Human Growth and Development / Unit 12 HGD 1699 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Forming Families
The idea
Young adults form families in varied orders. By the late twenties about a quarter of unmarried adults cohabit, and more young adults now live with a partner than with a spouse. Median age at first marriage is about twenty-eight for women and thirty for men. By the end of young adulthood about a third of women and a quarter of men are married. Mean age at first birth rose to about twenty-seven and a half in twenty twenty-three, according to federal statistics.
In practice
A couple who cohabit for three years, marry at thirty, and have a first child at thirty-two, now a common sequence.
Where people slip
Same-sex and different-sex cohabiting couples are equally stable. Rural young adults marry earlier and see marriage as the natural next step; urban young adults delay it until other tasks are done. About sixteen percent of young adults do not want or expect children, for personal, medical, financial or environmental reasons.
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