Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Families in the United States at 2000

Increasingly, the good work being done for and about families is multidisciplinary and collaborative. An impressive number of disciplines are closely studying issues facing American families in 2000 and in the future, each contributing significantly to a more highly integrated view of the family and the challenges families must address.Consolidating Our Thinking about Today's FamiliesSociology and Demography give us a statistical picture of American family at 2000; the United States is at some very important points of transition (Washington & Andrews, 1998). We are an aging country, with more than 50,000 individuals over 100 years old and a birth rate that has moved below the replacement level. There are great discrepancies between the rich and the poor, and the segment of American society with the greatest concentration of poverty is young children. In fact, 25 percent of young children (up to 6 years old) and their families live at or below the poverty level, and when household incomes up to 185 percent of poverty are considered (what is called near poverty) 44 percent of the young children under 6 are living in poverty or near poverty (Bennett & Li, 1998). These statistics on near poverty vary by state with a few states having less than 30 percent of young children living in poverty or near poverty and a few states having over 60 percent of young children living in poverty or near poverty. The rate of extreme poverty for young children, that is, less than 50 percent of the poverty level, has doubled in the last 20 years -- growing from 6 percent to 12 percent.In addition to the aging of America and the high levels of child poverty, the United States is increasingly characterized by racial and ethnic diversity,with 15 percent of the almost 4 million infants born each year being African American and 18 percent Hispanic (National Center for Health Statistics, 2000). Projections indicate that by 2010, the states of California, Texas, New York, and Florida will have more children of color than white (Washington & Andrews, 1998). American families can be characterized by their living arrangements and formal family structures. In the United States today, 25 percent of the households consist of only one individual living alone (Washington & Andrews, 1998). These individuals may be part of families, but they are not currently living with a family. The traditional nuclear family--two parents and their child or children--account for only 25% of the households in the United States. The remainder of households include families without children and single parent families. In fact, in the United States today, about one out of three infants is born to single unmarried parents (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 1998). From the perspectives of public health, medicine and nursing, the federal publication Healthy People 2010 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [DHHS], 2000) provides a wealth of information about the conditions of individual Americans in 2000 and national health goals for the next 10 years. This document compiles national level indicators about the health in 28 focus areas. The ten leading health indicators include physical activity; overweight and obesity; tobacco use; substance abuse; responsible sexual behavior; mental health; injury and violence; environmental quality; immunization; and access to health care. The authors suggest two national goals--(a) "Increase quality and years of healthy life" (p. 8), and (b) "Eliminate health disparities" (p. 11). From these focus areas and goals, we can infer a lot about families. Particularly in the case of maternal and child health, there are several indicators that suggest the well being of families around the birth of a child, including infant mortality (7.2%), prematurity (7.6%) and prenatal care beginning in the first trimester of pregnancy (83%). Each of these is targeted for improvement by 2010. …