THE THIRD WAVE
Turning now to those with children, the breakdown of the nuclear family is even more sharply evidenced in the spectacular increase in single-parent families. So many divorces, breakups, and separations have occurred in recent years— mainly in nuclear families—that today a staggering one-in-seven American children is raised by a single parent, and the number is even higher—one in four—in urban areas.*
The increase in such households has brought a growing recognition that, despite severe problems, a one-parent household can, under certain circumstances, be better for the child than a nuclear household continually torn by bitter strife. Newspapers and organizations now serve single parents and are heightening their group consciousness and political clout.
Nor, once again, is the phenomenon purely American. In Britain today nearly one family in ten is headed by a single parent—nearly a sixth of them headed by men—and one-parent households form what New Society magazine calls “the fastest growing group in poverty.” A London-based organization, the National Council for One-Parent Families, has sprung up to champion their cause.
In Germany, a housing association in Cologne has constructed a special block of apartments for such families and provided them with day-time child care so the parents can work. And in Scandinavia a network of special welfare rights has grown up to support these families. The Swedes, for example, give one-parent households first crack at nursery and day-care facilities. In both Norway and Sweden, in fact, it is sometimes possible for a single-parent family to enjoy a higher standard of living than that of the typical nuclear family.
A challenging new form of family has arisen in the meantime that reflects the high rate of remarriage after divorce. In Future Shock I identified this as the “aggregate family,” in which two divorced couples with children remarry, bringing the children of both marriages (and the adults as well) into a new, expanded family form. It is now estimated that 25 percent of American children are, or will soon be, members of such family units. According to Davidyne Mayleas, such units, with their “poly-parents,” may be the mainstream family form of tomorrow. “We’re into economic polygamy,” says Mayleas—meaning that the two merged family units typically transfer money back and forth in the form of child support or other payments. The spread of this family form, she reports, has been accompanied by a rising incidence of sexual relations between parents and nonblood-related children.
* The total is also fed by out-of-wedlock births and by adoptions by single women and (increasingly) single men.
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