About 4 in 10 babies born in America today are born to unmarried parents, and it’s an outright majority for children born to working-class women and black women. The percentage of children being raised by only one parent has steadily crept up over the past 20 years.
And if the latest Pew survey tells us anything about all of this, most people are perfectly fine with it.
Only 16% of respondents said the steady collapse of the traditional American family is “a bad thing” in a recent survey. That’s down from 29% 10 years ago.
It seems that if you lump unwed mothers, gay marriage, polyamory, and remarried parents into one big category of alternative family structures, then it’s all a big, fun, eclectic story.
In 2010, Pew found opinion was nearly evenly split into three camps on the virtue of changing family structures. About one-third (34%) said the changes were good, another third (32%) said it makes no difference, and the rest (29%) said the changes were bad.
The thing is, that last, kind of “judgy” group, now only 1 in 6 people, has a point. Children raised by one parent do worse in school, struggle with violence and drugs more, and are less likely to have a stable family life as an adult. One parent, as opposed to two, makes family finances and health more fragile, too. Alternatively, when mom has a boyfriend who’s not dad, children are exceptionally vulnerable to abuse.
So, why are we all fine with all the changes in family structure?
Pew’s phrasing of the question may have been slanted, prompting the seemingly “tolerant” answer. “These days there seems to be a growing variety in the types of family arrangements that people live in,” the pollsters said. “Overall, do you think this is a good thing, a bad thing, or don’t you think it makes a difference?”
Framing it as a matter of growing “variety” rather than as the collapse of the traditional models makes cohabitation, single motherhood, and polyamory sound like just new, extra-hoppy IPAs, sour beers, or shandies — maybe they’re not my style, but it’s great that other folks have options.
Interestingly, the Pew survey also found a slight downtick from 2010 in those who say all the variety is positively “a good thing,” from 34% to 30%. The real growth was in those who say family structure “makes no difference.”
So, the question for the share of the population that says family structure “makes no difference”: Do you believe that about your own families? Or do you simply not care how other people’s lives turn out?
