Household Structure & Family Roles

In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, the highest share in at least four decades. The number of young adults doing so has risen by 3 million since the start of the start of the recession in 2007, an increase driven by a combination of economic, educational and cultural factors.

A record 8% of households with minor children in the United States are headed by a single father, up from just over 1% in 1960, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Decennial Census and American Community Survey data. The number of single father households has increased about ninefold since 1960, from less than […]

Currently, 35% of Americans say the increase in gay and lesbian couples raising children is a bad thing, a decline from recent years.

About a quarter of LGBT men are fathers, and an additional 14% would like to have children someday.

A new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that Americans expect dad to be more of a moral teacher and emotional comforter than a breadwinner or disciplinarian.

For newer Pew Research Center findings on fathers, click here. The Census Bureau estimates that last year there were about 189,000 stay-at-home dads, defined as married fathers with children younger than 15 who stayed out of the labor force for at least one year primarily to care for the family while their wife works outside the […]

Our new report on "Breadwinner Moms" has attracted widespread press coverage and discussion. FactTank asks readers to weigh in with their reactions.

A record 40% of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The share was just 11% in 1960.

52.9% of women aged 15-44, or about 32.5 million, were mothers in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. The U.S. birth rate dipped in 2011 to the lowest ever recorded, led by a plunge in births to immigrant women since the onset of the Great Recession. Today’s mothers have more education than ever before, according […]

Kim Parker, associate director of the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project, and Wendy Wang, research associate, answer questions from readers on the Modern Parenthood survey,