‘90s FAMILY : Today’s Beaver Cleaver Has a Lot More on His Mind

With the American family in unprecedented flux, the ‘90s may be the toughest decade ever for children, according to a recent Rand study.

The yearlong study by the Santa Monica research institute distilled the results of 200 studies of the American family by major researchers, and matched their results with Census figures from 1960 and 1990.

The conclusion: June and Ward Cleaver are long gone, and the ‘90s Beaver Cleaver has a lot more to worry about than whether he’s gotten his brother, Wally, mad at him for some prank.

In a telephone interview from Harvard University, M. Omar Rahman, visiting professor and co-author of the comprehensive study, said the 1992 Murphy Brown debate over single parents piqued his curiosity, as well as that of Rand co-researcher Julie DaVanzo.

“A lot of people seemed to think that the American family was worse off today than it had been,” he said. “We wanted to know whether this was just nostalgia, or whether this was rooted in fact.

“We also wanted to know whether children from single-parent families are actually worse off than children from conventional, two-parent families.”

Their findings, Rahman admitted, surprised them.

They concluded that the traditional American family, while still alive, is no longer the single predominant social institution. Rather, it has become one of several common household models.

Because of this trend, and the aging of America, “It’s harder than ever to be a kid today,” Rahman said. “Above all, we need to redefine who we really are, and see how we can make society a more hospitable place for our children.”

Among the findings:

* Although the average American is better off today than in 1960, the average family’s median income has fallen substantially. This is because the number of households headed by women has tripled, with nearly half of those households existing at or below the poverty line and receiving federal help.

* The median annual income of a married couple with children under 18 is $43,000. The median annual income of a comparable household headed solely by the mother is $13,000. Fatherless families have increased to account for a quarter of all American families.

The middle ground prevalent in the ‘60s is disappearing, leaving more children growing up in either have or have-not homes.

* The majority of American children do not have Mom or Dad waiting at home after school. Even most infants 6 months and under don’t see Mom most of the day. Instead, 60% of their mothers work--three times the rate in 1960.

* Not only is Mom more likely to work, Dad, too, is increasingly absent. The American divorce rate also has tripled since 1960 to its current 60% level, and for many divorced dads, out of sight is often out of mind. Only half the country’s kids have seen their divorced dads even once in the last year. And only one in three divorced dads sends full child-support payments.

* Because of longer commutes and work weeks, even married dads are spending less time at home. The average parent in a two-parent household spends just seven hours a week with the child--a third of the time spent in 1960. Thus, even kids in two-parent families are increasingly growing up on their own.

* Today’s children are also more likely to grow up without siblings. The average family today has 1.8 children, compared with 2.2 children in 1960.

* One-quarter of today’s children are born out of wedlock--five times the rate in 1960.

* In 1960, children made up more than a third of the population, while the elderly constituted a mere 10%. Today, kids make up just a quarter of the population, while the elderly have shot up to 15%.

* The next-door neighbor is not only likely to be older, he is also twice as likely to be single; that’s because the rate of “non-family” households has doubled, from 15% in 1960 to 30% today. This is due largely to the rise in divorces, and in adults living together. In 1960, only 10% of American adults lived together as an experimental prelude to marriage; today, 50% do so.

* Should current trends continue, in 30 years the country will have more senior citizens than children. Thus, today’s kids, who have grown up largely on their own, will probably be strapped with ever higher taxes to help support the parents who neglected them, the authors concluded.

* Kids whose parents divorce will most likely see them split up within the marriage’s first seven years--before the kid is mature enough to deal with it. Half of all children will spend some time in a single-parent household, often before the parent remarries. A sixth of all children will at least partially grow up in families with one non-biological parent.

* On a more positive note, because people of color constitute a growing segment of the American population, children in the ‘90s are increasingly learning to deal with multiethnic groups. Whereas their ‘60s counterparts wore Native American headbands and grew long hair to dramatize their diversity, ‘90s children are more diverse to begin with, and are more likely to come from mixed backgrounds.

Rahman said he and DaVanzo were surprised by some of their findings, which fly in the face of popular myths.

The most popular current myth, he said, is that a typical single mother has more children today than in 1960. In reality, she will have about the same number of children. But because there are more single mothers, and because married couples are having fewer kids, single mothers appear relatively more prolific.

Rahman said many factors have joined together to help dissolve the traditional ‘60s family. Among them:

* Higher incomes for both men and women have made it easier for them to live independently of one another.

* Rising earnings by women have made it relatively more “costly” for them to stay at home with the kids.

* An escalating divorce rate has made prospective parenting a less-attractive option.

* Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Social Security and similar programs have reduced economic gains to marriage for the poor and the elderly.

* The sexual revolution has made it increasingly acceptable to bear children outside marriage. Thus, only 20% of Americans today believe that parents should stay together just for the children. In 1960, half of all Americans believed this.