One For Truth

Single-adult homes now the majority

For the first time in American history, single-adult homes now outnumber two-parent families. Per the Washington Times:

Nuclear-family households -- two married parents and a child -- were the most common as recently as 1990, when there were 25 million such households.
But by 2000, nuclear-family households fell to second place, both because there were almost a half-million fewer of these type of homes and because the number of single-adult households surged past 27 million.

So not only is the number of single-parent householdes rising, but the number of two-parent family homes is falling. Not relative to each other--these are raw numbers. Even as our population grows, the number of two-parent households falls.

I don't see how this can be received as anything other than a bleak statistic for our society. Despite the abundant evidence that single parent households are less happy, less healthy, and poorer than two-parent households this phenomenon is received as unremarkable by the social elites. And it has to be, for no-fault divorce is critical to being able to make the kind of lifestyle choices that modern Americans have come to expect. Listen to most TV and radio pop-psych talk and you would think that no commitment could be more important than personal fulfillment--getting your "needs" met. "But what about me and my needs?" Courageous, committed individuals don't ask that question when it was their own choices that led them into marriage and family. You just make it work. "Feelings" be damned.

posted by Zeke @ 1:21 PM