Research conducted by the government shows that over 50% of American citizens are single: a trend that apparently can’t be stopped
In the United States, in the wake of a 35-year trend of waning interest in marriage, the majority of adults are single. According to the government data, 50.2 % of American adults are unmarried, compared to only 37.4 % in 1976. The percentage of married adults steadily dropped throughout that time, and the trend shows no signs of stopping.
The numbers are in part due to divorces and deaths—about 20% of adults have lost their partner or are recovering from divorce, compared to just 15% in 1976. Yet, the biggest shift has been in the number of adults who have never married, nearly a third of the total in comparison to 22% in 1976.
Moreover, researchers with the Council on Contemporary Families found that only 22 % of children are being raised in the "traditional" arrangement of a married stay-at-home mother and a breadwinner father. Among all the possible family "types", the most common is one in which both parents work, but even these families represent only 34 % of the whole. Twenty-three percent of children are being raised by single mothers, only half of whom have ever been married. The rest of the children are being raised by cohabitating unmarried couples (7 %), single fathers (3 %), grandparents (3 %), or someone outside the family.
