European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 30, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                By Mary Lee. Cox news services s. Page 14 the stars and stripes Hen Nick Buonamia married 10 ago at age 21, he assumed he would have the kind of family he and his Friend grew up in mom at Home with the children dad at work everyone Hurt toward happily Ever after. I just expected to get married to finish Collene a Jyh grab the world by the horns he said. The Buonamia of Atlanta did t make it. They divorced after three children one House in the suburb and 51/2 years of marriage. Expecting to be a typical 1950s family they ended up being typical of the 198 today the Ideal family of the 50s accounts for slightly More than 8 percent of american families according to the Bureau of labor statistics. Other tykes two income single Parent Ste families or childless couples make up the majority. I think it s pretty obvious that what we perceive a the nuclear family is breaking up said Howard hav Tihe an economist with the Bureau of labor statistics. There Are new family types new living  the entire Buonamia clan in fact reflects the diversity of the american family. Of his three Brothers one has been married for nine years and is. Childless another has divorced twice and is in his third marriage. J Buonamia himself remarried three years ago and has a daughter. Only the youngest brother who has beef married to the same woman for six years and has two children comes close to having what Many consider to be a traditional family. Even his parents divorced after 27 years of marriage. J the stuff of Nick Buonamia s dream has Long dominated the Way americans think about families rut some demographers contend it s an image that s outlived the world to which it applied. This season television has discovered that fact and will premiere a number of shows in which singles or stepparents struggle to Cope. Even Roseanne the one new shove about a still United family has a working mom who 1 grouse about the Lack of time and Money. Roseanne s nest is a far cry from the so called traditional family Many grew up in after world War ii. That family Structure was an aberration believes or. Martha Farnsworth Riche senior editor for american demographics Magazine. After the War All of our competitor nations were devastated she said. Up until the 1960s, we had an unnatural competitive advantage and were making in terms of real earnings much More than we should have been. For the one and Only time in our history an Ordinary Guy with a High school degree could afford to have a non working  there is a lot of speculation about the possibility of a return to that postwar stereotype As the baby Boom generation mellows into Middle age. Riche believes we May return to those traditional values but not that family form. Times have changed too much. Cindy Buonamia Nick s wife is a head nurse at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta where she has worked for nine years. Upon the arrival of their daughter Grace Early this year mrs. Buonamia 34, became one of a soaring number of working mothers a Force that plays a major role in shaping today s families and the Way they operate. One of the results is that these Days housework is no longer a top priority in Many Busy lives. Women have always worked but in the past their labor usually was integrated with family. They were pressed into service during both world wars but most went Back to the Hearth in peacetime. In the 60s, however a whole generation of women entered the work Force and has stayed there forced by necessity or encouraged by the women s movement in 1940, 8.6 percent of mothers with children under 18 were part of the work Force. By 1987, the . Labor department reported that that figure had increased to 64.7 percent and that 50 percent of women with children younger than 1 year old work. In a Span of two decades we be gone from a world in which most Young kids had mothers outside the work Force to where the majority of kids have mothers in the work Force said or. Peter Morrison director of the Rand corp s population research Center. It s fundamentally altered the time dimension of  in the Days of the extended family the child of working parents might have been cared for by an older sister or grandmother. But families Are smaller now and greater mobility has scattered family members across the country making it More Likely children will be cared single Parent families Are increasing they re More than one fourth of All families with children. Not 3 Saleswoman shows family a pickup truck in Michigan. Nearly 65 percent of the nation s mothers work. For by an institution. Cindy Buonamia s parents for instance live 150 Miles away and she has no family in Atlanta. So 8-month-old Grace spends part of her Day in the child care Center sponsored by Emory University. The phenomenon of women in the workplace raises questions at the other end of. The family spectrum As Well. Who will care for elderly family members in need the traditional homemaker is the one who provided Long term care said Morrison. If you wind ahead into the future this woman will have a full time  of women in their 40s, he said Only about half started out their adult lives in the work Force compared with 72 percent to 73 percent of women in their 20s. These mature women. Are being replaced by Young women who have a totally different concept of what they re going to do with their lives Morrison said. It s Clear the vast majority Are going to live their lives vis a vis paid employment very much the Way men do. In 50 years they re going to be looking Back at today s Middle aged women As kind of an antique and won t be Able to relate to How they could have been that Way staying  As the family has been altered by a working Mother and father it also has been transformed by changing patterns of marriage and childbearing the Cornerstones of family life. Consider. Men and women marry later. They postpone marriage because of economic uncertainty the desire to continue education and to establish a career. Marriage also is postponed because living together is now acceptable. The median age for first marriage for women is 23.6 years the same As 1987, which was the highest on record. For men first marriage occurs at 25.9 years. Families Are smaller. The typical family consists of 3.17 persons the lowest Ever. Several factors have contributed to smaller families including a High divorce rate a greater number of babies born to single parents and a declining birthrate. At the Peak of the baby Boom in 1957, the average number of children per woman was 3.7 it declined to 1.8 children in 1975 and has remained at about that level. Families without children outnumber families with children. The number of families without children at Home surpassed those with children in 1985 for the first time. The marriage rate is declining. Until now 95 percent of almost every generation married. But it looks like for this generation of ours now in their 30s, that it will be Down to 90 percent Riche said. Fewer households Are made up of families. By census definition a household is one or More persons occupying a housing unit. A family includes at least two people related through birth adoption or marriage. Of the 91.1 million households in the United states As of March 71.5 percent were families. Forty years ago 90.3 percent of All households were families. Marriages continue to dissolve at High rates. Much is said about the divorce rate and the fact that it went the Ideal family accounts for less than 8 percent of american families today. Down in 1980 and then levelled off in the last few years. What is often ignored is that it levelled off at an incredibly High rate 50 percent of All first marriages and 60 percent of All second marriages end in divorce. In addition to the High rate of divorce said Morrison there is also the disturbing pattern of divorce. Younger  not Only divorce More readily but do so earlier in their marriages he said. The prospects of remarriage Are High at younger Ages and marriage divorce then remarriage Are occurring for a lot of people before they Are out of their 30s." there is a greater proportion of Ste families. It s difficult to calculate the number of Ste families in this country because the census has not tracked them Over the years. But because of dramatic increases in divorce and remarriage one third of All marriages Are remarriage the 1990 census will adopt a new family member classification that distinguishes a natural born or adopted child from a stepchild. Andrew Cherlin a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who has studied Ste families estimates that in 1980, there were 2.3 million such families in America. He defines a Ste family As one in which there is a stepchild under the age of 18 living in the Home. Demographer Paul Click of Arizona state University at Tempe estimates the number of stepchildren in the United states at 5.8 million but or. Emily Visher a co founder of the Ste family association of America puts the figure at one in five of All children or 12.6 million. Visher estimates that the parents of 45 percent of the children born in the 1980s will divorce before the children Are 18 and that 35 percent of those children will live with a stepparent before age 12. Single Parent families Are increasing. More than one Quarter of All families with children have Only one Parent present 90 percent of whom Are women. In 1987, single Parent family groups constituted 27 percent of All families with children up from 22 percent in 1980, 13 percent in 1970 and 9 percent in 1960. The census Bureau estimates that six out of 10 children born in 1984 will live in a single Parent Home at some time before Are 18. Divorce is not the Only reason for the increase More women both Black and White Are having babies without marrying. Sixty percent of Black babies Are born to single mothers. Among Whites it s starting at a lower level but going up at a rapid rate Morrison said. And it s not just a phenomenon of teen agers. Statistically it s a very uncommon thing for White single women in their late 20s and 30s to have a baby but it s  of All births about 22 percent Are to unmarried women. That Means More than one out of five families gets formed not by two people getting married but by one woman having a child Morrison said. We re now seeing changing social patterns not just in some Corner of the minority population but in staunchly Middle class White professional women he said. Monday january 30,1989 the stars and stripes Page 15