Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 30, 1994 TAG: 9408300074
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: The Washington Post WASHINGTON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The array of arrangements that have come to represent today's families include multigenerational homes where grandmother helps raise the kids, ``blended'' families of stepparents and half-siblings and households where children live with their unmarried parents.
``Most of us would think of the typical family as a married couple with their biological children,'' said Stacy Furukawa, a Census Bureau demographer and author of the report released Monday. ``We were just very surprised to see that situation is experienced by only half of American children.''
Census officials stressed that they were not attempting to make judgments about the relative worth of family arrangements, but simply describing the wide and increasing diversity in the living circumstances of children.
Omar Rahman, a demographer with RAND, a California-based think tank, said there is no clear evidence that children living in the ``traditional nuclear'' families necessarily fare better than those in other circumstances.
``If the presumption is that that's the optimum living arrangement, the jury is still out,'' he said. ``There is a lot of diversity and it's not at all clear that it's bad.''
The findings reflect large differences by race and ethnicity: While about 56 percent of white children live in a ``traditional nuclear'' family, the number drops to 26 percent among blacks and about 38 percent among Hispanics, who can be of any race. Using a broader definition of the family, many more children fall into what is widely accepted as desirable circumstances. Nearly three-quarters of children live in a household with two parents, although not necessarily their biological parents.
The figures, said Donald Hernandez, chief of the Marriage and Family Statistics Branch at the Census Bureau, ``reflect the very complex kinds of lives many children lead over time ... There's a lot of discussion and interest in traditional family living, but about half of kids do not live in such arrangements. That's important to inform people's thinking.''
Of the nearly 64 million American children under 18 years of age, 15 percent of all children live in blended families, defined as homes that include at least one stepparent, step-sibling or half-sibling, according to the report, ``Diverse Living Arrangements of Children,'' which is based on 1991 data.
The study makes clear that in many cases, single-parent households also include other adults. Among mother-only families, for example, one in five includes an adult male, often a grandfather or uncle or a mother's boyfriend. Among father-only families, 37 percent included an adult female.
Larry Bumpass, professor of sociology at University of Wisconsin, also pointed to the relatively large number of children living with their unmarried parents, citing statistics showing that a quarter of out-of-wedlock births are to unmarried couples living together.
Of children living with at least one parent, nearly 13 percent live in extended families, defined as a household with another adult, related or unrelated, beyond the nuclear family.
Children of single parents were much more likely to live in an extended family. Among mother-only families, for example, nearly 30 percent live in an extended household.
Demographers argue that many Americans mistakenly assume that earlier generations of Americans lived idyllic family lives and non-traditional arrangements were rare.
The ``traditional nuclear'' family as it is defined excludes not only children in single-parent and the so-called blended families, but also children of adoption and those living in the presence of grandparents.
But Hernandez, author of a 1993 book, ``America's Children,'' said that in 1940, about 30 percent of children lived in non-traditional families, in part because of remarriage after parent mortality, which has decreased significantly.
Memo: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.