Opinion: America’s changing family patterns, part I

June, historically in our culture, was “marrying month.” It was not a coincidence that many of the popular songs of the 1940s and 1950s rhymed “June” and “honeymoon.” A June marriage was the ideal for many young couples. And marriage was the foundation of the family. 

Our society, unlike most family systems throughout history, favored the formation of nuclear families. That is, the newly married partners formed a family separate from either of their parental families. Usually the only other members of the family were the children of the wedded couple. Of course, they still interacted with their parents and other relatives, but they lived separately as an emotionally close unit. A recent study by the Pew Research Center reveals that, in 1970, two-thirds (67 percent) of Americans between the ages of 25 and 49 were living with their spouse and one or more children under the age of 18.

The sixties changed everything

Then came changes. The decade of the 1960s was a time of social upheaval. “Free love” was seen by many as the alternative to courtship. The FDA approval of the birth-control pill had a tremendous effect on both marital and premarital sexual relations and reproduction. “Trial marriage,” that is young couples living together before deciding to get married, became more common. When the Bureau of the Census did its surveys, they counted both “families” (married couples with or without children) and POSSLQs (Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters).