A new report reveals some good news about the comeback of the American family – the number of children living with two parents increased last year.
In a blog post titled The Resurgence of the Two-Parent Family for The Institute for Family Studies, research psychologist Nicholas Zill noted data from “the U.S. Census Bureau shows that in 2023, the proportion of children in two-parent families increased to 71%. The fraction in single-parent families decreased to 25%, while the proportion with neither birth parent declined slightly to under 4%.”
Two years ago, Zill discovered that the number of children living in a traditional two-parent family had stopped declining.
According to census data, the number of children under 18 living with two parents had fallen from 88% in 1960 to just over two-thirds in 2005.
By 2020, the proportion of children living with two parents gradually started to recover, Zill explained, reaching 70%.