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5
Ideational Influences on Family
Change in the United States

William Axinn
Department of Sociology
Amie Emens
Population Studies Center
Colter Mitchell
University of Michigan

In this chapter we summarize the literature about ideational influences on
family formation behaviors in the United States. The U.S. population hasbeen characterized by substantial changes in marriage, divorce, childbearing, cohabitation, and gender roles over the past half century. We begin by
describing these changes briefly as background for our summary of
research on ideational influences on those changes. Then we review the key
streams of social theory motivating research into the influence of ideational
factors on changes in familyformation processes in the United States. Next
we review the powerful measurement resources that have fueled unparalleled research on this topic in the United States, again very briefly. Finally
we turn to a topic-by-topic review of the literature on ideational influences
on cohabiting, marital, divorce and childbearing behavior. Because the
empirical literature on ideational influences onfamily change in the United
States is large, it is not possible to provide a comprehensive review of that
literature here. Nevertheless, the summary we provide points toward key
insights into ideational influences on family change.
FAMILY CHANGE IN THE UNITED STATES
The past several centuries have been characterized by both continuity
and change in family formation behaviors in the United States119

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(Thornton, Axinn, & Xie, in press). In the summary provided here we
focus on changes between the early 1900s and the beginning of the 21st
century. We focus on changes in marriage, divorce, nonmarital cohabitation, and childbearing. Our review begins by summarizing behavioral
changes and thenmoves on to describe changes in attitudes about
those same behaviors. Although our primary agenda is descriptions of
changes in family formation, we briefly comment on other closely
related changes including labor force participation, education, religion,
and gender role attitudes.
Changing Family Formation and Related Behaviors
Behavioral changes in family formation in the United States duringthe
1900s follow a well-known pattern documented in many previous historical studies (Cherlin, 1992; Fitch & Ruggles, 2000; Teachman, Tedrow &
Crowder, 2001). In general, rates of marriage and childbearing declined
slowly and steadily during the first half of the 1900s, had a sharp rise
between 1950 and 1960 directly following World War II, and then
returned to decline after 1960. Rates ofdivorce followed the opposite
trend, rising slowly through the first half of the century, bumping up
during World War II, dipping after World War II, and then rising again
after 1960. Premarital cohabitation was extremely rare until the late
1960s, rising steadily after 1970 and compensating for much of the post1970 decline in marriage rates. In the paragraphs that follow we
describe thesewell-documented trends in greater detail.
Marriage. Although changes in the age structure of the U.S. population can account for some changes in crude rates of marriage, the U.S.
population has also been characterized by important changes in age
specific rates of marriage. Changes in age specific rates of marriage
reflect both changes in the fraction of the population who never marry
and changesin the timing of marriage. However, changes in the fraction
who never marry account for relatively little of the long-term decline in
age specific rates of marriage in the United States.
Between 1860 and 1920 the percentage of White men and women age
45–54 years who had never married increased steadily (from 5.7 to 12.8
for men and 7.3 to 11.0 for women). From 1920 to 1980 there was a...