The biggest corresponding increase in households has been in women living alone, followed by men living alone and other families with children. The women living alone are due both to living longer and to waiting longer to marry than 40 years ago. One trend in families, which is outside the traditional understanding, is with unmarried couples. There were 1.3 million unmarried couple households in 1978 and 4.9 million in 1998. The breakdown on how many children belonged to single parents prior to cohabitation, and how many are born to cohabitating couples, is not known.
Single parents are on the rise as well.
In 1978 about one-fifth of single mothers had never married, but had a child and was raising that child on their own. By 2000, this percentage doubled. Churches really intent on ministering to, and not just attracting, families would do well to pay attention to single parents, since their needs are obviously greater most of the time. One moderating factor in children's well being in single-parent families can be the presence of grandparents in the home. In 1998, about 17 percent of unmarried mothers with children lived in the homes of their parents, compared with 10 percent of single fathers.