THEN AND At present: How American families have changed since the early 1900s

millennials living at home

Family life is irresolute in the United states of america.
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  • Average family size is decreasing, and heart children could be going extinct.
  • More and more Americans are living in multigenerational households.
  • Smartphones accept changed the manner families interact.

Family traditions, recipes, and heirlooms can exist passed from generation to generation relatively unchanged. But families themselves have undergone many changes due to advancements in technology, economic factors, and societal shifts.

Here's how families have changed from the 1900s to today.

The divorce rate is decreasing.

Divorce is becoming less common.
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INSIDER Data sourced figures from theCenters for Illness Command and Prevention and plant that thedivorce charge per unit has been steadily decreasing since the mid-1980s. In 2017, the rate reached two.9 divorces per ane,000 Americans with only 787,251 divorces total — the lowest it's been since 1968.

Data scientist Randal Due south. Olson writes that theonly major spike in the divorce rate was later Earth War II, probably because of  "pre-WWII marriages coming to an abrupt end once the romance of wartime marriage wore off."

INSIDER'sKim Renfro reportedthat some sociologists say in that location could be a link between declining divorce rates and more people deciding to alive together before marriage.

Household sizes accept decreased, merely the size of the boilerplate family home has increased.

Single-family homes are bigger.
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Co-ordinate to Census Bureau data, the average single-family house is nearly ane,000 square feet bigger than it was forty years agone.

In 1973, the average single-family home in the United states of america was 1,525 foursquare anxiety. In 2010, that number had increased to ii,169 foursquare feet.

At the same time, the boilerplate household size has been decreasing. In 1960, there were an average of 3.3 people per household. In 2018, it dropped to ii.53 people.

Men are pitching in more to help with housework and parenting responsibilities, merely women even so do virtually of it.

Men are helping more around the house.
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As gender roles shift and women focus more on their careers before having children, millennial men are as well shifting to have on more housekeeping and parenting responsibilities — or, at least, they're trying to. Women all the same take on a asymmetric amount of that unpaid labor.

"The majority of young men and women say they would ideally similar toequally share earning and intendance giving with their spouse,"Sarah Thébaud, a sociologist at the Academy of California, Santa Barbara, told The New York Times. "Only it's pretty articulate that we don't accept the kinds of policies and flexible work options that actually facilitate egalitarian relationships."

Many Americans moved to the suburbs later on Earth War II.

Suburbs have grown in popularity.
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Before Globe War II, 13% of Americans lived in suburbs, according to the Oxford Research Encyclopedia. By 2010, half of the US population lived in suburbs.

Every bit automobile ownership became more than popular, it immune families to move further from urban areas and commute to piece of work, and having a home with a lawn and picket fence became the "American dream."

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