14.2 Variations in Family Life - Introduction to Sociology 3e | OpenStax

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• 30 percent of women under 30 are single,

• Parents also teach children gender roles.

• The combination of husband, wife, and children that 99.8 percent of people in the United States believe constitutes a family is not representative of 99.8 percent of U.S. families.

• only 66 percent of children under seventeen years old live in a household with two married parents.

• decrease from 77 percent in 1980

• married parents and children as the nucleus, or core, of the group.

• Three percent of children live with two cohabiting parents

• Single-parent households are on the rise.

• 32 percent of children lived with a single parent only, up from 25 percent in 2008.

• 21 percent live with their mother.

• Four percent live with their father,

• 1968, for example, only one percent of children lived with a solo father,

• and three percent lived with a solo father in 2008

• 16 percent of children are living in blended families, those with step parents and/or step-siblings.

• Four percent of children live in families with couples who are not married.

• three million children lived with a guardian who was neither their biological nor adoptive parent.

• The causes range from parental mental health issues, drug use, or incarceration, as well as physical or sexual abuse of the children by the parent, or abandonment by the parent.

• About half of these children live with grandparents, and about 20 percent live with other relatives

• 25 percent of children who do not live with an adoptive or biological parent live with nonrelatives,

• When children are placed into foster care or other non-parental care, agencies and families usually do their best to keep siblings together.