Divorce and Family Instability

Abstract

The stability of the nuclear family in the United States has become more vulnerable over the past two decades, and most signs point to increasing instability during the next decade. The country’s divorce rate doubled between 1965 and 1978. In 1978 there were 4.8 million children under 18 years of age living with a divorced parent. Currently, over one million children experience the divorce of their parents each year. With no dramatic increase in the rate, it is estimated that 45 percent of the children born in 1977 will reside in a one-parent family sometime before 1995, when they will reach their 18th birthday [Everly 1977; Glick 1978, 1979; Hetherington 1981; Jellinek & Slovik 1981].