Societal Trends in Families

This week in my Family Relations class we talked about Societal Trends in Families. Some of the trends that we see a lot are; the age in which people are getting married (people are getting married older), cohabitation, employed mothers, people living alone, intimacy before marriage, kids born outside of marriage, household size, birthrates, and divorce rates (Lauer & Lauer. Chapter 1). With these trends we can see a lot of correlation between them. For example; Divorce rates could correlate with employed mothers, or cohabitation can correlate with intimacy before marriage which can correlate with kids born outside of marriage. These two are just some examples of how these things correlate with each other, they all can correlate somehow. These trends aren’t necessarily bad, but from what we know about studies done, children do better in an intact family. Intact families are homes where the mom and dad are married and living together. If some of these trends keep increasing, then we are going to see more and more children grow up in situations that are not the ideal.

In the picture attached we see that Husband-wife family households are decreasing while the other types of households are increasing. If we look at the societal trends in families, not all of them are having children, and those who are, are actually having less children. Couples are having about 2 children total, and a lot of people are choosing to not have children at all. I think that these are possible correlations to why these household trends are changing.

One of the trends that I find particularly interesting is the age in which people are getting married. The average ages are 30 for men, and 28 for woman. In class we took a little poll to see what we thought the average age that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are getting married, we all guessed about 20 for woman, and 24 for men. However, it is actually 24 for woman and 26 for men. I found this interesting, especially because I am getting married this year and both my fiancé and I are 22. We are quite off for the averages of both members and non-members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Two of the trends that I think correlate are cohabitation and divorce rates. I think that people are just living together rather than getting married, so that when things end there isn’t a divorce, because they were never married. I think that this can get difficult when the people cohabitating have children, because those children’s parents were never married, they were just living together. I think that this can be hard for those children because I think that when they grow up, they have skewed relationship views. I think that any children that are growing up in non-traditional families in general have skewed relationship views.

I think that we are seeing more people living alone or cohabitating rather than getting married because they were children of broken households growing up, so they are more hesitant to get into a serious marriage because they are scared that it will end like the marriages they’ve seen in their lives. I think that it is important for adults to be good examples of healthy relationships for children so that when those children grow up, they aren’t afraid to be in committed relationships. I think that this will be good for society because people will be able to make commitments and keep those commitments that they have made. I think that this helps people be better citizens as well.

Citations:

Lauer & Lauer. Chapter 1. file:///C:/Users/Carlyle/Downloads/Lauer%20&%20Lauer,%20Chapter%2001%20(1).pdf

Lofquist, Lugaila, O’Connell and Feliz. Households and Families: 2010: 2010 Census Briefs. file:///C:/Users/Carlyle/Downloads/us%20census%20-%20households%20and%20families,%202010.pdf