Women without spouses

A recent analysis of census data shows that 51% of American women live without a spouse. You can read the New York Times article here.

When I taught child psychology or child development classes, I usually included some cross-cultural and historical information on families. Here in the USA, we like to think the mythological household of mom, dad and the kids is "ideal." But we were in a minority of about 30% of family situations. The rest of the world tended to, and still does, live in different family constellations and we are now a part of that "rest" of the world.

What does it mean? It means women are not marrying, women are being widowed, and women are being independent. And why not? Some of the women have children, some have partners and some live alone. That it made for pretty big news is more surprising to me than the facts.. I live alone, my friends tend to live alone and none of us are unhappy or see our lives as much different from those of our friends who are married...

Your thoughts?