Wow has the family unit changed significantly over the past 100 years! When we take a close look at the trends of the family in society today versus in the past we see numerous differences. Today we will take a look at the many popular trends that have begun to surface that are greatly affecting the family but first let’s clear up a few misconceptions about the family. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘opposites attract’ right? Well, wrong. The more values, beliefs, lifestyles choices, ect you share with a person, the more likely you are to be attracted to them! Another important misconception is that happily married people don’t have conflict. Unfortunately, there is a very small chance that anyone will experience a non conflicting marriage. In fact, studies have shown that some conflict strengthens a union! So no need to fear because NO half of all marriages do not end in divorce. The numbers are far less than that and are difficult to compute.
Now that we get those worries out of the way, I want us to take a look at one specific topic about the family that has impacted society and will always continue to impact society. That topic is fertility rates around the world. Fertility rate is the number of children born per woman. An important factor in understanding why there has been such a change in this number has to do with many things. A primary reason is due to more and more women entering the workforce. We see that since about the 1950’s, more women have been going to work and less and less babies are being born. Women have begun to focus more on their career and therefore households with a stay-at-home mother and a working father are now only a small portion of America.
Another popular trend in the family today has to do with prosperity. Since the fertility rates have been declining, we see that as families who increase their wages and income, tend to have less children and use what money they have on less kids and supporting and giving all to those few or one child and stopping there. Another important factor in fertility rates has to do with the well known birth control pill. As birth control has become more popular over the recent years, we see a steady decline in the number of babies being born. Birth control is easy, cheap, and reliable so why wouldn’t it be a huge hit? Due to this, we see a drop of about 50% in birth rates since birth control has become more widespread.
In recent years there has been a well known sexual revolution. This sexual revolution revolves mainly around seeing more and more couples cohabitate. As there is an increasing amount of couples who cohabitate, what happens is we see the age of marriage is getting to be much older. As couples are getting married later and later, we see that the number of births are decreasing because women who have kids at later ages are at more of a risk than younger women therefore they have less children.
Lastly for today we will take a look at the amount of people living alone. In 2009 it was recorded that around 31.7 million Americans were living alone! For whatever reason, whether it be divorce, widowed or they never married, people living alone has a great impact on fertility rates! When people aren’t living together and no marriages are happening of course we are going to see less babies being born! All of these trends tie into today’s average household size. Because there are higher rates of people living alone and lower birth rates, the average amount of people living in one house has dropped considerably over the last 100 years.
Alright so now that we’ve taken a look at all the changes in the family over time, It’s important to remember that the family truly is the basis of society. Numerous studies have shown that the best opportunity for children is within an intact family with a mother and a father. Let us always remember how important the family is to society and to every person on this earth.
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