We're changing — and the structure of the American family is too.
 | By Eleanor Barkhorn Editor at Large, Opinion |
American family structure has transformed over the past several decades. We're getting married at later ages, and fewer people are getting married at all. A recent Pew report found that roughly 40 percent of Americans ages 25 to 54 did not have a spouse or live-in partner in 2019 — up noticeably from 29 percent in 1990. |
Despite these changes, Kaitlyn Greenidge writes in an essay today, the narratives we tell about family and adulthood have remained stubbornly attached to the ideal of marriage. |
"Our culture may have changed to allow other ways for people to chart their lives," she writes, "but whole industries and institutions — banking, real estate, health care, insurance, advertising and most important, taxation — revolve around assumptions of marriage as the norm." |
Greenidge recently ended her own marriage, and she went in search of new narratives. She found inspiration in a memoir by Diane di Prima, a poet who became a single mother in the 1950s. |
Greenidge quotes di Prima: "There should, it seemed to me, be no quarrel between these two aims: to have a baby and to be a poet." Nevertheless, she continued, "A conflict held me fast." |
di Prima was willing to admit to the difficulties of her then-unconventional life, but to still insist that her independence was worthwhile. |
For Greenidge, di Prima's story — and her own, and all the other stories out there of hard-won independence — offer "a glimmer of a new world coming." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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