Marriage and Commitment: Early Stages of Marriage
Marriage tends to go through various phases and stages. During the early years of marriage, newlyweds settle into their new positions as husband and wife. The arrival of the first child may be the least happy time in the career of a marriage, a ti...
Families Today and Tomorrow: Stepfamilies
Given the number of divorces and remarriages that take place in the United States each year, stepfamilies have increasingly become a common family form in 21st century America. But as with families in general, there is no single, iron-clad definitio...
Changing Families: Role of Family and Social Change, The
Despite enormous changes in the forms that families may take, family as an institution somehow endures and continues to play a uniquely important role in society.
Divorcing: Process of Divorcing, The
The process of divorce is never easy. In many cases it doesn't happen in a smooth, linear fashion. There may be a series of separations and reconciliations before the split becomes final.
Divorcing: Divorce in Historical Perspective
The number of couples who divorce is strikingly higher today than it was a hundred years ago. Many experts believe there may be a relationship between escalating rates of divorce and the greatly increased number of women who work outside the home. ...
Singlehood...: Gay and Lesbian Couples vs. the Marriage Movement
Sixty percent of Americans consider homosexual relations wrong, a figure that has decreased since the 1970s but is still out of step with other advanced industrial nations. Twenty-nine percent of gay men and 44 percent of lesbians currently live in...
Singlehood...: Costs and Benefits of Cohabitation
In general there are fewer legal supports for cohabiting singles including health and life insurance. However, singles who share a life together report the relationship provides them with greater freedom to be themselves, to share finances, and to e...
Singlehood...: Why People Cohabitate
In the last fifty years, the number of cohabiting singles in the United States has mushroomed. Among whites, cohabitation is an experiment, a kind of trial marriage. For African- or Mexican-Americans, cohabitation is more often an alternative or su...
Changing Families: Alternative Family Structures
Among the most obvious changes in American families has been the increased diversity of family forms and structures. Some of the most common alternative family forms are: single parent families, married couples without children, stepfamilies, and f...
Working: Working Women and Childcare
Finding suitable childcare has increasingly become an important issue for nearly all working parents. In large part, this has come about because massive structural changes in the U.S. economy have brought working women into the labor force in grea...