with maybe 5 percent when she first began her career.
\nHotelling has shifted her language with the times. She says she used to call her students moms and
\ndads, but now, “I say ‘moms and partners’ and hope nobody screams.”
\nAccording to 1999 figures from the Population Resource Center, families in which the mother is the
\nhead of the household are, by and large, living on less. Because of the wage gap, female-headed
\nhouseholds earn, on average, $26,164 a year; male-headed households earn $41,138 per year; and
\nmarried households earn $56,827 per year.
\nThen, there are the more than 1,100 federal benefits that married households can take advantage of
\nduring a lifetime. Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, married partners can take leave from
\nwork when their spouse gets sick; unmarried partners cannot. Federal Medicaid laws permit only
\nmarried couples to keep their homes when one partner needs nursing home care; an unmarried
\npartner can lose the house. When a married person dies, the spouse inherits Social Security benefits;
\nan unmarried partner gets nothing.
\nAll told, according to the Los Angeles-based American Association for Single People and cited in an
\nOctober 2003 Business Week article, with health benefits, retirement, and so on, married families
\ncan “earn” 25 percent more than unmarried ones.
\n3
\nMarriage Penalties
\nHow does this stack up with the so-called “marriage penalty” that people complain about at tax time?
\nTwo of the major tax penalties were eliminated in 2003, says Fred Grant, a senior tax analyst at
\nTurbo Tax, a corporation that produces electronic tax preparation programs.
\nUsed to be, married couples filing jointly had a lower standard deduction than two singles living
\ntogether, and married couples (in the lowest two income brackets) got bumped into a higher tax
\nbracket on a combined income, thus paying more taxes overall. Now, only the richest three tiers pay
\nmore as marrieds than as cohabiters.
\nThere are a few other penalties married couples face (for example, they need a lower combined
\nincome to qualify for a $1,000 per-child tax credit), but, Grant warns, taxes are such a complex soup
\nincorporating home ownership, itemizations, and more, it’s almost impossible to state assertively
\nwhich type of family comes out ahead tax-wise.
\nMoney, Marriage — and Children
\nWhat is safe to say is that the kids of untraditional families can wind up penalized. Of course, there
\nare many possible scenarios. In the best cases, kids living with, for instance, only their mother also
\nreceive financial support from a father. But as many single moms will tell you, not all fathers pay
\ntheir full share of childcare costs.
\nStatistics also show that there are many kids lacking basic health insurance — at last count, about 8.4
\nmillion, according to the U.S. Census. All told, there are 11 million children (16 percent) living at or
\nbelow the poverty line, and while that’s not broken down into the number of kids with married or
\nunmarried parents, it’s a sure bet that many impoverished kids are in untraditional families.
\nThough a growing number of couples are fine with never getting married, the vast majority of
\ncohabiting relationships change into either marriage or separation after an average of 18 months,
\nsays Susan Brown, PhD, associate professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University’s Center
\nfor Family and Demographic Research and a contributor to the 2002 collection of essays and studies
\nJust Living Together. She says that according to some research, there may be a psychological cost to
\nraising a family without the mental safety net of marriage.
\n“I’ve found that cohabiters are more depressed than married people, and it seems to be because of
\nrelationship instability,” Brown says. That means most unmarried parents who live together get
\nmarried eventually — or break up and seek other potential spouses.
\nThe Growth of Gay Families
\nAccording to the Urban Institute, 2 in 5 gay or lesbian couples live in a house with children under age
\n18. But because the U.S. Census Bureau doesn’t figure same-sex relationships into their data, it’s
\nhard to pinpoint exactly how many children are living with gay or lesbian parents.
\nThe American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) places its bet between one and nine million children,
\nwhich means somewhere between 1.4 percent and 12.5 percent of all kids. While the AAP issued a
\nstatement saying that children of same-sex couples deserve two legally recognized parents, no state
\ncan grant federal marriage benefits to these couples, and only these states — California, Connecticut,
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\nMassachusetts, New Jersey, and Vermont — allows state rights, such as the guarantee that unmarried
\nparents can visit a child in the hospital.
\nTwo moms, one donor: One couple, Sue Hamilton and Christy Sumner, used a sperm bank when
\nthey decided to have a baby. While the couple isn’t able to marry in their home state of California,
\nHamilton recently adopted their daughter, which is legal there. Negotiating state laws puts extra
\nstress on gay and lesbian families, but Hamilton and Sumner have encountered a few sympathizers.
\n“One of the hospital workers fell in love with our family,” Hamilton says.
\n“She thought it was nutty that birth certificates have to read ‘mother’ and ‘father,’ and typed up a
\nmock certificate that just has our names on it.”
\nCan Your Employer Help You?
\nSome large employers are scrambling to catch up to how families are changing. Traditionally,
\ncompanies required workers to be married if they wanted benefits for household members. But now,
\n“in order to attract and retain quality employees, the benefits need to be more flexible,” says Kevin
\nMarrs of the American Society of Employers, an organization that tracks information for firms in the
\nDetroit area. He concedes, however, that because domestic partner benefits can cost a company more
\nmoney, many small independent businesses don’t yet offer them.
\nFew laws protect untraditional families. In fact, at this point federal laws don’t prohibit
\ndiscrimination based on marital status, so unmarried families can and do face discrimination in
\nthese key areas:
\n\u2022 Housing
\n\u2022 Employment
\n\u2022 Adoption
\n\u2022 Insurance
\n\u2022 Child custody
\n\u2022 Hospital visitation
\n\u2022 The ability to make a decision for a partner or child in an emergency
\nWilson and Mayes are lucky — their decision to not get married is made easier by the fact that their
\nstate, Texas, permits common-law marriage status. Declaring that lets them enjoy joint health
\ncoverage through Mayes’s employer, and it smoothed the adoption process. If all states had such
\nlaws, a great many people would benefit. But only 16 states recognize common-law marriage — and
\nthree of those require couples to prove they’ve been living together since the ’90s, according to Nolo
\nPress, which publishes plain-English legal information.
\nWhy Aren’t Laws Catching Up to How We’re Living?
\nTo many politicians, pushing for marriage is easier than changing laws. President Bush proposed
\nspending $1.5 billion over five years on a Healthy Marriage Initiative to encourage couples
\n(especially in poor communities) to marry. The money hasn’t been approved, but the Department of
\nHealth and Human Services is running the program.
\n“Bush [advocates] marriage among low-income populations as a way to ameliorate poverty. But I’m
\nnot sure that’s the answer,” Brown says.
\n5
\nDaniel Lichter, a sociology professor at Ohio State University, goes even further. In his 2003 study,
\n“Is Marriage a Panacea?” he shows that poverty rates for disadvantaged women who marry and then
\ndivorce are actually higher than for women who never marry in the first place. (One thought is that
\nthe loss of financial stability as a direct result of divorce — which costs money in itself — may set
\nwomen back.) So getting married doesn’t always ease the financial burden of raising kids, and it
\ncertainly doesn’t help open the rigid boundaries of what “counts” as a family.
\nThe answer probably lies in making sure all families — whether Mom and Dad drive the minivan to
\nsoccer practice or Mom piles her step-kids onto the city bus — receive the same kinds of rights,
\nbenefits, and treatment. Access to affordable childcare and living wages are also more direct
\nsolutions.
\nDiscrimination against unmarried families is still real. But those families also have the love and
\ncourage it takes to press for change. Says Hamilton, “It really doesn’t matter what kind of
\nrelationship the parents are in — what matters is the love they have for their child. That is what
\nmakes a family.”
\nChris Beam is a writer in New York City. Originally published in American Baby magazine, May
\n2005. Parents.com \u00a9 Copyright 2015, Meredith Corporation. All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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