The Trendy Family

            Picture yourself in a sixth grade classroom with all of the wooden desks and the teacher writes the words, "Baby Boom," on the board. Your little mind tries to figure out what these words could possibly mean without it involving explosions. Thankfully, the Baby Boom is a nicknamed term describing an entire generation born between the 1950's and 60's because of the large population increase. However, there is a common misconception and mental picture of how many children were in each family. While most, myself included, pictured a minimum of five to ten children in each family, the average family only had three children.

           Now that we have some history under our belts, let's talk about the present. In the current world, there are certain trends among families and/or couples that raise some questions of how our world is doing today. Below is a list of ten current family trends and facts concerning the trends. 

1. Premarital Sex: Increasing

2. Births to American Women: Increasing (about 61% of women in their twenties give birth and are unmarried)

3. Living Alone: Increasing

4. Cohabitation: Increasing (Around 60-80% of couples cohabitate)

5. Delayed Marriage: (Average age of married females: 26.5 years, males: 28.5 years)

6. Extended Families No Longer Living Together: Increasing

7. Fewer Children: (Replacement birthrate is 2.13. Replacement birth is the amount of children each family would need to have in order to keep the population up as older generations are dying)

8. Household Size: Small families, big home

9. Employed Mothers: Increasing (Mothers of children six years and younger)

10. Divorce: Declining (73% married, 23% divorced)

            Find anything interesting? Anything that could be correlated to one another? One trail of correlation, for example, could be cohabitation, leading to premarital sex and births to American women (facts are from American data), which then can lead to delayed marriage, having few children, employed mothers, divorce, and then living alone after the child/children move out. This is the reality to many families, today. But why should we care? What do these trends have to do with you or me? Wouldn't it be nice to know that we are all in a similar boat?  No family is perfect, though we often want to be ideal to make sure all members are happy. We just need to be aware that all of our actions and choices have effect into the eternities. If you are in need of clarification of that particular statement, there is a link at the bottom of the page of a talk given by Thomas S. Monson. While family trends have changed over the last 60 years since the Baby Boom, we need not take the situation lightly. As the next generation who is to start a family, I ask that those who are planning to have children or already do to make sure that your family is taken care of and you are making the choices necessary to possibly change these trends for the better.

Until next time,

Toni Jo

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2004/10/choose-you-this-day?lang=eng