SOCIAL INDICATORS 2006
Family Formation and Sexuality (Part 1)
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Act was passed by Congress in 1996. Two of the Act’s goals were to reduce out-of-wedlock births and to encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. Scholars and politicians generally agree that the most desirable form of the family for the nurture of children is a household where both the mother and father are present. Therefore, one measure of societal decline would seem to be a decrease in the number of children born into and raised in two-parent families.
The percentage of families with both parents present declined from 87.7% in 1960 to 85% in 1970. Except for a brief plateau in the late 1980s, the percentage steadily declined to 69.2% in 1993. From 1993 until 2003, the percentage stayed between 68% and the 1993 level. Over the last two years, it has fallen to 67.3%. In 1968, 10.7% of children lived only with their mother, 1.1% with their father, 2.4% with other relatives, and .4% with no relatives. By 2003, those percentages were 23.4% with their mother, 4.8% with their father, 3.4% with other relatives, and .9% with no relative. Government policy appears to be moving even more toward advancing two-parent families, but it remains to be seen if societal values will move toward two-parent homes.
The divorce rate plays a role in the rate of families without two parents.
The rate of divorces to marriages was about 25-27% from 1950-1967. That rate doubled to more than 50% ten years later, in 1977. Since that time, it has remained remarkably constant at about 50%. Divorce may have impacted the initial rise in one-parent households, but it does not explain everything.
Approximately 10% of all births were to unwed mothers in 1970. That ratio has been about 1 in 3 for the last ten years and is still rising. The percentage of all births to teenagers was 5.4% in 1970. That grew to 9.9% in 1994. A slight decline began in 1999; by 2004, it was 8.3%. The more significant trend is the percentage of births to unwed mothers twenty years old or older. The rate was 5.3% in 1970, but by 2004 that rate had increased fivefold to 27.5%. It has increased by 0.5-1.0 percentage points a year since 1999. The behavior of White women drives this increase.
Abortion also has a direct impact on all of these statistics:
Approximately 80% of abortions are to unmarried women. Had those pregnancies come to full term unmarried women would have given birth to 45% of all births in 2002. That rate has been stable for almost a decade.
These statistics all suggest more sexual activity outside the marriage relationship. Finding reliable time series data on sexual activity is difficult. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has been doing ongoing research on teenagers and has learned the following:
It is hard to know how these numbers compare to earlier eras. Many are inclined to think these numbers were much lower as late as the 1960s, but reliable data is hard to come by. This chart shows increased sexual activity among teenagers in the seven years from 1988-1995. There was a modest decline in the rate from 1995-2002, especially for males and those under eighteen. The CDC also says there has been an increased use of contraception. These factors have likely contributed to a reduced rate of unmarried teen births.
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