Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Are traditional families really an endangered species?

We've all heard the rhetoric about the traditional family being on the skids. This is the message that often comes from people who are trying to redefine the family and who really don't think that the traditional family (i.e. a family that includes both natural parents) is any better than any other structure in the first place.

Truth to tell, there are serious issues that need to be dealth with, but if you look behind that rhetoric about the decline of the traditional family, what you usually find is that the data are overstating the problem. But here is a little more realistic perspective from Beau Weston, a professor of religious sociology at Centre College, in my hometown of Danville, Kentucky, wherein he points out that 58 percent of children live with married parents:
The latest good news from the Census Bureau finds that a solid majority of kids live with their married parents. Another couple percent live with their unmarried parents -- and a significant hunk of those parents will marry. Being raised by their own married parents is the best situation for kids. That doesn't mean that the other options are terrible, or that all married parents are great. But most kids get the best option. And since most parents want to stay married and raise their kids together, most parents get the best option, too.
You will want to visit his very excellent blog, called The Gruntled Center. I admit the title makes him sound..., I don't know, grumpy or something. But I have found him really quite jolly.

3 comments:

One Brow said...

We've all heard the rhetoric about the traditional family being on the skids. This is the message that often comes from people who are trying to redefine the family and who really don't think that the traditional family (i.e. a family that includes both natural parents) is any better than any other structure in the first place.
Funny, I usually hear that message from groups like Focus on the Family.

Anonymous said...

One brow makes a good point.

Also the traditional family is usually defined to have a working father and stay-at-home mom. How many of the 58% fit this standard criterion?

This sentence is misleading at best:"Another couple percent live with their unmarried parents -- and a significant hunk of those parents will marry." Whether these parents marry does not affect the percent of married families at present. He might as well write: "Some of these married couples with kids will eventually divorce."

Even so, 58% at the schools I have attended would be a failing grade.


j a higginbotham

Martin Cothran said...

One Brow's point is actually not a bad point at all. What I should have said is "the rhetoric about the traditional family being obsolete".

The point of course is that families with a mother and a father living in the same home (which I suppose would be the broad definition of the traditional family) is not only common, but still the norm.