In the past decade, nearly half of Western European marriages resulted in divorce, causing an increase of single parent homes. Between the years of 1980 and 1990, over 41% of children in America, faced the divorce of their parents (Geuens, 2003). The once traditional family structure began to change to more of social diverse unions between the years of 1970-2010, from husband and wife to men and men or women and women. More blacks and whites married each other and atheists were said to have married Baptist. Although the number of unmarried women in their 20’s and 30’s rose, they had less children per household. The divorce rate began to drop during the Great Recession and the rate of new marriages were just as low (Angier, 2013). Provide two examples of nontraditional family structures.
Gay or lesbian couples that are raising children together and grandparents that raise their grandchildren are both examples of nontraditional family structures. According to the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, the number of gay couples with children has doubled in the past decade, and today well over 100,000 same-sex couples are raising children, estimates of at close to two million, or one out of 37 children under age 18 (Angier, 2013).
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Child custody is important for counselors to understand, which parent has legal decision making or could sign the consent. Children of divorced parents often receive less parenting as the single parent works more to overcompensate from the loss of the second income, causing the families to have less time together. Single parents more often consider the opinion of their child when it comes to holiday and vacation decisions, versus in a two-parent family, the parents make the decisions together, leaving less space for the opinion of any children (Geuens,