Marriage, Family & Alternative Lifestyles
According to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the likelihood of new marriages ending in divorce is nearly one-in-two or 43%, (Divorce 2003). While 2,384,000 marriages occurred in the U.S. in 1997, that same year 1,163,000 divorces were granted (Divorce 2003). A family has traditionally been defined in the U.S. as a male and female couple with their own children, sharing a common dwelling and dividing duties based on gender. Because of high numbers of divorces, a rise in single-parent households, the rise in gay unions and gay couples adopting children, and new technologies that enable women to have children without necessarily being with a male have undermined the traditional definition of marriage and family in the U.S. Today, few American families fit the definition of a traditional American family offered above. Hare and Gray (1994) report that as of the 1990 Census, “only 16 percent of all American families comprised the so-called typical American family, that is, a married couple who are the biological parents of two children, where the father works outside the home and the mother is a homemaker,” (1). Like the people in them, today’s marriages and families are diverse.
From adoption and surrogate parenting to increasing rates of remarriage and same-sex parents, the number of diverse family constellations and marriage in U.S. society continues to grow. Such constellations offer enormous benefits as well as significant obstacles. Because of a high divorce rate, stepfamilies are but one a growing number of new family structures. It is estimated that about half of all marriages in the U.S. are a remarriage for at least one of the adult partners, (Hornik 2001). Further, one in three children in the U.S. under age 18 is a member of a stepfamily, (Hornik 2001). As Hornik (2001) maintains, “Most experts predict a significant increase in stepfamilies, poss...