Increasingly Complex Families, Increasingly Unhappy Children
December 20, 2017The Topic: Increasingly Complex Families, Increasingly Unhappy ChildrenThe News Story: Divorce Is Making American Families 66% BiggerThe New Research: Dizzy and Confused on the Parental Marriage-Go-Round The News Story: Divorce Is Making American Families 66% Bigger “This holiday season,” opens a recent story from Bloomberg, “many Americans may need a flow chart to figure how they’re all related.” In an attempt to “quantify” such trends, American researchers recently turned their focus to just how many stepfamilies exist in this country. They found that, among adults over 55 years of age, a full third have a stepchild. This rise in stepfamilies is one implication of the divorce revolution. Reports Bloomberg, “For Americans with grown children, counting stepchildren boosts the total number of adult kids by 66 percent. . . . About 40 percent of older Americans with children are in stepfamilies, according to survey data.” But as complexity rises, so also does the complexity of questions such as who pays for college, who is invited over for Christmas dinner, and who takes care of aging parents. Aware of such trends, Bloomberg reports that “stepfamilies often need to work harder to bring their sprawling families together.” According to some additional research, however, no amount of hard work can minimize the negative affects of such family complexity and transition on children. (Source: Ben Steverman, “Divorce is Making American Families 66% Bigger,” Bloomberg, December 18, 2017.) The New Research: Dizzy and Confused on the Parental Marriage-Go-Round Getting individuals out of bad marriages and into good ones was one of the professed objectives of the progressive activists who pushed permissive no-fault divorce statutes. Never more than an afterthought for these progressive idealists, the children of divorce have suffered a great deal in the world of revolving-door marriages. As the latest evidence
Categories:
