When families gather round the table Thanksgiving Day, chances are they are as much a mishmash as the food. THE UNITED States retains the highest divorce rate of the Western world, even though our rate is down from its 50 percent peak in the 1990s.
Stepchildren. Ex-spouses. Half-siblings. Multi-cultural. Unmarried cohabitants. Single parents.
Don’t be alarmed. Truth is, that’s the landscape of the American family.
Recent reports of U.S. demographics show we are a curious amalgam and more like a Jackson Pollock than a Norman Rockwell painting.
Today, most moms bring home the bacon along with dad. The female workforce has quadrupled since the 1950s and today 40 percent of women are their family’s sole breadwinner.
Families are smaller, with an average of two children compared to three in the 1970s. Fewer women are becoming mothers, 80 percent compared to 90 percent in the 1990s.
The fastest-growing immigrant group is Asian, not Hispanic, despite the furor over immigration. The high influx of Asians has helped steady our divorce rates — the lowest in 30 years — and also raise the average level of household income of any racial group.
Asian families average divorce rates of 20 percent, compared to the national average of 40 percent, and on average earn roughly $68,000 a year, compared to the national average of $44,000.
On average, Americans are marrying much later. First-time grooms now are nudging age 30 and blushing brides are almost 27, on average, a good seven to eight years later than a generation ago. Likewise, first-time moms are now on average 25 and older.
The good news is that the rate of teen births has dropped dramatically thanks to sex education in schools and widespread birth control measures.
Those gathered around the table could be black and white, Baptist and Hindi, Democrat and Republican.
Let’s give thanks we live in a country where that’s not only permissible, but welcome.
— Susan Lynn
Guess who’s coming to Thanksgiving dinner?
