For First Time, Unmarried Households Reign in U.S.

Traditional marriage is no longer the norm in the majority of U.S. households, according to recent census data.

AFP:

It is by no means dead, but for the first time, a new survey has shown that traditional marriage has ceased to be the preferred living arrangement in the majority of US households.

The shift, reported by the US Census Bureau in its 2005 American Community Survey, could herald a sea change in every facet of American life — from family law to national politics and its current emphasis on family values.

The findings, which were released in August but largely escaped public attention until now because of the large volume of data, indicated that marriage did not figure in nearly 55.8 million American family households, or 50.2 percent.

More than 14 million of them were headed by single women, another five million by single men, while 36.7 million belonged to a category described as “nonfamily households,” a term that experts said referred primarily to gay or heterosexual couples cohabiting out of formal wedlock.

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