More surprising, perhaps, than the current difficulties of traditional marriage is the fact that marriage itself is alive and __62__. As Skolnick notes, Americans are a marrying people - __63__ to Europeans, more of us marry and we marry at a younger age. __64__ , after a decline in the early 1970s, the __65__ of marriage in the United States is now __66_ . Even the divorce rate needs to be taken in this pro-marriage context - some 80 percent of __67__ individuals remarry. __68__, marriage remains by far the preferred way of life for the vast majority of people in our remarry,
What has changed more than marriage is the nuclear family. Twenty-five years age, the __69__ American family consisted of a husband, a wife, and two or three children. __70__ there are many marriage in which couples have decided not to have any children. And there are many marriages where at __71__ some of the children are from the wife’s __72__ marriage, or the husband’s or both . Sometimes these children spend all of their time with one parent from the __73_ marriage ; __74__ they are shared between the two former parents.
Thus, one can find every type of family arrangement. There are marriages __75__ children; marriages with children from only the __76__ marriage; marriages with “full-time” children from both the present and former marriage; __77__ with “full time” children from the present marriage and “part-time” children from former marriages. It is not all that __78__ for a child to have four parents and eight grandparents ! These are __79__ changes from the traditional nuclear family. __80_ even so ,even in the midst of all this, __81__ one constant : most Americans spend most of their adult lives married.