Abstract

Hooking Up, Shacking Up, Splitting Up..

Though it is still thought of as the norm, the married-couple household has been shrinking steadily as a share of the United States national population, to the point where only a little over half of U.S. households (52 percent) are of the supposedly dominant type. Interracial marriages are surprisingly rare, though the rates have doubled over the past decades up to 2004. People are also waiting longer to get married; the age has been rising steadily since the 1960s. But the early marriages of the 1950s, taken as the ideal in traditionalist circles, look like a historical anomaly. Approximately half of marriages end in divorce, a rate that appears to have stabilized in recent years after sharp increases. Being poor, young, black or nonreligious puts you at greater risk of divorce.