Less Than Half of U.S. Teens in ‘Intact Families’

Less Than Half of U.S. Teens in ‘Intact Families’
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Only 45 percent of American teenagers have spent their childhood with an intact family, with both their birth mother and biological father legally married to each other since before or around the time of the teen’s birth, a new report discloses.

The other 55 percent live in single-parent families, stepfamilies, or with adoptive or foster parents, according to the report from the Family Research Council’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute.

“Increased rates of divorce and childbearing outside of marriage have turned growing up in a stable, two-parent family into an exception, rather than the rule, for young Americans,” states the report, titled “The U.S. Index of Belonging and Rejection.”

The report, based on U.S. Census Bureau figures, found a wide disparity in the percentage of intact families among different ethnic groups: 62 percent of Asian-American teens live with both married parents, as do 54 percent of white teens, 40 percent of Hispanic youth, 24 percent of American Indian and Alaskan Native teens, and just 17 percent of African-American youth.

In multiracial families, the figure is 41 percent.

There is also wide disparity in the states: 59 percent of teenagers in Utah live in married two-parent families, as do 58 percent in New Hampshire and 57 percent in Minnesota, compared to 32 percent in Mississippi and 34 percent in Louisiana. In the District of Columbia, the figure is 16 percent.

Dr. Pat Fagan, who produced the report, asserted that the “culture of rejection” affects the entire nation.

“Children in broken homes are more likely to be poor or welfare-dependent,” he said in a statement. “They enjoy less academic achievement and less social development, have more accidents and injuries, and have worse mental health and more behavioral problems.

“The culture of rejection burdens communities with higher levels of poverty, unemployment, welfare dependency, domestic abuse, child neglect, delinquency, crime and crime victimization, drug abuse, academic failure, and unmarried teen pregnancy and childbearing.”

As a result, he added, the United States “experiences increased costs in education, healthcare, mental health and the administration of justice.”

The report warns that America “will not be able to maintain its leadership role in the community of nations unless its parents take a leadership role in the communities they have built: their families.”