More than half of older US teenagers are not living with both married parents, according to a new study.
The data, taken from the US Census Bureau’s American Community
Survey, shows that of the 12.8 million teenagers aged 15-17 years old in
the U.S. in 2008, just 5.8 million, or 45 per cent were living with
both married birth parents.
The new study, called the US Index of
Belonging and Rejection, is written by Pat Fagan of the Family Research
Council.
It shows that a further seven million 15-17 year olds were living
with one birth parent only, with a birth parent and a stepparent, with
two cohabiting parents, or with neither parent (in adoptive or foster
families, in group quarters, or on their own).
The survey also analysed the situation at both a regional and
ethnic/racial level.
It showed that the proportion of teens living with
both parents across their childhood varied dramatically across ethnic
and racial groups.
The figures showed that Asian-American teenagers were the most likely
to live with both married parents.
Sixty two per cent of older
teenagers in this group lived with both married parents.
By comparison, a little over half (54 per cent) of whites aged 15-17, live with both parents.
Forty per cent of Hispanic teenagers live with both parents, while
only 17 per cent of African-American youth - less than one in five -
live with both married parents.
However, the study says that there are also variations that cannot be
explained by socioeconomic and ethnic factors. These variations have
to do with the cultural commitment to traditional family life in
particular geographic areas.
According to the figures, married
two-parent families are still the norm for teenagers in eleven states,
with Utah (59 per cent), New Hampshire (58 per cent), Minnesota (57 per
cent), and Nebraska (57 per cent) having the highest percentage of older
teens living with both married parents.
Among the four regions of the United States, the Northeast is the
strongest (50.4 per cent) while the south (41 per cent) is the weakest.
The south - mistakenly thought of as the most tradition-bound region in
the US - has the least family-friendly environment for children. In
the majority of southern states, fewer than 40 per cent of teenagers
live with both married parents.
The southern states are also among the
poorest in the US. In some states, such as Mississippi (32 per cent)
and Louisiana (34 per cent), only one third of children enter adulthood
from an intact family.
The study also notes that increased rates of divorce and childbearing
outside of marriage have turned growing up in a stable, two-parent
family into an exception, rather than the rule, for young Americans.
Pointing to figures from the National Centre for Health Statistics’
(NCHS) 1995 Survey of Family Growth Report, it says that approximately
43 per cent of first marriages in the US end in divorce in the first
fifteen years of marriage (the rate is somewhat lower for first
marriages involving children), and today, 3.6 divorces occur for every
1,000 couples married, up from 2.2 divorces per 1,000 marriages in 1960.
Moreover, the divorce rate exists alongside a decreasing marriage
rate.
The number of children living in intact married two-parent
families drops proportionately as young people go from early childhood
to adolescence with separated or divorced parents.
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