Demographic Foundations of Family Change

Abstract

As a result of the decline in mortality current cohorts have the theoretical potential to spend more time in the conjugal family statuses of parent child and spouse. To determine the extent to which this potential has been realized in the US a model was developed to simulate demographic conditions in 1800 1900 1960 and 1980 and then calculate how long women remained in the various family statuses in each historical period. Despite declines in fertility and increases in divorce the 1980 simulated cohort spent more years as children as parents as currently married spouses and in conjugal family units than people in the 1800 and 1900 cohorts. The 1980 cohort spent about 27 adult years with spouse and surviving children--4 years more than the 1800 cohort. The proportion of adult life spent in the status as child of at least one parent over 65 years of age has increased from 15% in 1800 to 29% in 1980. On the other hand time spent as a spouse is far lower than its potential. If 1800 marriage patterns obtained concurrently with 1980 mortality years married would increase from 27 to 45 whereas the actual 1980 figure is 35 years. If 1800 mortality were combined with 1980 marriage patterns 15 of the 1980 years married would be lost showing the preponderant effect of mortality. Compared to earlier cohorts contemporary cohorts have chosen to spend a smaller proportion of their adult years as a spouse as a parent of a young child and as a member of a conjugal family unit. Time spent with spouse and children declined from 56% of adult lifetime in 1800 to 43% in 1980. The proportion of lifetime spent as a parent of a child under 18 years has declined by half and that spent as a parent of a child under 5 years has declined by 2/3 as a result of reductions in family size preferences. More attention is urged to the changing time spent in various family statuses as a potential source of social change.