I think it's rather absurd, perhaps even offensive, to refer to households headed by a gay couple or an unmarried couple as a "non-family household". Are they really telling the Lofton family that they're not a family because the two fathers can't get married? It certainly sounds like it. And where do households without children, people like me who live alone, figure into this?

Aaack! Run! The sky is falling!

Is this a Big Deal that I'm missing out on, or...?

Maybe it's a sign that that relationship habits are declining, and a growing number of singles is growing cynical about finding a mate.

I can understand why social conservatives would be alarmed by this, but what they don't always understand is that there is no statist solution to moral problems or changes in demographic patterns in society.

Aaack! Run! The sky is falling!

Is this a Big Deal that I'm missing out on, or...?

Did someone say this is a Big Deal that I missed, or...? I find it interesting that nowhere in the story, this post, or in the comments has anyone suggested this is alarming. It may very well be, but no one has suggested that. Yet, you seem to suggest and assume here that I think it's a Big Deal. I do believe that's a legitimate argument that it is, but it was never made here.

Fully granted that you made no such argument, Josh, but I figured (correctly, as it turns out: "I do believe that's a legitimate argument that it is...") that this must be a Big Deal of some sort or you wouldn't have bothered posting about it.

I'll admit that I was kind of being a jerk in the way I asked, so please let me ask less jerkishly, what's the big deal? I mean, I can assume the obvious answers (children should grown up in a two-parent home, etc), but that's just bringing up the same old arguments with different facts - no one who thinks that gay parents and single parents are okay is going to see anything wrong with there being more of them.

Thus: is there something here I'm missing, or is this just another set of data that will make the average conservative upset (and the average liberal apathetic)?

Well, I think that even if we forget the political divide here and just look at the stats like good li'l social scientists, we can all agree that this is an interesting piece of information. What I'd like to see is someone compare these figures to pre-industrial revolution (or, at least, pre-1850) Western family patterns; my impression is that the nuclear family was itself an unprecedented development, implying as it did a separation between members of what we today refer to as "extended family" members.

PM is onto something. The transition away from the nuclear family as the norm is at least as interesting as the transition away from the "household economy" that existed prior to Industrial Revolution (where, indeed, "extended" family tended remain under the same roof as the "nuclear" family).

In response to Nick and others, ditto on what PM and David said. This is certainly incredibly interesting in what it says about American culture. Whether that's good or bad is a matter of debate, but I would suspect all can agree that it says something significant.

I think that most Americans are just disenchanted with the succession of broken promises and hopes dashed in previous relationships. It's like Pavlov's dog, if one finds themselves dumped after a plethora of "I love yous" and "we're meant to bes," then one would probably start to relate the heartbreak with the very words meant to convey something different.

And who can blame them?

RedHeadedLawyerLady's comment only delays the question: why would this generation of Americans be so much more disappointed than earlier ones were?

RedHeadedLawyerLady's comment only delays the question: why would this generation of Americans be so much more disappointed than earlier ones were?

I did offer a possibility. To rephrase, it seems the general culture has gotten worse at maintaining relationships. Declining relationship skills leads to worse marriages, and thus more disillusionment with that dream. Realationships are definitely more unstable these days.

The real question is WHY relationship skills are in decline. It may be a cyclical phenomenon per Strauss and Howe's Generations:

"Turnings last about 20 years and always arrive in the same order. Four of them make up the cycle of history, which is about the length of a long human life. The first turning is a High, a period of confident expansion as a new order becomes established after the old has been dismantled. Next comes an Awakening, a time of rebellion against the now-established order, when spiritual exploration becomes the norm. Then comes an Unraveling, an increasingly troubled era of strong individualism that surmounts increasingly fragmented institutions. Last comes the Fourth Turning, and era of upheaval, a Crisis in which society redefines its very nature and purpose."

We're in an Unraveling right now. Each generation has a Prime Directive which can be (and is often) taken to extremes: physically-measured productivity (Civics - WWII Generation), collective security (Adaptives - Silent Generation); ideology and inner purpose (Idealists - Boomers), individualism (Reactives - GenX).

(Before I continue, these characterizations identify strong cultural trends, and should not be interpreted as sweeping generalizations.)

(The generations seem to parallel the four personality types: choleric Civics, phlegmatic Adaptives, melancholic Idealists, sanguine Reactives. A friend once summarized the four personality types thus (in order listed): "have a productive day," "have a nice day," "have an interesting day," "have a fun day.")

Marriages can't even begin to take place without a strong teamwork ethic. Powerful individualism is therefore a severe marriage handicap. It can be overcome with discipline, but recklessness is a common Reactive trait. Disillusionment and alienation are also common to Reactive generations, which would support my thesis.

This is all assuming that the trend away from marriage is more a GenX thing than a Boomer thing. (The other two generations are too small a portion of the adult population to be a factor.) Some generational demographics on marriage would be helpful.

As something of a thought experiment, I wonder how the statistics would change and we counted as married those gay couples who have gotten married, if not under the law, through some ceremonial process.

Gays are roughly 3% of the population, and very few of them are "married." Even less statistically significant than counting Republicans in Greenpeace.

Alan,

That seems like a low-ball figure to me, but even if we accept that 3% (we need not venture off topic), that's 10 million Americans. You'd only need 300,000 of those 10 million citizens (a mere 3%) to have participated in some ceremonial committment event (which is to say: a wedding); count them among married couples, and suddenly households with married couples become the majority situation.