recent Census Bureau report provided startling demographic
confirmation of these predictions. "Between 1970 and 1992, the number
of never-married adults nearly doubled, from 21 to 42 million.... The
number of currently divorced persons has quadrupled from 4.3 million
in 1970 to 16.3 million in 1992, representing 9 percent of all adults age
18 and over in 1992." ² There has been a concurrent rise in the number
of "unmarried-couple households" to "2.6 million in 1988, 1 million
more than in 1980." ³ The Census Bureau also reported a dramatic rise
in single-parent households: "Between 1970 and 1992, the proportion of
children living with two parents declined from 85 percent to 71 percent,
while the proportion living with one parent more than doubled from 12
percent to 27 percent." ⁴ Furthermore, "it has been estimated that about
one-quarter of children today will live with a stepparent by the time they
have reached 16 years of age." ⁵ Another radical shift in the composition
of American households has been in the dramatic increase in the number
of working mothers: "The proportion of all married-couple families with
both partners working increased from 37 percent in 1976 to 49 percent
in 1987"; 69 percent of single mothers participated in the paid labor
force in 1987. ⁶ The significance of these numbers was emphasized in a
1987 Congressional Report: "In 1955, 60 percent of the households in
the United States consisted of a working father, a housewife mother, and
two or more school-age children. In 1980, that family unit was only 11
percent and in 1985 it was 7 percent." ⁷ In short, the traditional nuclear
family is chosen by or possible for a dwindling minority of Americans.

The diversification of household arrangements in North America
and in most European countries during the last three decades has con-
tributed to a sense of uncertainty about the future of the family and has
fueled an increasingly contentious debate about what a family actually is
and how it should operate. Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh address
the significance of this debate in The Anti-Social Family:

The definition of "family" is in itself a politically contested one and the ve-
hemence with which academic and historical points of view are argued
bears tribute to this fact. . . . In a very precise sense "the family" is an
ideological construct and when we consider debates on "its place in soci-

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