New Study Chronicles Crisis of Traditional Families

New Study Chronicles Crisis of Traditional Families
Written by Dave Bohon
Friday, 24 December 2010 00:00
The New American

A new study from the Family Research Council (FRC) reveals that over half of children in the United States are being raised in single-parent homes decimated by divorce, separation, and parental conflict. In the U.S Index of Belonging and Rejection, Dr. Patrick Fagan, director of the FRC’s Marriage and Religion Institute, found that the American family model has become one of rejection, with only 45 percent of American teens raised in families with both a mother and father legally married to one another.
By contrast, 55 percent of teens in the U.S. have been raised in families marred by rejection, including “single-parent families, stepfamilies, and children who no longer live with either birth parent but with adoptive or foster parents.”

Fagan’s research, based on data gathered from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, found that increased divorce rates and more children born outside of marriage “have turned growing up in a stable, two-parent family into an exception, rather than the rule, for young Americans.” Especially relevant, he found, were statistics showing that while 62 percent of Asian-American teens and 54 percent of Caucasian teens live with both married parents, only 17 percent of African-American youth — less than one in five — live in intact homes with both married parents.  FULL STORY