South Carolina Young Adults Count
A comprehensive report on the lives of South Carolinians ages 18 to 29
A comprehensive report on the lives of South Carolinians ages 18 to 29
Young adulthood is typically a period of transition from dependence on parents to independence as adults. However, many young adults continue to rely upon their parents financially as well as by still living at home. Others leave the nest physically, but remain dependent on their families for some financial support, childcare assistance, and other help. Many young adults, particularly by their upper 20s, marry, have children, and develop their own separate households. By their late twenties and early thirties, their lives have usually become more stable and financially self-sufficient. In addition to permanent employment, the family milestones of successful marriage, household formation, and parenting signal the attainment of maturity for many young adults.
Moving away from home to establish an independent residence is a typical part of the transition to adulthood. The paths and speed of transition to independent living arrangements vary among young adults. Some leave for college and the military. Others set up households, either for their own families or with roommates. Many remain or return home, some happily but others regretting the freedom lost by staying with the adults who raised them as children.
Age is the strongest predictor of leaving home. According to the U.S. Bureau of Census, 74% of 18-19 year olds in 1990 lived with parents, compared to 40% at ages 20-24 and 16% at ages 25-29. Girls tend to leave home younger than boys due to earlier marriage or cohabitation. However, increased affluence, later marriage, and changing values have resulted in approximately one quarter of unmarried 20-24 year olds living away from families, either by themselves or with roommates or partners.
Media reports suggest that the current generation of young adults is slow in establishing independence, but there is little empirical support for such a perception. This impression stems from the increase in the number of young adults most likely to live at home; i.e., the unmarried. In fact, even among unmarried 18-24 year olds, living at home has declined steadily since WWII from 80-85% in 1940 to 56% in 1990; for ages 25-29 the decline was from 80% to 40% over this same time period. The major historical change in home leaving is the extent to which it is now concentrated in the relatively narrow age range of 18-21.
Research demonstrates that early home leaving is characteristic both of middle-class youth who go off to college at age 18 or 19 and of youth moving to independence away from large or disadvantaged families, or from parents who have divorced or experienced marital turmoil. Young adults who leave home to attend college are disproportionately more likely to leave early. Even at age 18, 54% of college students have left compared to 24% of those not attending college. Those who leave home to marry have a lower probability (18%) of returning home than those who leave for independent living (37%), college (42%), cohabitation (47%), or the military (52%). Additional information is provided in Appendix A.
African-Americans are more likely than Whites to live at home in the young adult years. One study found that, among unmarried childless adults, 50% of African-Americans and 35% of Whites lived with family members in 1980. Among unmarried mothers ages 19-26 in 1984, 45% of African-American and 22% of White women lived with their own mothers. The low rate of home leaving for African-Americans is attributable largely to their lower likelihood of leaving home for marriage or for college.
Just because young people leave home does not necessarily mean they leave the support of their parents. Leaving home is often largely symbolic in terms of self-sufficiency. According to Graber and Dubas, "the living arrangements of most college students may be characterized as independent from parents in a social or environmental context, but may not be indicative of independent living, especially in terms of financial responsibilities." The transition out of the parental home has been found to have positive effects on the adjustment of young adults and has been linked to improvements in the parent-child relationship. However, White and Lacy have found that young adults who continue to receive support from parents into their early 20s achieve greater success in the long term. Thus, although many parents and children believe that 18 is the appropriate age for home leaving, research shows that they should plan on 22-24 years of coresidence or financial dependence.
According to the 1990 Census, 15% of 18 to 24 year-olds in South Carolina were in group quarters, primarily college dorms and military barracks, but also group homes and institutions. The other 85% of 18-24 year olds lived in households: 44% with their parents, 6% with other relatives, 28% in their own households, and 7% with friends and other non-relatives.
By their late twenties, most young adults were living independently. Only 4% of young adults ages 25-29 lived in group quarters. The remaining 96% lived in households: 16% with parents, 4% with other relatives, 7% with friends and other non-relatives, and 69% in their own households (see Appendix B). Despite the data reported by the Census, it is likely that considerably more than 7% of young adults were living with
roommates in an ever-changing fashion, leaving it to Mom or Dad to fill out the Census form. This dual existence, sometimes living independently with roommates and sometimes back home with parents, is not unusual for young adults, especially under age 25.
In the 1990 Census, 8% of 18-19 year-olds, 37% of 20-24 year olds, 69% of 25-29 year olds, and 81% of 30-34 year olds were the heads of their own families or spouses. Of those families headed by young adults, there was important variation in circumstances: two-thirds of the 43,640 families headed by 15-24 year-olds were married couples; 53% of these couples had children. In contrast, three-fourths of the 205,660 families headed by 25-34 year-olds were married couples, and 74% of these couples had children.
Significant numbers of young adult-headed families were female householders who had no husband present. In 1990, 51% of African-American and Other and 10% of White families headed by 15-24 year olds were single females raising children; 41% of African-American and Other and 10% of White families headed by 25-34 year olds were women raising children with no husband present.
S.C. Families Headed by Young Adults in 2000
| Total Householders | White Householders | African American Householders | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Age 15-24 |
Age 25-34 |
Age 15-24 |
Age 25-34 |
Age 15-24 |
Age 25-34 |
|
| Married couple family | 49% | 69% | 67% | 81% | 21% | 41% |
| Male householder, no wife present | 13% | 7% | 13% | 6% | 11% | 8% |
| Female householder, no husband present | 38% | 24% | 20% | 13% | 68% | 50% |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Census 2000. SF4, Table PCT 30.
Across the United States and in South Carolina, there has been a decline in marriage for several decades. Generally for the middle class this has meant postponement of family formation and extension of the phase of life as youth, moving back and forth between home and college or roommates and exploring marriage possibilities through cohabitation. For lower income persons, the postponement of marriage has generally been longer or permanent. Furthermore, many economically stressed, unmarried young adults abandoned cultural norms regarding sex and childbearing, leaving nature to take its course. Many young women bear children and raise them with little or no help from the fathers. Increasingly, this occurs in cohabitational relationships which do not result in marriage despite the birth of a child. Eventually many of the unmarried mothers and fathers do marry, but usually not with their original partners.
The precipitous decline over the past three decades in the institution of marriage has alarmed many social critics:
The suddenness with which marriage has been overthrown is breathtaking. Just 14 percent of white women who married in the forties eventually divorced. A single generation later, almost 50 percent of those married in the late sixties and early seventies have already divorced. This explosion in divorce was followed in quick succession by an unexpected surge in out-of-wedlock births. Between 1970 and 1992, the proportion of babies outside of marriage leaped from 11 percent to 30 percent. Even since 1970, the marriage rate has fallen almost 30 percent, while the divorce rate has jumped nearly another 40 percent. Cohabitation, the great historic competitor to marriage, increased six fold. By 1994, 40 percent of never-married women in their thirties had had an illegitimate child. (Gallager, p. 5)
Academic researchers tend to describe the same critical phenomena with more detachment:
During the 1950s the men and women born and raised during the depression and the war years came of age. They married sooner than any other cohorts who have reached adulthood in the twentieth century before or since. About three-fourths of the women born in 1930 to 1934 were married by age twenty-three; in contrast, women born twenty years earlier or later were two or three years older before three-fourths of them were married. Moreover, the long-term rise in divorce affected those who came of age in the 1950s less than some other cohorts. In addition, more of the women in the paternal generation of the 1950s had two or more children than did the women in either their parents' or their children's generations. The distinctive family patterns of the young adults of the 1950s suggest that when we look for explanations of the postwar trends, we should examine the experience of growing up in the depression and war years.
As for the children of the 1950s - who were born during the baby boom and who reached adulthood in the 1960s and 1970s - they, too, have been distinctive in some respects. To be sure, their pattern of marrying has been more like the typical twentieth-century pattern than was the case for their parents' generation. But in the 1980s, women's average age at marriage rose beyond the twentieth century high. And since 1970 there has been a great increase in cohabitation prior to and after marriages. These recent changes suggest that the place of the institution of marriage in American society may be changing.
Moreover, the lifetime levels of divorce for persons who married in the 1960s and 1970s will increase beyond what we would expect from the long term trend. Rates in the 1980s, although stable, still imply that about half of all marriages begun in the mid 1970s will end in divorce or separation. Most of those who divorce will live with a partner and eventually marry, creating an unprecedented number of unions in which one partner or both has been previously married. (Cherlin, pp. 29-30).
While middle class marriage rates dropped precipitously, the comparable decline among lower income persons resulted in the near disappearance of marriage as an established cultural presence for most young adults in impoverished communities.
Marriage Rates of 20-29 Year Old U.S. Civilian Males by Earnings
Source: Johnson et al., 1992, p. 20.
Andrew Sum, Neeta Fogg, and Neal Fogg in Out-of-School, Out-of-Luck? present data pointing to economic causes of the decline in marriage, especially among African-American young adults under age 30.
In 1973, over 60 percent of young adult men earned enough in the labor market by themselves to theoretically raise a family of four out of poverty. The fraction of young men able to achieve such earnings fell moderately over the remainder of the 1970s and then more markedly during the 1980s and early 1990s. By 1995, the fraction of young men with annual earnings above the four person poverty line had fallen to 44 percent...In 1995, only one-third of young Black and Hispanic men earned enough to raise a family of four out of poverty. Only one-fourth of those young men who did not obtain a high school diploma (or a GED) earned more than the four-person poverty line in 1995, and only one-half of those with a high school diploma were able to do so. In contrast, approximately 70 percent of those with 16 or more years of schooling had annual earnings high enough to raise a family of four out of poverty. (Sum et al., 1997, pp. 96-97. See also pp. 56-57 and 98-99 in Appendix C.)
Regarding the dramatic growth in poor, single-parent families, William Julius Wilson writes:
In the inner-city ghetto community, not only have the norms in support of husband-wife families and against out-of-wedlock births become weaker as a result of the general trend in society, they have also gradually disintegrated because of worsening economic conditions in the inner city, including the sharp rise in joblessness and declining real incomes. The weakening of social sanctions has had the most severe impact on the jobless, but it has also affected many who are employed, especially those whose jobs are not very secure or stable and/or those who are experiencing declining real incomes. (Wilson, 1996, pp. 94-97).
Ethnographic data reveal that both inner-city black males and females believe that since most marriages will eventually break up and since marriages no longer represent meaningful relationships, it is better to avoid the entanglements of wedlock altogether. For many single mothers in the inner city, nonmarriage makes more sense as a family formation strategy than does marriage. Single mothers who perceive the fathers of their children as unreliable or as having limited financial means will often - rationally - choose single parenthood. From the point of view of day-to-day survival, single parenthood reduces the emotional burden that often accompanies the sharing of both living arrangements and limited resources. Men and women are extremely suspicious of each other, and their concerns range from the degree of financial commitment to fidelity. For all these reasons, they often state they do not want to get married until they are sure it is going to work out. (Wilson, 1996, pp. 104)
Although Wilson writes about minority groups living in the inner city, he is careful to emphasize that the weakening of marriage is a generalized cultural trend in American society.
Changing patterns of family formation are not limited to the inner-city black community...They are part of a current societal trend. The commitment to traditional husband-wife families and the stigma associated with out-of-wedlock births, separation, and divorce have waned significantly in the United States. The labor market conditions which sustained the 'male bread-winner' family have all but vanished. This has gradually led to the creation of a new set of orientations that places less value on marriage and rejects the dominance of men as a standard for a successful husband-wife family. (Wilson, 1996, pp. 104-105)
Which are most important in causing the precipitous decline in marriage rates: economic or cultural factors? While Wilson finesses the question by suggesting accurately that both are important, this seems to beg the question of relative importance. Sum and Fogg have estimated that 25-30% of the decline over past decades can be explained directly by reductions in the annual earnings of young men with no post-secondary schooling; however, their data show a close relationship between income and marriage at any single point in time. So the answer truly is both, with cultural influences appearing to be somewhat stronger than even the powerful loss of economic opportunity.
One of the most dramatic changes since 1970 affecting young adults in South Carolina has been the substantial decline in the percent of adults who are married. When calculated as the annual percentage of all young adults ages 20-29 who get married, marriage rates have declined in South Carolina for more than two decades from 13% in 1970 to 7% in 1997. The number of young adults ages 20-29 getting married in 1970 was 53,124, in 1980 was 55,227, and in 1997 was 39,629.
As shown in the graphs on the following page, the decline in marriage rates has occurred for all age, sex, and race groups among young adults. Each age group of young adult males experienced a decline in the percentage married of nearly 20% or more. There was a 27-31% drop in the married proportion of White males 25-29 and African-American males 25-34, causing a decline in the number of husbands and fathers at home with their children. Young adult females had similar declines in marriage, affecting almost 30% of White females 20-24 and 30% of African-American females 20-24 and 25-29.
Male Marriage Rates
Female Marriage Rates
Source: 1970-1990 U.S. Censuses.
These precipitous decreases are even more astounding when presented in terms of the very low rates to which they fell: for example, among 20-24 year old White women the rate fell from 71% in 1970 to 41% in 1990, and from 48% to 19% among 20-24 year old African-American women. White male marriage rates fell from 46% to 27% of 20-24 year olds. Among African-American men, the rate declined for ages 25-29 from 68% to 38% and for ages 20-24 from 36% to 14%.
These numbers have greater meaning when one considers that among African-American 25-29 year olds, 62% of men and 63% of women were not married; among White 25-29 year olds, 44% of men and 32% of women were not married. Among African-Americans, even in their early 30s half of both men and women were not married, while for those ages 35-44, 31% of men and 38% of women were not married. Sociologist Lynn White summarizes the consequences: "The bottom line is that more women have jobs than husbands, not only at ages 20-24, but also at ages 25-29, and 30-34. More importantly, more women have children than husbands." These low marriage rates have enormous implications for parenting children. Middle class families are having fewer children and at later ages. More lower income families are bearing and raising children outside marriage.
Today's young adults throughout the United States have been heavily exposed to the influence of divorce. Approximately one-third of young adults experienced the divorce of their parents, and virtually all have observed the impact on close acquaintances. Furthermore, young adults are at serious risk for divorce in their own marriages. Numerous scholars have described the rapid growth in divorce since the mid-1960s:
Divorce rates in the United States began to rise shortly after the Civil War and continued on a steady upward course for more than a century. Roughly 5% of marriages ended in divorce just after the Civil War compared with an estimated 36% in 1964. Thus, the pattern of prevalent divorce was firmly in place in this country even before the divorce revolution of the 1960s.
Nonetheless, there was a sharp increase in the incidence of divorce from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s. During a span of a decade and a half, divorce rates for married women more than doubled (from 10.6 per 1,000 in 1965 to 22.8 in 1979), pushing the risk of divorce much higher for all marriage cohorts, especially those wed after the mid-1960s. Some researchers speculated that a majority of all marriages contracted in the 1970s and after would end, especially when both informal separations and formal divorces were counted. Other researchers reached more conservative estimates but still projected that more than two in every five marriages would end in divorce when divorce rates reached their peaks in the middle 1970s.
Divorce rates began to level off in the late 1970s and actually declined by about 10% during the 1980s...Most demographers think that divorce is not likely to continue its upward pattern, at least in the near term. There are several demographic explanations for the failure of divorce rates to increase after the 1970s which do not necessarily imply that Americans today are becoming more committed to staying married than they were in the previous two decades.(Furstenberg, pp. 30-31)
According to Frank Furstenberg, the small decline in divorce since 1980 "does not indicate a higher propensity toward marital stability. Instead the composition of those marrying has changed in ways that only make it appear that marriages are becoming more stable." The probable causes are the delay in the age of marriage which reduces the high number of divorces typically occurring among young persons; fewer vulnerable marriages created as a result of premarital pregnancies; and the increase in cohabitation which avoids some marriages which might have ended in divorce.
There has been much debate regarding the causes of the increase in divorce since the 1950s and the 1960s. Andrew Cherlin, in his important book Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, concluded:
I think that increased labor force participation of young married women ultimately will be seen as the most important stimulus to the initial rise in age at marriage and in divorce after 1960...This rising participation accounted for at least part of the change, but it is impossible as yet to say precisely how large or small a part. It may be...that the less favorable income position of young men accounted for another part, and improved contraception may have also contributed. It is not possible to state definitively which of the effects was more important; but together they take us a long way toward accounting for the trends in marital formation and dissolution in the 1960s and 1970s. (Cherlin, pp. 56-57); (see also Appendix D)
Others have attributed the enormous increase in divorces to cultural values favoring self-gratification over the well-being of the family or to legal influences, especially no fault divorce laws. It is almost certain that all of these factors have played a role in causing the growth of divorces, but the relative strength of the individual causal factors remains the focus of debate and research.
Divorce is usually followed by remarriage. Eventually two-thirds of recently divorced women and three-fourths of divorced men will remarry, except among African-Americans of whom only 32% of women and 55% of men remarry within ten years. During the 1970s and the 1980s the remarriage rate fell from three-fourths of divorced women and four-fifths of divorced men because so many divorced persons chose cohabitation to explore the viability of their relationships. Approximately 60% of those that remarried have cohabited. Unfortunately, remarriages are subject to a 37% rate of divorce within ten years as compared with 30% for first marriages. The eventual divorce rate for remarriage is projected to be near 60%. The percentage of persons divorcing twice has grown from 2% of all adults in the early 1900s to 16% in recent years.
Annual divorce rates among 20-29 year olds in South Carolina increased from 1.3% in 1970 to 2.0% in 1980, then began to decline to 1.8% in 1990, and continued down to 1.4% in 1997. The number of young adults getting divorced in 1970 was 5,198, grew to 11,620 in 1980, and then fell to 7,851 in 1997. The decline in divorces among 20-29 year olds during the 1990s is explained by the smaller size of the young adult population once the Baby Boomers entered their thirties and by the ever-decreasing number of young adults who get married and thus could possibly divorce. Since the pool of married young adults under the age of twenty five has dropped by one half, the actual percentage of married young adults who divorce has declined little since 1980 but is significantly higher than in 1970. During 1997, 4,569 wives and 3,461 husbands under age 30 divorced, constituting 29% and 22% of all divorces in South Carolina. It appears that young adults in South Carolina have responded to the divorce revolution primarily by postponing marriage and choosing the substitute relationship of cohabitation.
Over the last two decades, cohabitation has grown from rare behavior to the majority experience in cohorts of marriageable age. People now talk about cohabiting rather than "living in sin". Cohabitation now has become a common practice, often as a trial phase to determine the viability of a relationship preliminary to marriage.
The large increases in the proportion of never married among persons in their early twenties is commonly interpreted to mean that young people are staying single longer. Because of cohabitation, however, being unmarried is not synonymous with being single. Young people are setting up housekeeping with partners of the opposite sex at almost as early an age as they did before marriage rates declined. Three-quarters of the decline in the proportion of women married for the first time by age 25 was offset by increased cohabitation. Nor does the decline in remarriage mean that separated and divorced persons are staying single longer. All of the decline in the proportion of separated and divorced persons who remarried within five years was offset by increased cohabitation.
Thus, the picture that is emerging is that cohabitation is very much a family status, but one in which levels of certainty about the relationship are lower than marriage. This is partially a result of the use of cohabitation as a testing ground for marriage. (Bumpass, Sweet, and Cherlin, pp. 924-926.)
Almost half of all marriages were preceded by cohabitation when the first National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) was conducted in 1989. Researchers project that the proportion must be higher by now. The NSFH found that 45% of women aged 25-34 had ever cohabited, most often before their first marriage. The proportion of those who cohabited did not vary substantially by race or ethnicity.
Cohabitation resembles marriage in many ways, but without the long-term commitment and investment. Cohabitation involves an intimate relationship, the sharing of living space, at least some intermingling of personal finances, and a time-intensive relationship with a partner. Cohabiting couples report equal levels of satisfaction regarding the division of household labor and childcare, and are similar to married couples in their level of agreement about most day-to-day issues. Cohabiting couples are less likely to bear children than married couples.
About half of all cohabiting relationships end within one and a half years through marriage or break-up. Ninety percent end within 5 years. When cohabitations end, 60% result in marriage and 40% in break-up. This suggests that cohabitation is not a lifelong alternative to marriage, but primarily a stage that precedes marriage. According to Andrew Cherlin, "These young adults appear to be cohabiting as a way of finding a compatible partner, whom they often marry." Children growing up with a single-parent or in households experiencing conflict and divorce are more likely as adults to view cohabitation as a low risk way to explore their marriage prospects. Since an ever-increasing majority of children has experienced single-parent families and divorce, cohabitation is likely to continue its growth in popularity. Appendix E presents the influence of education and college enrollment on cohabitation.
More than one-third of births are to unmarried mothers, but one-quarter of these unmarried mothers are cohabiting with the children's fathers at the time of birth. Furthermore, the number of single-parent households is actually much lower than initially assumed because many surveys ignore cohabiting unmarried couples. Bumpass, Raley, and Sweet argue that the definition of step families should be expanded to include cohabitation with a child of only one partner. Cohabiting couples would increase current step families by one third. In the late 1980s, forty percent of cohabiting couples had children present.
Most babies are born to young adults, who are at an age when women face difficult decisions regarding having children and making a home, pursuing career opportunities, or furthering their education. In 1997, 33,666 babies were born to young mothers ages 18 years to 29 years; 63% of White births and 67% of African-American and Other births were to mothers ages 18-29.
Births to Mothers in S.C. During 1997
| Under 18 | 18-19 | 20-24 | 25-29 | 30-34 | 35 + | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White | 4% | 8% | 25% | 30% | 22% | 11% | 100% |
| Afr. American & Other | 10% | 13% | 32% | 22% | 14% | 8% | 100% |
Source: Department of Health and Environmental Control Division of Biostatistics.
In 1997, 37% of all young women between the ages of 20 and 29 years who gave birth were unmarried: 20% of Whites and 68% of African-Americans and Others. Of all births to unmarried women, 35% occurred before age 20, 72% before age 25, and 88% before age 30.
Births to Unmarried Mothers in S.C. during 1997
| Under 18 | 18-19 | 20-24 | 25-29 | 30-34 | 35-39 | 40+ | Total(%) | Total(Num) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 15% | 19% | 37% | 17% | 8% | 3% | 1% | 100% | 6,849 |
| Afr. Amer.&Other | 15% | 19% | 38% | 17% | 8% | 3% | 1% | 100% | 13,002 |
| White | 16% | 21% | 36% | 16% | 7% | 3% | 1% | 100% | 6,849 |
| Ratio AA&O / W | 1.7 | 1.7 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 1.9 | 2.1 | NA | 1.9 |
Note: Ratio equals number of African American births divided by the number of White births.
Source: Department of Health and Environmental Control Division of Biostatistics.
The average maternal age at the time of the birth of her first child during 1997 was 25.2 years for White mothers and 22.2 years for African-American and Other mothers. According to the 1990 Census, among White women in South Carolina the percentage of 2-24 year olds who had ever given birth was 31%; of 25-29 year olds, 59%; of 30-34 year olds, 76%; and of 35-44 year olds, 85%. Among African-American and Other women, 49% of 20-24 year olds had given birth, 71% of 25-29 year olds, 82% of 30-34 year olds, and 89% of 35-44 year olds.
The average number of children of 30-34 year old White women giving birth in 1995-97 was 2.1, and 2.5 for those 35 and older. For African-American and Other mothers, the average number of children was 2.5 for those 30-34 years old and 2.9 for those 35 and older.
Looking at all women surveyed in the 1990 Census, including both those who had children and those who had none, the average number of children ever born to White women was 1.3 for ages 25-34, and 1.9 for ages 35-44. The average number of children ever born to African-American mothers was 1.7 by ages 25-34 and 2.5 by ages 35-44. Also, of White women, 33% of ages 25-34 and 15% of ages 35-44 had not had any children; of African-American women, 23% of ages 25-34 and 12% of ages 35-44 had not had children.
Over the past several decades birth rates have fallen precipitously (see Appendix F). For women in the prime childbearing ages 15-39, the average number of children ever born fell by 36% from 1.73 in 1960 to 1.10 in 1990: from 1.57 to 0.99 for Whites, and from 2.05 to 1.32 for African-Americans. For 30-34 year olds whose childbearing is almost complete, the average number of children ever born fell by 40% from 2.77 in 1960 to 1.66 in 1990: from 2.39 to 1.51 for Whites and from 3.64 to 1.99 for African-Americans. Over the thirty year period, the result is an average reduction of one child per woman, partly because more women have had no children but primarily because most families want fewer children. African-Americans still have higher fertility rates, but their rates have declined more substantially in comparison with White women. By 1990, African-American women were each having approximately 0.5 more children than Whites, as compared with 1 to 1.5 more three decades earlier.
Children Ever Born: 1960, 1990
| Mothers Ages 18-19 | Mothers Ages 20-24 | Mothers Ages 25-29 | Mothers Ages 30-34 | Mothers Ages 35-39 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| W | AA&O | W | AA&O | W | AA&O | W | AA&O | W | AA&O | |
| 1960 | 0.31 | 0.3 | 1.05 | 1.35 | 1.94 | 2.72 | 2.39 | 3.64 | 2.53 | 3.95 |
| 1990 | 0.13 | 0.28 | 0.43 | 0.85 | 1.01 | 1.47 | 1.51 | 1.99 | 1.76 | 2.28 |
| 1960-1990 (Reduction) |
0.18 | 0.02 | 0.62 | 0.5 | 0.93 | 1.25 | 0.88 | 1.65 | 0.77 | 1.67 |
Source: 1990 U.S. Census.
Data from the 1990 Census for South Carolina shows the number of related children in families according to the age of the head of the household. Since the head of household is sometimes the oldest member of the house, the data could make the parents appear somewhat older on average than the mothers are. This data includes all related children living in the household, sometimes including nieces, nephews, and grandchildren.
Children in Young Adult Families
| Under 25 | Under 30 | Under 35 | Under 40 | All Ages | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-schoolers < 6 | 11% | 36% | 62% | 79% | 100% |
| School age 6-17 | 1% | 8% | 28% | 55% | 100% |
| All children < 18 | 5% | 18% | 40% | 63% | 100% |
Source: 1990 U.S. Census.
Young adults are more likely to be parents of preschoolers than of school age children. Over one-third (36%) of
preschoolers are in families with a head of household under the age of 30 and three-fifths (62%) with a household head under 35. By comparison, only 8% of school age children are in families with a head of household under 30 and only 28% with a household head under 35. Unmarried single-parents generally have children at a younger age and are more likely to have children during their young adult years, especially preschoolers.
Significant numbers of families experience intermittent but serious conflict, and some are troubled by protracted damaging conflict, including violence. Unresolved conflict has been found to be a major cause of emotional and behavioral problems among children as well as one of the primary reasons for divorce. During 1997, law enforcement officials recorded 35,652 domestic assaults within families in South Carolina. These domestic assaults comprised 32% of all assaults, both simple and aggravated. Overall, 58% of domestic assaults involved spouse abuse, which constituted 18% of all assaults. Approximately one third of domestic assaults are carried out by young adults ages 18-29. Since most family violence is not reported, the true incidence of family disruption is much more widespread than even the large number of reported cases would indicate.
In FY98 there were 9,009 children involved in indicated child abuse and neglect cases in S.C. While only one-quarter of these cases occurred in two-parent families, over two-fifths were in single-parent families and the remainder were in families with step-parents or relatives, and other living situations. Unfortunately, no data is available regarding the age of the parents or the perpetrators. Thirty percent of the abused and neglected children were under age 5 and sixty percent under age 10.
Abuse and Neglect
| Num. Abused or Neglected by Age | Type of Family | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single-Parent Families | Two-Parent Families | Blended (Step-parent) | Other Relatives | Other | |
| Total | 3,723 | 2,400 | 427 | 767 | 1,689 |
| Ages 0-4 | 1,092 | 740 | 83 | 280 | 493 |
| Ages 5-9 | 1,163 | 746 | 134 | 194 | 485 |
| Ages 10-14 | 949 | 586 | 132 | 174 | 452 |
| Ages 15-19 | 519 | 328 | 78 | 119 | 259 |
Source: S.C. Department of Social Services, FY98.
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