Comparison statistics for 1960 are from U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States . The composition of households in the United States reflects the dynamic diversity of contemporary life.
People often pass through a number of different household types over the life course.
The biggest change is that more people are living outside of married-couple families, not so much because they are never marrying, but because they are marrying later and often divorcing. Another form of dynamic diversity is the variation in the number of children in families. This is not due primarily to a rise in permanent childlessness, but rather to longer lives and smaller families, which together have shortened the portion of adult life devoted to childrearing.