Society

Family structures—and the definition of family—have changed rapidly in the last few years, and even in the last six months, according to a recent New York Times feature “The Changing American Family” written by Nancy Angier.

“Researchers who study the structure and evolution of the American family express unsullied astonishment at how rapidly the family has changed in recent years, the transformations often exceeding or capsizing those same expert’s predictions of just a few journal articles ago,” wrote Angier.^[1] Andrew J. Cherlin, a professor of public policy at Johns Hopkins University, stated: “This churning, this turnover in our intimate partnerships is creating complex families on a scale we’ve not seen before. It’s a mistake to think this is the endpoint of enormous change. We are still very much in the midst of it.”^[2]

(While the New York Times report is on American families, similar trends are occurring in many areas of the world. For example, birthrates in some European countries have dropped below replacement levels.)

Heading the list of changes is the lowest birthrate ever in the United States and with fewer children per family; more unmarried women giving birth to children; women choosing not to bear children at all; coining of the term gayby (gay couples with children); the rise of cohabiting couples; marriage deferment; and more mothers working outside the home.

Angier claims that types of families and living arrangements are less “traditional” than ever before yet the idea of “family” is still strong, evoking responses of “Love! Kids! Mom! Dinner.”^[3] However, the “white-picket fence” concept of “the old-fashioned family plan of stably married parents residing with their children remains a source of considerable power in America—but one that is increasingly seen as out of reach to all the but the educated elite.”^[4]

The Family: A Proclamation to the World was issued by the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles in September 1995. Prior to his reading of the Proclamation, President Hinckley said, “I need not remind you that the world we are in is a world of turmoil, of shifting values. Shrill voices call out for one thing or another in betrayal of time-tested standards of behavior. The moral moorings of our society have been badly shaken. . . . How bitter are the fruits of casting aside standards of virtue.”

If the “standards of virtue” as long-taught to Latter-day Saints and reiterated in the Proclamation on the Family were followed in our society, family life would largely fit the pattern of “stably married parents residing with their children.” Virtue and chastity before marriage—between and man and a woman—and fidelity afterwards is the Lord’s way for families to be created and to live in happiness.

The number of cohabiting couples since 1996, a year after the issuance of the Proclamation, has increased by 170% to nearly 8 million couples. As one woman put it, “We had to get used to each other before we considered marriage.” Others never even consider getting married. I met a young adult woman in our apartment building who had no hesitation about telling me that she and her boyfriend lived together. One often hears the phrase “have been together” for five years, or whatever the number it is.

Couples are refusing or delaying marriage for various reasons: completing education, launching a career, achieving financial stability, uncertainty over a long-term relationship, freedom to walk away, fear of divorce. Marriage, as Angier said, has gone from the “cornerstone to capstone, from a foundational act of early adulthood to a crowning event of later adulthood.”^[5] Intimacy is not delayed, however, and has thus increased the number of babies born to unmarried parents.

In 1995, President Hinckley said, “The statistics are appalling. More than one-fourth of all children born in the United States are born out of wedlock, and the situation grows more serious.”^[6] Now, 18 years later, the situation has grown more serious: the number of babies born to unmarried mothers is 41%, and they are born to women in their 20s and 30s, rather than in their teens.

Although the number of babies born out of wedlock has increased, the birthrate has declined steeply to half the number of children as were born in 1960. That 2012 marked the lowest birthrate ever suggests the drop will continue. Moreover, twenty percent of women are choosing or cannot have children. Those who do have children have an average of two children, whereas forty years ago, the average was three.^[7]

However, the baby boom is happening among gaybys, or same-sex couples, who are “pursuing parenthood anyway they can” through adoption, surrogate mothers or donor sperm. A study conducted by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, indicated that “the number of gay couples with children has doubled in the past decade, and today well over 100,000 same-sex couples are raising children.”^[8]

While divorce rates are down (perhaps attributable to the number of cohabiting couples), blended families are proliferating as couples divorce and remarry. Many children face the adjustment to step-parents, step-siblings, half-siblings, multiple grandparents, and an array of relatives, and some experience family shifts several times in their young lives. Children often spend parts of their days, nights, and weeks with one or the other parent, trade off for holidays, or see very little or none at all of the noncustodial parent.

Another factor in the changing American family is the number of mothers working outside the home, now up to 75%. In many of these families, parents share in child care and household duties. While many families have two paychecks, 40% of mothers provide the only or primary income, most often as single mothers, who have to do most or all of child care and household work.^[9] The increase in the percentage of working mothers has had an enormous impact on the dynamics of family life, especially children.

President Hinckley said in his remarks preceding the Proclamation, “I believe that it should be the blessing of every child to be born into a home where that child is welcomed, nurtured, loved, and blessed with parents, a father and a mother, who live with loyalty to one another and to their children. . . . The accumulated wisdom of centuries declares with clarity and certainty that the greater happiness, the greater security, the greater peace of mind, the deeper reservoirs of love are experienced only by those who walk according to time-tested standards of virtue before marriage and total fidelity within marriage.”^[10]

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Studies on the nature of families could be so different if only the Proclamation were heeded.