Gettyimages.com/A family with a little 3 year old girl smiling on a city waterfront. The mother, a mid adult African-American woman, is holding her mixed race daughter who is sitting on a railing. The man is African-American and Hispanic.
It’s no secret that millennials are putting an end to a lot of old traditions surrounding marriage, parenthood, and the nuclear family. We’re marrying later, we aren’t getting married at all, and some of us are having children out of wedlock, remaining with the other biological parent and still just…not getting married. Some say out of wedlock children are on the rise because women do not rely on marriage as much today as they did 60 years ago for things like financial survival or societal acceptance. I guess I like to think of it as more of a personal decision than any sort of monetary or cultural one. But, I really cannot speak for all of the women who are reproducing with their committed partner and not tying the knot. I can just tell you that it’s happening a lot, and people can still be surprisingly close-minded about it. Here are things people still say to unmarried parents.
Gettyimages.com/A mid adult father stands on his front porch with his preteen son. He gestures and frowns as they talk and lean against the railing.
Don’t you want to be a real family?
Er, they are a real family. And who really gets to say what constitutes a real family, anyways? Is it biology? Is it a group of people who have each other’s back, no matter what? Is it both? I can certainly say I know a lot of people who are technically family according to DNA but do not have each other’s backs.
