What’s the Typical American Household?

Published September 14, 1979. If asked to describe the typical American household today you’d probably say it is (1) A residence with a married husband and wife present; (2) Some children in the family; (3) Father as the sole bread-winner for the family; and (4) Mother as housewife who stays at home. Most typical American household?

Not so according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In a news release on March 8, 1977, the bureau indicated that this type of family comprised only 13 percent of the total households in America.

From the report on their research (see box at right) the following trends seem noteworthy:

1. The single parent family (90 percent of which are headed by women) is rapidly increasing and may proportionately be the fastest growing household type. 
2. A significant number of people are living alone. The Sept 4, 1978 edition of Newsweek indicated there are 52 million single adults in the United Sates, and if statistical projections are accurate, people who live alone may account for 25 percent of all U.S. households by 1985. 
3. A high percentage, more than 40 percent, of households have adults but no children present. 
4. The Walton Family portrayed on Television is highly atypical. Only 6 percent of the households in the United States have three generations living together in a common residence. 
5. The experimental families or couples living together unmarried, get a disproportionate amount of attention for comprising so small, about 4 percent, of the total types of households. 
6. There are now more families where both husband and wife earn wages (16 percent) than where the husband only earns wages (13 percent).
7. There are more families headed by single parents (16 percent) than there are nuclear families with husband only earnings wages (13 percent). 
8. The common belief that there are numerous families with neither father nor mother working is largely a myth. Only one percent of households are in this category.

Dr. Carlfred Broderick, marriage counselor and family life educator at the University of Southern California, has recently noted in his text “Marriage and the Family:”

“Marriages do not occur in a vacuum. Not only are they part of the vast stream of human history, affected by economic, political, and technological changes of every sort, but they are also part of a more immediate matrix of kin and friends. A careful survey of marriages past and present shows that there has never been a Standard American Family with respect to embeddedness in a locality or a kinship structure. As long as we have kept records there has been a variety of patterns to match the variety of Americana lifestyles and cultural patterns.”

From these and other statistics it appears that Americans are living in diverse patterns of households and family structures. Evidently the vast majority, over 90 percent, seek both marriage and parenthood at some point in their life. But not everyone marries and has children in their early 20s or even their 30’s.

It is also true that relatively few people spend their total adult life either married or with children. Women generally outlive their husbands by an average of seven years, and a husband and wife spend approximately 12-15 years together, depending on age and family size, after their children leave home. And at the present time about 40 percent off those who marry terminate their marriages by divorce even though the majority will eventually remarry. According to a 1976 census, some seven percent will never marry and ten percent of married couples will not have children because of physical inability or by choice.

How decisions in the United States are made about marriage, children and occupational preferences all are highly varied. In their various cultural and lifestyle patterns Americans have evidently thrived on unity without uniformity.

Yet marital relationships and parenthood appear to be most meaningful to most people however and whenever they are attained.