An Unmarried Woman - and Man

Listen: A new survey has shown that traditional marriage has ceased to be the preferred living arrangement in the majority of U.S. households. This leaves open the possibility that there are still those married folks who continue to be married, but just don't prefer it. But seriously folks, what does this mean? In nearly 55.8 million American households, Father doesn't necessarily know best. Instead, more than 14 million of them are headed by single women, another five million by single men, while 36.7 million belonged to a category described as "nonfamily households," a term that experts said referred primarily to gay or heterosexual couples cohabiting out of formal wedlock.
This would be the end of the world as Jerry Falwell knows it, and I feel fine. I confess that I travel in a pretty traditional circle, with a lot of very highly functioning families of a pretty traditional sort. That said, I can also say that I spend the day with a room full of nine and ten year olds whose experience is anything but traditional. I expect that when I call home that I will most likely reach somebody's mom before I speak to a dad, and there are a great many kids living with their grandparents - while mom and dad finish growing up.
You might think that this leads to a lot of dysfunctional behavior and challenges in the classroom as well as at home. I'm here to tell you that having a "traditional family" in no way ensures any kind of advanced academic standing or personal conduct. Sometimes having two parents just ensures twice as much bad input.
Douglas Besharov, a sociologist with the American Enterprise Institute had this to say: "Overall, what I see is a situation in which people - especially children - will be much more isolated, because not only will their parents both be working, but they'll have fewer siblings, fewer cousins, fewer aunts and uncles," the scholar argued. "So over time, we're moving towards a much more individualistic society."
So, three cheers for the individual, or just a quiet one, since it's still my night to put my son to bed.