Family Trends

This week in Family relations, one main thing we talked about was the different trend in families today. Whether this be in single-parent families or in a two parent household, there are many different trends that we can see. They include: Age at first (age at which people are marrying), cohabitation, employed mothers with children under 6, living alone, depression, sexual intimacy before marriage, cut of wedlock birth, decrease in household size, decreasing birth rates, and divorce rates. All of these are some trends we see in different families, yet there is a correlation between them.

Just to compare a couple, if we look at say living alone and depression, we can probably figure that there is a good relationship between these two. Whether it be social loneliness or emotional loneliness, it is something that we should be concerned about for those struggling with this. When we talk about the loneliness of some, we could also probably guess that there is some sort of depression involved because they feel that they are not meaningful to someone, or that they simply just aren't good enough. 

There are many different ways to compare these trends to one another. Another one to look at would be cohabitation prior to marriage, and divorce. Often times when people get married at a young age, they do it so quickly because they think they really love each other and they think they have things figured out, but in reality they don't know what's coming for them. They want to get married to say they are married, but then in the end they figure out they don't love each other as much as they thought, and then it leads to divorce. This is something so scary to me, because I feel like it it's important to be on your own for a while and experience the world before you decide on who to marry. 

It is probably easier to say that those who come from a husband-wife typical household versus those who come from a single parent household have a little better of a life. Looking at different statistics with different situations is interesting to see the different rates. If you would like to take a closer look at this, check out the website familystructurestudies.com to look at the different scenarios for each type of family and the outcome!