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51% of US Women Are Now Living Without Spouse
This is a major demographic watershed, long predicted by sociologists, clergy, novelists, and science fiction writers. More women are now living without husbands in the US than with. In some ways, despite the predictions, it still comes as a shock.
According to the NY Times, it conducted its own analysis of US Census data to come up with these conclusions.
“This is yet another of the inexorable signs that there is no going back to a world where we can assume that marriage is the main institution that organizes people’s lives,” said Prof. Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. “Most of these women will marry, or have married. But on average, Americans now spend half their adult lives outside marriage.”
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For what experts say is probably the first time, more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.
Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.



Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (4)
at 06:45 on January 16th, 2007
This is the sort of story that will roil talk shows all day long. Magazine editors will open veins in agony that they didn't get to this first. Everybody will be looking for quotes, like, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."
So please get cracking!
at 17:04 on January 17th, 2007
The Times got their numbers from the Census Bureau's new American
Community Survey, which surveyed "117 million women over the age of
15." Wait a minute. "Over the age of 15"?
Is it really a surprise that millions of 15-20 year-olds are "living
without spouse"? It shouldn't be. In addition to several cultural
factors (some of which the Times touched on), the age of consent in the
United States averages just over 16 years of age. In several states,
including California, it's 18.
link
at 18:21 on September 13th, 2007
Actual News Geezer, I like this story. It's good stuff. some of the info I need for an argument for a debate
at 05:18 on August 5th, 2009
Feminist have degraded the institution of marriage and motherhood for several decades now. It is only natural that we are now see and feeling the results of their efforts to get rid of the central building blocks of a stable thriving society.
I did notice that most of the women that they quoted in the article were over the age of 50 and were themselves without men in their lives (mostly due to divorce). This is the generation that brought in such a radical change in marriage and family values. My husband is of that generation and he does remember the push to "loosen" up the cultural restraints put on free sex. Becoming married to one person and the having of children would have only prevented the person from "finding themselves". The women they used for the article now seem to be reverting back towards the "find themselves" mode of young adulthood.
Their crap has now infected every generation that has come after them. I can only say THANKS...we really didn't need this.