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CNN Live At Daybreak
Census Shows Developing Trends in Families
Aired June 29, 2001 - 08:25 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: The 2000 Census is chocked full of some very, very interesting data, including some new trends in marriage and family issues.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: At first glance, when you look at these numbers, they appear to show an erosion of the American family.
But as Kathy Slobogin reports, that's not necessarily so.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANIELLE HABERMAN: I was just out with my friends, and he was out with his friends, and he came up to me -- I'll make that clear.
KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Danielle Haberman and Josh Konigsberg are getting married Saturday. She's 27, he's 26. They've been dating for five years.
(on camera): What took you so long?
JOSH KONIGSBERG: We met when I was so young: I was 21 years old; Danielle was 22. And we just hadn't really experienced enough.
SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Josh and Danielle aren't alone. Over the last 30 years, the average age women first marry has increased by nearly 4.5 years -- for men, by 3.5 half years.
JASON FIELDS, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU: Since 1970, we've seen a dramatic rise in the age that people get married.
SLOBOGIN: Jason Fields, author of a new Census Bureau report on changes in the American family, says American men, on average, marry at nearly 27 -- women, at 25.
FIELDS: They're making the decision later. They have additional priorities: for example, finishing school, going on with education, starting a career.
SLOBOGIN: Couples are waiting longer, and more people are living alone. As a result, the traditional nuclear family has shrunk from 40 percent of American households, 30 years ago, to less than a quarter today.
HABERMAN: We have to pack. SLOBOGIN: But none of this means marriage is in decline. In fact, by age 65, 95 percent of Americans have been married at least once.
KONIGSBERG: So we've got to practice our kiss for when they say, You may now kiss the bride.
HABERMAN: Yes. Should we practice?
For starters, a lot of people our age have parents who got divorced, so I think they're slowing things down, making sure that they really know the person really well.
SLOBOGIN: That's what Mike Seale and Priscilla Bagby-Hynes are doing. He's a divorced father of two, she, a divorced mother of three. They live together unmarried. They've been engaged for seven years.
(on camera): When do you think you'll get married?
MICHAEL SEALE: We have to set a date.
PRISCILLA BAGBY-HYNES: 2012.
M. SEALE: April 17th.
SLOBOGIN (voice-over): Mike and Priscilla are part of the small but growing American group: Unmarried couples living together are up 72 percent in the last decade. But before you chalk that up to a decline in American family values, listen to their reasons.
M. SEALE: We've made our commitment to each other, but we also realize that, unlike most relationships, where the relationship between the two people comes first, we've both had children, and we had prior responsibilities.
SLOBOGIN: Both went through painful divorces and are putting their own remarriage plans on hold until their children are grown.
BAGBY-HYNES: I just feel like that when a child goes through a divorce, as well as the two parents that go through the divorce, it's a crumbling of your empire, and you have to rebuild it. And Michael and I have been working on it for a long time.
SLOBOGIN: Mike and Priscilla's kids live in a blended family of stepparents and stepsiblings, like nearly one in five American children today.
GEORGIA SEALE: It's still a family. It doesn't matter if they're biological or not, you have a family -- and as long as you have that paternity, then everything is fine.
SLOBOGIN: Mike and Priscilla's family may be as typical as any American family today, even though it's not the kind of family they grew up in. BAGBY-HYNES: When I went to college and graduated from college and got married and raised my children, I was still carrying over the values from my grandmother in my own family, and I think that now we're seeing that it hasn't worked as well as it did for them.
M. SEALE: This whole thing is very new to us too, but for seven years, two months, and two days, we've been very happy. So I think it's working.
SLOBOGIN (on camera): In the end, the American family is not collapsing, just changing. In fact, 71 percent of American children still live in two-parent families, which includes stepparents and adoptive parents. So despite change, the family survives.
Kathy Slobogin, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
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