The Modern American Family
Key trends in marriage and family life in the United States.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Parenthood
The Experiences of U.S. Adults Who Don’t Have Children
Some 57% of adults under 50 who say they are unlikely to have kids say a major reason is they just don’t want to. Among those ages 50 and older, 31% cite this as a reason.
Among parents with young adult children, some dads feel less connected to their kids than moms do
Majorities of both moms and dads with a young adult child age 18 to 34 say they’re as involved in their child’s day-to-day life as they’d like to be.
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Family Support in Graying Societies
America is turning gray, with the share of people ages 65 and older expected to rise more than 50% by 2050 – a trend that may burden more families. But Germany and Italy are already there, with a fifth of their population in that age range.
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Americans’ ideal family size is smaller than it used to be
Half of Americans (48%) say two is the ideal number of children for a family to have, reflecting a decades-long preference for a smaller family over a larger one.
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Childlessness Falls, Family Size Grows Among Highly Educated Women
For women, postgraduate education and motherhood are increasingly going hand-in-hand. Not only are highly-educated women more likely to have kids, they are also having bigger families than in the past.
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Working-mom guilt? Many dads feel it too
Today’s working fathers are just as likely as working mothers to say that finding the right balance between their job and their family life is a challenge.
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Working while pregnant is much more common than it used to be
The latest figures show that 66% of mothers who gave birth to their first child between 2006 and 2008 worked during pregnancy, up from 44% in the early 1960s.
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For most highly educated women, motherhood doesn’t start until the 30s
More than half (54%) of mothers near the end of their childbearing years with at least a master’s degree had their first child after their 20s. In fact, one-fifth didn’t become mothers until they were at least 35. Some 28% became moms in their late 20s, and 18% had children earlier in their lives.
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Fewer than half of U.S. kids today live in a ‘traditional’ family
Just 46% of U.S. kids under 18 are living in a home with two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage, a marked change from 1960.
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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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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.
