American attitudes toward marriage have undergone changes in recent years, with shifts toward an increased acceptance of nontraditional family forms. Data show that Americans are developing increasingly favorable attitudes toward nontraditional family structures, such as cohabitation. While most American adolescents express positive attitudes toward marriage and a desire to become married themselves, more and more […]
The Building Strong Families (BSF) project is a large-scale program demonstration and rigorous evaluation to learn whether well-designed interventions can help interested romantically involved unmarried parents build stronger relationships and fulfill their aspirations for a healthy marriage if they choose to wed. The central question of the evaluation is whether interventions can succeed in helping […]
Many couples in the United States are choosing to live together before marriage. Young people in particular, seem to believe that living together first is a good idea. Research shows, however, that couples who live together before getting married: Have a higher divorce rate; Tend to be less happy in their marriages; Have more trouble […]
Research has consistently shown that family structure can facilitate or limit the ways in which parents are able to positively influence the future outcomes of their children. What is less understood is in what domains family structure matters and the magnitude of its effects over time. This paper presents existing evidence on the association between […]
This paper highlights the benefits of using the American Community Survey (ACS) including the ability to analyze data at the state and national levels, as well as explore the relationship between socio-economic characteristics and changing family structure. The following family structure variables are explored in the paper: estimated median age at first marriage, married and […]
This fact sheet from the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center outlines the trends in children’s living arrangements from 1970-2004.
This document includes detailed information at the national level about the characteristics of children, husbands and wives, unmarried couples, households and family groups. Many of the tables have data by race and Hispanic origin. The data are from the 2005 Current Population Survey’s (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC). The ASEC supplement to the […]