|
E-mail this page to a friend!
Features for Senior Citizens
Senior Citizens Out of Step with Children on Sex,
Marriage, Parenting
Younger generation has different moral values, says
Pew Research
 July 5, 2007 - Americans believe that births to
unwed women are a big problem for society, and they take a mixed view at
best of cohabitation without marriage. Yet these two nontraditional
behaviors have become commonplace among younger adults, who have a
different set of moral values from their elders about sex, marriage and
parenthood, a new Pew Research Center Survey finds.
This generational values gap helps to explain the
decades-long surge in births to unmarried women – which now comprise
nearly four-in-ten (37%) births in the United States – as well as the
sharp rise in living together without getting married, which, the Pew
survey finds, is something that nearly half of all adults in their 30s
and 40s have done for at least a portion of their lives.
But this generational divide is only part of a more
complex story. Americans of all ages, this survey finds, acknowledge
that there has been a distinct weakening of the link between marriage
and parenthood. In perhaps the single most striking finding from the
survey, just 41% of Americans now say that children are "very important"
to a successful marriage, down sharply from the 65% who said this in a
1990 survey.
Indeed, children have fallen to eighth out of nine
on a list of items that people associate with successful marriages –
well behind "sharing household chores," "good housing," "adequate
income," "happy sexual relationship," and "faithfulness." Back in 1990,
when the American public was given this same list on a World Values
Survey, children ranked third in importance.
The new Pew survey also finds that, by a margin of
nearly three-to-one, Americans say that the main purpose of marriage is
the "mutual happiness and fulfillment" of adults rather than the
"bearing and raising of children."
 In downgrading the importance of children to
marriage, public opinion both reflects and facilitates the upheavals in
marital and parenting patterns that have taken place over the past
several decades.
In the United States today, marriage exerts less
influence over how adults organize their lives and how children are born
and raised than at any time in the nation's history. Only about half of
all adults (ages 18 and older) in the U.S. are married; only about
seven-in-ten children live with two parents; and nearly four-in-ten
births are to unwed mothers, according to U.S. Census figures.
As recently as the early 1970s, more than
six-in-ten adults in this country were married; some 85% of children
were living with two parents; and just one-birth-in-ten was to an unwed
mother.
Americans take a dim view of these trends, the Pew
survey finds. More than seven-in-ten (71%) say the growth in births to
unwed mothers is a "big problem." About the same proportion – 69% – says
that a child needs both a mother and a father to grow up happily.
 Not surprisingly, however, attitudes are much
different among those adults who have themselves engaged in these
nontraditional behaviors. For example, respondents in the survey who are
never-married parents (about 8% of all parents) are less inclined than
ever-married parents to see unmarried childbearing as bad for society or
morally wrong.
They're also less inclined to say a child needs
both a mother and father to grow up happily. Demographically, this group
is more likely than ever-married parents to be young, black or
Hispanic,1 less educated, and to have been raised by an unwed parent
themselves.
There is another fast-growing group – cohabiters –
that has a distinctive set of attitudes and moral codes about these
matters. According to the Pew survey, about a third of all adults (and
more than four-in-ten adults under age 50) have, at some point in their
lives, been in a cohabiting relationship with a person to whom they were
not married. This group is less likely that the rest of the adult
population to believe that premarital sex is wrong. They're less prone
to say that it's bad for society that more people are living together
without getting married. Demographically, this group is more likely than
the rest of the adult population to be younger, black, and secular
rather than religious.
The body of this report provides a deeper
analysis of attitudes and behaviors on all these matters. It is
presented in five sections. See link at bottom of page.
Key Points
● A Generation Gap
in Behaviors and Values. Younger adults attach far less
moral stigma than do their elders to out-of-wedlock births and
cohabitation without marriage. They engage in these behaviors at rates
unprecedented in U.S. history. Nearly four-in-ten (36.8%) births in this
country are to an unmarried woman. Nearly half (47%) of adults in their
30s and 40s have spent a portion of their lives in a cohabiting
relationship.
●
Public Concern over
the Delinking of Marriage and Parenthood. Adults of all
ages consider unwed parenting to be a big problem for society. At the
same time, however, just four-in-ten (41%) say that children are very
important to a successful marriage, compared with 65% of the public who
felt this way as recently as 1990.
●
Marriage Remains an
Ideal, Albeit a More Elusive One. Even though a
decreasing percentage of the adult population is married, most unmarried
adults say they want to marry. Married adults are more satisfied with
their lives than are unmarried adults.
●
Children Still Vital
to Adult Happiness. Children may be perceived as less
central to marriage, but they are as important as ever to their parents.
As a source of adult happiness and fulfillment, children occupy a
pedestal matched only by spouses and situated well above that of jobs,
career, friends, hobbies and other relatives.
●
Cohabitation Becomes
More Prevalent. With marriage exerting less influence
over how adults organize their lives and bear their children,
cohabitation is filling some of the vacuum. Today about a half of all
nonmarital births are to a cohabiting couple; 15 years ago, only about a
third were. Cohabiters are ambivalent about marriage – just under half
(44%) say they to want marry; a nearly equal portion (41%) say they
aren't sure.
●
Divorce Seen as
Preferable to an Unhappy Marriage. Americans by lopsided
margins endorse the mom-and-dad home as the best setting in which to
raise children. But by equally lopsided margins, they believe that if
married parents are very unhappy with one another, divorce is the best
option, both for them and for their children.
●
Racial Patterns are
Complex. Blacks are much less likely than whites to
marry and much more likely to have children outside of marriage.
However, an equal percentage of both whites and blacks (46% and 44%,
respectively) consider it morally wrong to have a child out of wedlock.
Hispanics, meantime, place greater importance than either whites or
blacks do on children as a key to a successful marriage – even though
they have a higher nonmarital birth rate than do whites.
●
Survey Sample and
Methods. These findings are from a telephone survey
conducted from February 16 through March 14, 2007 among a
randomly-selected, nationally representative sample of 2,020 adults.
>>
For more information on this survey or to download complete study, click
here.
Click to More Senior News on the
Front Page
Copyright: SeniorJournal.com |
