Four Decades of Trends in Attitudes Toward Family Issues in the United States: The 1960s Through the 1990s

Abstract

This article examines trends in family attitudes and values across the last 4 decades of the 20th century, with particular emphasis on the past 2 decades. The article focuses on attitudes toward a wide range of family issues, including the roles of men and women, marriage, divorce, childlessness, premarital sex, extramarital sex, unmarried cohabitation, and unmarried childbearing. More generally, the article considers trends in 3 broad contemporary values: freedom; equality; and commitment to family, marriage, and children. Five data sets are used for the article: Monitoring the Future, General Social Survey, International Social Science Project, Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children, and the National Survey of Families and Households. These 5 data sets reveal substantial and persistent long‐term trends toward the endorsement of gender equality in families, which may have plateaued at very high levels in recent years. There have also been important and continuing long‐term trends toward individual autonomy and tolerance toward a diversity of personal and family behaviors as reflected in increased acceptance of divorce, premarital sex, unmarried cohabitation, remaining single, and choosing to be childless. At the same time, marriage and family life remain important in the cultural ethos, with large and relatively stable fractions of young people believing that marriage and family life are important and planning marriage and the bearing and rearing of children.

A Genetically Informed Study of Marital Instability and Its Association With Offspring Psychopathology.

“…Psychological difficulties, socioeconomic status, educational attainment, subjective wellbeing, early sexual activity, nonmarital childbirth, earlier marriage, cohabitation, marital discord, and divorce are all associated with parental separation (reviews in Amato, 1999;Amato & Keith, 1991b;Emery, 1999;Furstenberg & Teitler, 1994). Although divorce has become more prevalent and socially accepted (Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001), the differences between children from intact and divorced families has not decreased over the past 40 years; rather, they have increased (Amato, 2001). Longitudinal research has also indicated that the magnitude of emotional problems associated with divorce increases when offspring reach young adulthood (A. J. Cherlin, Chase-Lansdale, & McRae, 1998).…”

Age, relationship status, and the planning status of births

“…Although the timing and relationship context of childbearing behavior has changed, there is some evidence that norms regarding appropriate situations for childbearing have lagged behind changes in behavior. For instance, the majority of Americans continue to report that marriage is the ideal setting for having children (Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001). The changing demographic profile of American mothers raises the question as to whether the traditional age-and partnershipdependence of birth planning remains.…”

Free to stay, free to leave: Insights from Poland into the meaning of cohabitation

“…In some countries there are no commonly used terms to describe a cohabiting partner (Manning and Smock 2005;Mynarska and Bernardi 2007) and there is no term for the non-marital equivalent of an in-law (Nock 1995). Although cohabitation has become increasingly accepted throughout the developed world (Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001;Mynarska and Bernardi 2007) there are still marked differences between countries in terms of attitudes toward informal unions (Soons and Kalmijn 2009). Especially in Catholic countries, such as Poland, where there is a lesser degree of social acceptance of informal unions, cohabitors might continue to experience certain forms of stigmatization.…”

“…This process can lessen the danger of having an unhappy marriage that eventually ends in divorce. Thus, young people view pre-marital cohabitation as a means of improving their chances in future marriage, and of "divorceproofing" their relationship (Manning and Cohen 2012;Kline et al 2004;Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001). Cohabitation is therefore frequently conceptualized as a "trial marriage" or a "testing period" before marriage (Heuveline and Timberlake 2004;Seltzer 2000;Kiernan 2004).…”