The United States at 250: How the Country Has Changed in the Past 50 Years
Ahead of the nation’s birthday, Pew Research Center identified some prominent trends across key areas of American life: demographics, work, family and economics.
Family & Relationships
Family Caregiving in an Aging America
Family members are increasingly caring for aging parents or spouses as the U.S. population gets older. Caregivers’ experiences differ by gender.
How Parents Use Online Communities
On Reddit’s largest parenting forum, around one-in-five posts mention kids’ tech use. Posts often express negative emotions, but comments are overwhelmingly supportive.
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Publications
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Teaching the Children: Sharp Ideological Differences, Some Common Ground
People with consistently conservative political values are particularly likely to say it is important to teach children religious faith, while those with consistently liberal values stand out for the priority they give to teaching tolerance.
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How is Ideology Linked to Child-Rearing Values?
Respondents in the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel were surveyed about which of 12 traits they feel are “especially important to teach children,” and to then choose the three most important. The total percentages who name each trait among the most important are presented in this interactive chart along a scale of political ideology.
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For first time, census data on married couples includes same-sex spouses
Census Bureau officials and other experts do not expect counting same-sex spouses along with all other married couples to make a big impact on overall statistics for married couples. But if the number of same-sex married couples continues to rise, that could change.
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Birth rate for unmarried women declining for first time in decades
For the first time in decades, the non-marital birth rate in the U.S. has been declining. It’s likely that the decline occurred as a result of the economic recession of 2007-2009.
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27 countries limit a woman’s ability to pass citizenship to her child or spouse
To most Americans, citizenship, like DNA, seems like something a parent passes to a child without thought or effort. And indeed, for fathers around the world, that’s almost universally true. But one-in-seven countries currently have laws or policies prohibiting or limiting the rights of women to pass citizenship to a child or non-citizen spouse.
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PAA journal: Parents of better-educated kids live longer
Still another reason to send your children to college: You’ll live longer.
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For gay newlyweds in some states, ‘limbo’ may last another year
It has happened in four states so far, and may well happen in others – a kind of marital limbo where licenses have been granted and vows exchanged, but the marriages themselves have not been officially recognized.
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‘March for Marriage’ rally reflects steadfast opposition to gay marriage among evangelical Christians
Opposition to same-sex marriage is now more concentrated among a few religious groups – particularly white evangelical Protestants.
