I found it... the article from CNN..., but now from the Trib...

[Guest guest]

Guess it's from the associated press...

 

> Survey: ‘Traditional’ families slipping away

>

> By Martha Irvine

> The Associated Press

>

> CHICAGO (AP) -- A new survey finds only about a quarter of U.S. households

> contain married couples with children -- a trend that may mean more than

> half of the nation's children won't be living with both parents after the

> turn of the century.

>

> The General Social Survey, conducted periodically by the University of

> Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, found only 26 percent of

> households have married couples and kids, compared with 45 percent in the

> early 1970s.

>

> The survey, released today, paints an even starker picture of marriage in

> the 1990s than U.S. Census officials, who found that married couples with

> children younger than 18 fell from 50 percent in 1970 to an estimated 36

> percent of all families in 1997.

>

> Tom W. Smith, director of the survey, said if current trends continue,

> most households won't even contain children -- largely a testament to the

> increasing number of people waiting to have children and the ever-growing

> number of baby boomers becoming "empty nesters."

>

> Surveyors found that Americans seem to be accepting of what Smith called

> the "modern family."

>

> For example, 67 percent of Americans surveyed last year disagreed that

> parents ought to stay together just because they have children. That

> question was not asked in previous surveys, Smith said.

>

> Americans are becoming more accepting of divorce -- due in part to the

> fact that many people who are starting families may be products of divorce

> themselves, said Stephen Kraus, a Connecticut-based market researcher.

>

> "It's very much a sense of tolerance. People can do what they want," says

> Kraus of Yankelovich Partners, a market research and consulting firm that

> tracks attitudes about family, among other things.

>

> One researcher says that's because Americans continue to see marriage as

> an ideal -- even if they don't think it's always best to get or remain

> married.

>

> "We are a very marriage-happy society. There's a basic ideology that

> building a family means stability," says Bahira Sherif, a professor of

> individual and family studies at the University of Delaware.

>

> What's missing, she says, are the tools -- and role models -- young people

> need to teach them how marriage works. That leads her to believe that

> divorce rates won't be dropping anytime soon.

>

> In conducting the survey, researchers interviewed 2,832 Americans age 18

> and older between February and May of last year.

>

> The 1998 survey also found that:

>

> Fifty-six percent of adults were married, compared with nearly

> three-quarters in 1972, when the survey was first taken.

> Fifty-one percent of children lived in a household with their two original

> parents, compared with 73 percent in 1972.

> The percentage of households made up of unmarried people with no children

> more than doubled to 32 percent last year, compared with figures from

> 1972.

> And the percentage of children living with single parents rose to 18.2

> percent, compared with 4.7 percent in 1972.

>

> Copyright 1999 The Associated Press