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SALT LAKE CITY — Americans are more accepting of families led by gay and lesbian partners than those of single mothers, a new Pew Research Center report says.
Results of a survey of 2,691 Americans indicated a third of Americans are comfortable with a wide variety of family situations; a third consider nontraditional arrangements to be damaging to the country's social fabric, while a third approve of some arrangements but not others.
- Rejectors 32%
- Accepters 31%
- Skeptics 37%
Bonnie L. Peters, a licensed clinical social worker and executive director of the Family Support Center, cautions against making broad judgments about parents.
"Everybody needs to be evaluated according to who they are. Anyone that is parenting a child needs to be looked at in terms of their ego strengths, in terms of how they cope, in terms of what their developmental history has been and what their outlook is about children. That applies to anybody," she said.
Unlike children raised in traditional nuclear families or by gay or lesbian partners, single parents face the challenges of parenting alone, she said.
"There's only one person that's going to be there to make the food. There's only going to be one person there to take the kids to the doctor," Peters said. "There are very creative single parents that have done what they needed to do to adjust for that."
Traditional nuclear families are less the norm as divorce rates have increased over time and familial arrangements have changed.
"The reality is that many families, in fact most families, are not that way today. I guess there is the dream (of the nuclear family), the hope that kids can be raised by the best of both worlds on both sides of the equation of their parents, but that's not necessarily the reality," Peters said.
The survey examined seven societal trends: more unmarried couples raising children; more gay and lesbian couples raising children; more single women having children without a male partner to help raise them; more people living together without getting married; more mothers of young children working outside the home; and more women not ever having children.
Respondents, who researchers categorized into "acceptors, skeptics or rejecters" were asked if the trends were good for society, bad for society or whether they made no difference.
"Religiously observant adults, older adults, white, married adults, Republicans and men generally express the greatest misgivings about the seven trends tested in the survey and tend to fall in the 'rejecter' group," the report said.
Ninety-nine percent of 'skeptics' said the increase in single motherhood is bad for society. Nine in 10 'acceptors' said the increase in single women having children has made no difference or is a good thing for society.
Interestingly, all groups were upbeat about the prospects for the family as an institution.
For more information, visit http://pewsocialtrends.org/2011/.
Written by Marjorie Cortez with contributions from Andrew Adams.
