For children, growing diversity in family living arrangementsFamily unit life is changing. Two-parent households are on the decline in the U.s.a. as divorce, remarriage and cohabitation are on the rising. And families are smaller now, both due to the growth of single-parent households and the driblet in fertility. Non just are Americans having fewer children, but the circumstances surrounding parenthood have changed. While in the early 1960s babies typically arrived within a matrimony, today fully four-in-10 births occur to women who are single or living with a non-marital partner. At the same time that family structures have transformed, so has the role of mothers in the workplace – and in the home. As more moms accept entered the labor forcefulness, more than have become breadwinners – in many cases, main breadwinners – in their families.

As a consequence of these changes, at that place is no longer one dominant family form in the U.S. Parents today are raising their children against a properties of increasingly diverse and, for many, constantly evolving family forms. By contrast, in 1960, the height of the mail-World War Two baby boom, at that place was one dominant family grade. At that time 73% of all children were living in a family with ii married parents in their first marriage. By 1980, 61% of children were living in this type of family, and today less than half (46%) are. The declining share of children living in what is frequently deemed a "traditional" family has been largely supplanted by the rising shares of children living with single or cohabiting parents.

Not only has the diversity in family living arrangements increased since the early 1960s, but and then has the fluidity of the family. Non-marital cohabitation and divorce, along with the prevalence of remarriage and (non-marital) recoupling in the U.S., brand for family structures that in many cases continue to evolve throughout a child'southward life. While in the past a child born to a married couple – as most children were – was very likely to grow up in a home with those two parents, this is much less common today, as a child'south living arrangement changes with each adjustment in the relationship status of their parents. For example, one study constitute that over a three-twelvemonth catamenia, about 3-in-ten (31%) children younger than half-dozen had experienced a major change in their family or household structure, in the form of parental divorce, separation, marriage, cohabitation or death.

The growing complexity and diversity of families

The two-parent household in declineThe share of children living in a ii-parent household is at the lowest betoken in more than half a century: 69% are in this type of family organization today, compared with 73% in 2000 and 87% in 1960. And fifty-fifty children living with two parents are more likely to be experiencing a multifariousness of family arrangements due to increases in divorce, remarriage and cohabitation.3 Today, fully 62% of children live with two married parents – an all-time depression. Some xv% are living with parents in a remarriage and 7% are living with parents who are cohabiting.iv Conversely, the share of children living with one parent stands at 26%, upward from 22% in 2000 and just ix% in 1960.

These changes accept been driven in part past the fact that Americans today are exiting marriage at higher rates than in the past. Now, about 2-thirds (67%) of people younger than 50 who had ever married are still in their get-go matrimony. In comparison, that share was 83% in 1960.5 And while amidst men near 76% of start marriages that began in the tardily 1980s were still intact x years later, fully 88% of marriages that began in the belatedly 1950s lasted as long, according to analyses of Census Bureau information.6

The rise of single-parent families, and changes in 2-parent families

Black children and those with less educated parents less likely to be living in two-parent householdsDespite the decline over the past half century in children residing with 2 parents, a majority of kids are all the same growing upwardly in this type of living system.7 Nonetheless, less than one-half—46%—are living with two parents who are both in their offset marriage. This share is down from 61% in 19808 and 73% in 1960.

An additional xv% of children are living with two parents, at to the lowest degree one of whom has been married earlier. This share has remained relatively stable for decades.

In the residue of two-parent families, the parents are cohabiting but are not married. Today 7% of children are living with cohabiting parents; however a far larger share will experience this kind of living system at some betoken during their childhood. For instance, estimates suggest that about 39% of children volition accept had a mother in a cohabiting human relationship by the time they plough 12; and past the time they plough 16, well-nigh half (46%) volition have experience with their mother cohabiting. In some cases, this will happen because a never-married mother enters into a cohabiting relationship; in other cases, a mother may enter into a cohabiting relationship after a marital breakdown.

The reject in children living in two-parent families has been get-go by an nearly threefold increment in those living with just ane parent—typically the female parent.9 Fully 1-fourth (26%) of children younger than age 18 are now living with a unmarried parent, up from simply 9% in 1960 and 22% in 2000. The share of children living without either parent stands at 5%; near of these children are being raised by grandparents.10

The majority of white, Hispanic and Asian children are living in two-parent households, while less than half of black children are living in this type of arrangement. Furthermore, at least half of Asian and white children are living with two parents both in their showtime marriage. The shares of Hispanic and blackness children living with ii parents in their first marriage are much lower.

Asian children are the most likely to be living with both parents—fully 84% are, including 71% who are living with parents who are both in their first marriage. Some 13% of Asian kids are living in a single-parent household, while xi% are living with remarried parents, and just 3% are living with parents who are cohabiting.

Roughly 8-in-10 (78%) white children are living with ii parents, including about half (52%) with parents who are both in their first union and 19% with two parents in a remarriage; 6% have parents who are cohabiting. About one-in-five (19%) white children are living with a single parent.

Among Hispanic children, two-thirds live with 2 parents. All told, 43% alive with two parents in their first spousal relationship, while 12% are living with parents in a remarriage, and 11% are living with parents who are cohabiting. Some 29% of Hispanic children live with a single parent.

The living arrangements of black children stand in stark contrast to the other major racial and ethnic groups. The majority – 54% – are living with a single parent. Just 38% are living with two parents, including 22% who are living with two parents who are both in their first wedlock. Some nine% are living with remarried parents, and vii% are residing with parents who are cohabiting.

Children with at to the lowest degree one college-educated parent are far more likely to be living in a 2-parent household, and to be living with two parents in a first marriage, than are kids whose parents are less educated.11 Fully 88% of children who have at least 1 parent with a bachelor's caste or more are living in a two-parent household, including 67% who are living with 2 parents in their first matrimony.

In comparison, some 68% of children who have a parent with some college experience are living in a ii-parent household, and just twoscore% are living with parents who are both in a first marriage. Nigh six-in-ten (59%) children who have a parent with a high school diploma are in a 2-parent household, including 33% who are living with parents in their start marriage. Meanwhile, but over half (54%) of children whose parents lack a high school diploma are living in a ii-parent household, including 33% whose parents are in their offset matrimony.

Composite families

One-in-six kids is living in a blended familyAccording to the most recent data, xvi% of children are living in what the Census Bureau terms "composite families" – a household with a stepparent, stepsibling or half-sibling. This share has remained stable since the early 1990s, when reliable data first became bachelor. At that fourth dimension 15% of kids lived in blended family households. All told, nearly 8% are living with a stepparent, and 12% are living with stepsiblings or half-siblings.12

Many, but not all, remarriages involve composite families.xiii Co-ordinate to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, half dozen-in-ten (63%) women in remarriages are in blended families, and about one-half of these remarriages involve stepchildren who alive with the remarried couple.

Hispanic, blackness and white children are equally likely to alive in a blended family. About 17% of Hispanic and black kids are living with a stepparent, stepsibling or a half-sibling, equally are 15% of white kids. Among Asian children, still, vii% – a far smaller share – are living in blended families. This low share is consistent with the finding that Asian children are more likely than others to be living with two married parents, both of whom are in their first spousal relationship.

The shrinking American family

Among women, fertility is decliningFertility in the U.S. has been on the decline since the end of the post-Earth War Ii babe blast, resulting in smaller families. In the mid-1970s, a xl% plurality of mothers who had reached the end of their childbearing years had given birth to four or more children.14 Now, a similar share (41%) of mothers at the finish of their childbearing years has had two children, and just fourteen% have had four or more children.fifteen

At the same fourth dimension, the share of mothers ages 40 to 44 who have had only one kid has doubled, from 11% in 1976 to 22% today. The share of mothers with three children has remained nearly unchanged at well-nigh a quarter.

Women's increasing educational attainment and labor strength participation, and improvements in contraception, not to mention the retreat from spousal relationship, take all likely played a part in shrinking family size.

Among Hispanics and the less educated, bigger familiesFamily size varies markedly across races and ethnicities. Asian moms take the lowest fertility, and Hispanic mothers take the highest. Most 27% of Asian mothers and one-third of white mothers nigh the end of their childbearing years accept had three or more than children. Among black mothers at the end of their childbearing years, 4-in-x have had three or more children, as have fully half (50%) of Hispanic mothers.

Similarly, a gap in fertility exists among women with different levels of educational attainment, despite recent increases in the fertility of highly educated women. For example, just 27% of mothers ages 40 to 44 with a post-graduate caste such equally a master'south, professional or doctorate caste have borne three or more than children, equally have 32% of those with a bachelor's degree. Amid mothers in the aforementioned age group with a high school diploma or some college, 38% take had 3 or more kids, while amidst moms who lack a high school diploma, the majority – 55% – take had iii or more than children.

The ascent of births to unmarried women and multi-partner fertility

Not only are women having fewer children today, but they are having them nether unlike circumstances than in the by. While at in one case almost all births occurred within union, these 2 life events are now far less intertwined. And while people were much more likely to "mate for life" in the by, today a sizable share have children with more than 1 partner – sometimes within marriage, and sometimes exterior of it.

Births to unmarried women

The decoupling of marriage and childbearingIn 1960, just five% of all births occurred outside of marriage. By 1970, this share had doubled to 11%, and past 2000 fully i-third of births occurred to unmarried women. Non-marital births continued to rising until the mid-2000s, when the share of births to unmarried women stabilized at effectually forty%.16

Not all babies born outside of a marriage are necessarily living with just one parent, however. The majority of these births at present occur to women who are living with a romantic partner, according to analyses of the National Survey of Family Growth. In fact, over the by 20 years, virtually all of the growth in births outside of union has been driven by increases in births to cohabiting women.17

Researchers accept establish that, while marriages are less stable than they once were, they remain more stable than cohabiting unions. By assay indicates that about one-in-5 children born within a marriage volition feel the breakup of that marriage by age 9. In comparison, fully half of children built-in within a cohabiting spousal relationship volition experience the breakup of their parents by the same age. At the aforementioned time, children born into cohabiting unions are more likely than those built-in to single moms to someday live with two married parents. Estimates suggest that 66% will accept washed and then past the fourth dimension they are 12, compared with 45% of those who were born to unmarried non-cohabiting moms.

The share of births occurring exterior of marriage varies markedly beyond racial and ethnic groups. Among blackness women, 71% of births are at present non-marital, as are about one-half (53%) of births to Hispanic women. In dissimilarity, 29% of births to white women occur outside of a union.

For the less educated, more births outside of marriageRacial differences in educational attainment explain some, but not all, of the differences in not-marital nascence rates.

New mothers who are college-educated are far more likely than less educated moms to be married. In 2014 just 11% of women with a college degree or more than who had a babe in the prior yr were single. In comparison, this share was about four times as high (43%) for new mothers with some college but no college caste. About half (54%) of those with only a high school diploma were unmarried when they gave birth, as were virtually six-in-10 (59%) new mothers who lacked a high schoolhouse diploma.

Multi-partner fertility

Related to non-marital births is what researchers call "multi-partner fertility." This measure out reflects the share of people who have had biological children with more than than one partner, either inside or outside of marriage. The increase in divorces, separations, remarriages and serial cohabitations has likely contributed to an increase in multi-partner fertility. Estimates vary, given data limitations, but analysis of longitudinal data indicates that almost 20% of women most the end of their childbearing years have had children by more ane partner, as have virtually three-in-ten (28%) of those with two or more than children. Inquiry indicates that multi-partner fertility is particularly mutual amid blacks, Hispanics, and the less educated.

Parents today: older and better educated

While parents today are far less likely to exist married than they were in the by, they are more than probable to be older and to have more education.

In 1970, the boilerplate new mother was 21 years old. Since that time, that historic period has risen to 26 years. The rise in maternal age has been driven largely by declines in teen births. Today, seven% of all births occur to women under the age of xx; as recently as 1990, the share was almost twice as high (thirteen%).

While historic period at start nascence has increased beyond all major race and ethnic groups, substantial variation persists across these groups. The average first-time mom amid whites is now 27 years quondam. The average age at get-go nascency among blacks and Hispanics is quite a bit younger – 24 years – driven in office by the prevalence of teen pregnancy in these groups. Just five% of births to whites have place prior to age twenty, while this share reaches eleven% for non-Hispanic blacks and 10% for Hispanics. On the other cease of the spectrum, fully 45% of births to whites are to women ages 30 or older, versus just 31% amid blacks and 36% among Hispanics.

Mothers today are also far better educated than they were in the past. While in 1960 just xviii% of mothers with infants at domicile had whatsoever college experience, today that share stands at 67%. This trend is driven in large part by dramatic increases in educational attainment for all women. While about one-half (49%) of women ages 15 to 44 in 1960 lacked a high school diploma, today the largest share of women (61%) has at to the lowest degree some college experience, and merely 19% lack a high schoolhouse diploma.

Mothers moving into the workforce

Among mothers, rising labor force participationIn addition to the changes in family construction that have occurred over the by several decades, family life has been greatly affected past the motility of more and more mothers into the workforce. This increase in labor forcefulness participation is a continuation of a century-long tendency; rates of labor forcefulness participation among married women, particularly married white women, accept been on the ascension since at least the turn of the 20th century. While the labor force participation rates of mothers have more or less leveled off since about 2000, they remain far college than they were 4 decades ago.

In 1975, the first year for which data on the labor force participation of mothers are bachelor, less than half of mothers (47%) with children younger than xviii were in the labor force, and about a 3rd of those with children younger than iii years onetime were working exterior of the home. Those numbers changed quickly, and, by 2000, 73% of moms were in the labor force. Labor strength participation today stands at seventy% amongst all mothers of children younger than 18, and 64% of moms with preschool-aged children. About three-fourths of all employed moms are working full time.

Amid mothers with children younger than 18, blacks are the near likely to be in the labor strength –about iii-fourths are. In comparison, this share is 70% among white mothers. Some 64% of Asian mothers and 62% of Hispanic female parent are in the workforce. The relatively high proportions of immigrants in these groups likely contribute to their lower labor forcefulness interest – foreign-born moms are much less probable to be working than their U.S.-born counterparts.

The more education a mother has, the more likely she is to be in the labor forcefulness. While nearly one-half (49%) of moms who lack a high schoolhouse diploma are working, this share jumps to 65% for those with a high schoolhouse diploma. Fully 75% of mothers with some college are working, as are 79% of those with a college degree or more.

Along with their movement into the labor force, women, even more men, have been attaining higher and college levels of education. In fact, among married couples today, information technology is more mutual for the wife to accept more than pedagogy than the married man, a reversal of previous patterns. These changes, forth with the increasing share of single-parent families, mean that more than ever, mothers are playing the role of breadwinner—often the primary breadwinner—within their families.

In four-in-ten families, mom is the primary breadwinnerToday, twoscore% of families with children under xviii at home include mothers who earn the bulk of the family unit income.18 This share is up from 11% in 1960 and 34% in 2000. The bulk of these breadwinner moms—eight.3 million—are either unmarried or are married and living apart from their spouse.19 The remaining iv.9 million, who are married and living with their spouse, earn more than their husbands. While families with married breadwinner moms tend to take higher median incomes than married-parent families where the father earns more ($88,000 vs. $84,500), families headed past unmarried mothers accept incomes far lower than unmarried male parent families. In 2014, the median annual income for unmarried mother families was only $24,000.

Breadwinner moms are particularly common in blackness families, spurred by very high rates of single motherhood. Virtually iii-fourths (74%) of black moms are breadwinner moms. Most are single or living apart from their spouse (61%), and the remainder (13%) earn more their spouse. Among Hispanic moms, 44% are the primary breadwinner; 31% are unmarried, while 12% are married and making more than their husbands. For white mothers, 38% are the primary breadwinners—twenty% are single moms, and 18% are married and accept income higher than that of their spouses. Asian families are less likely to have a woman every bit the main breadwinner in their families, presumably due to their extremely depression rates of single motherhood. Just 11% of Asian moms are single. The share who earn more than their husbands—xx%— is somewhat college than for the other racial and ethnic groups.

The flip side of the movement of mothers into the labor force has been a dramatic reject in the share of mothers who are now stay-at-home moms. Some 29% of all mothers living with children younger than 18 are at home with their children. This marks a modest increase since 1999, when 23% of moms were home with their children, but a long-term turn down of nearly 20 percentage points since the tardily 1960s when nigh half of moms were at home.

While the prototype of "stay-at-domicile mom" may conjure images of "Get out It to Beaver" or the highly flush "opt-out mom", the reality of stay-at-habitation motherhood today is quite different for a big share of families. In roughly iii-in-ten of stay-at-dwelling house-mom families, either the father is not working or the mother is single or cohabiting. As such, stay-at-dwelling mothers are more often than not less well off than working mothers in terms of educational activity and income. Some 49% of stay-at-domicile mothers have at most a high-school diploma compared with 30% amongst working mothers. And the median household income for families with a stay-at-domicile mom and a full-fourth dimension working dad was $55,000 in 2014, roughly half the median income for families in which both parents work full-time ($102,400).20