What Is Happening with the Traditional Family?

My VIP for this week is the traditional family – a mother, a father, and children. The traditional family is declining, but it “has the most potential to bring Americans together,” according to Terence P. Jeffrey, investigative editor for the Daily Caller News Foundation. 

The Census Bureau recently released a report about the living arrangements American mothers have when they give birth to their first child. It did not paint a pretty picture.

“There have been sweeping changes to marriage and family structures in the United States over the last several decades,” said the report. “Fertility rates dropped to historically low levels. Marriage rates declined while cohabitation became more common. Childbirth increasingly occurred outside of marriage as legal and cultural norms shifted.”

The Census Bureau’s analysis indicated that since the early 1990s there has been a fairly consistent percentage of mothers who were married when they gave birth to their first child. But this percentage was always above 60%, leaving nearly 40% of first-born children in a household that was not a traditional family.

In the period from 1990 through 1994, according to the Census Bureau, only 62.2% of first-born babies were born to a married couple. Another 20.4% of the babies born in that period were born to a mother who was neither married nor “cohabiting” with a partner. Then there were 17.4% who were born to a mother who was cohabiting with a partner with whom she was not married.

In the period from 1995 through 1999, the percentage of first-born babies who were born to mothers who were married increased modestly to 63.8%. In the period from 2000 through 2004, it increased again to 66.3%.

But then it declined again.

From 2005 through 2009, it was 62.9%. From 2010 through 2014, it was 60.0%; from 2015 through 2019, it was 60.7%; and from 2020 through 2024, it was 60.8%.

While the percentage of first-born babies born to married mothers declined between 1990-94 and 2020-24, the percentage born to unmarried but cohabiting mothers increased, climbing from 17.4% to 23.9%.

And there were still 15.3% of first-born babies in the 2020-2024 period who were born to mothers who were neither married nor cohabitating.

The Census Bureau’s report also noted a distinction in the trends among women who had a college education and those who did not.

“Marriage became a more common living arrangement among first-time mothers with at least a bachelor’s degree, increasing from 74.4 percent in 1990-1994 to 84.5 percent in 2020-2024,” said the bureau’s report.

“In contrast, the prevalence of marital first births among mothers with less than a bachelor’s degree declined from 58.6 percent in 1990-1994 to 40.6 percent in 2020-2024, and the share of women cohabiting at first birth rose from 19.2 percent to 34.8 percent,” it said.

In other words, in the period from 2020-24, a significant majority (59.4%) of the first-born babies born to mothers without a college degree were not born in a traditional married-couple household.

The Census Bureau’s report concedes that babies born outside a traditional family structure also tend to be born in a less prosperous environment. “Children born to married parents on average have access to more economic resources,” says its report.

The Census Bureau’s household income data for 2024 shows two factors that, as this column has noted before, clearly have an impact on that income: family structure and education….

It makes sense that a married couple will give their children a stronger family structure. It also makes sense that a married couple, each with a college degree, will have more skills and knowledge than with individuals without a college degree or appropriate trades training.

My long-time readers know that I have encouraged education since the beginning of this blog. My children would tell you that I pushed education since they were in the lower grades of elementary school. As a result, all of them have a college degree and most of them have graduate degrees. They are all doing well, rearing strong families, and strengthening their communities. All of us should be involved in life-long learning.