About a quarter of all Americans who have kids under 18 living with them in 2013 are not married, according to new Census figures. Most of those are single moms. Only 8% of homes with kids are overseen by cohabiting-but-not-married couples. Of those folks, about two thirds are both biological parents of the kids they live with. That means that just over 5% of kids live with a biological mum and dad who aren’t married. While cohabiting is becoming increasingly popular—the new figures suggest that about 7% of American households are set up that way—it’s less common as a family unit than media reports might suggest. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been a massive drop in the slice of America that is married with kids. Between 1970 and 2013, the share of households that sociologists call the “intact biological family” almost halved, from 40% to 19%. By way of comparison, the proportion of American homes made up of married couples without children dipped only slightly, from 30% to 29%. The U.S. is still a little way off the European style of home, in which it’s more common for a mother and a father raise their biological children together, without getting the marriage license. The new report, America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2013, has, for the first time, a table that offers data on American parents living with their children. A few interesting, if not exactly surprising data points emerge: If a guy is living with kids, it’s 86% more likely that he will be married than not. If a woman is living with kids, it’s only 67% more likely that she will be married. A quarter of all women who live with kids under 18 are single, which is true of only 6% of men who live with kids of that age. Another sign that the face of families is changing: in 1970, almost all (96%) of the kids who lived with just their mother had a mom who had been married at some stage, but was subsequently![]()
