Several members of my family

and a number of friends gathered on our porch and in the back yard for

a singing and ice cream making recently.

Probably not a good combo.

The singing went downhill after all the ice cream consumption! I had served

fried chicken and a variety of salads earlier in the evening and the musicians

had faired well after eating, but the ice cream was another story. Oh

well, we all enjoyed ourselves tremendously anyway!

Daniel had a brother and sister

in attendance and I had a brother and sister there as well. During the

evening we all discussed having a family gathering every fall at our place

beginning this October. Since the death of Daniel's mom April 30, all

our parents are gone. It's up to the kids now that would be 13 brothers

and sisters altogether to keep the family connected.

One by one, as friends departed

through the evening and on into the Sunday noon hour, these friends said

to me, "Now we're family, too, right?" Their point being they

wanted to come back in October. What a compliment. I felt really good

about the event and about my friends and family.

Then I recalled a bit of data

that had recently caught my attention. According to 2000 Census figures

released at the end of May, the American family is changing in dramatic

ways. Some things to consider:

The number of families headed

million households.

For most of the past decade,

about a third of all babies were born to unmarried women, compared with

3.8 percent in 1940.

The number of single fathers

has also increased; single fathers now head more than two million families.

Louisiana State University

researchers can offer insights about what's in store for the family as

the 21st century presses onward.

Note: These are not my personal

insights but they caught my attention and I'm thinking about them. Thought

you might want to consider them too.

LSU sociologist Michael Grimes

researches how the family intersects other institutions of society such

as the economy and educational and political systems. He seeks to understand

how social inequalities based on class, race/ethnicity, gender and sexual

orientation affect the structure and activities of the family. He is researching

working-class families to examine the roles that men and women play in

families and how the roles are affected by each gender's participation

in the larger society. He is also studying family violence, including

child abuse and neglect.

According to Grimes, "The

family must always be viewed as interdependent with the larger society.

Because of this interdependence, the structure of the family and its activities

at a given point in time cannot be understood in isolation from the events

that are occurring in the larger society at that point in time. For example,

one only has to look at the tremendous impact that women's return to work,

which began during the late 1960s and early 1970s, had on the structure

and activities of the American family to realize the interdependence between

the family and the remainder of society."

Interesting, huh?

Now consider this. According

to LSU political scientist James Garand, there has been a debate among

scholars about the degree to which rising divorce rates during the 1960s,

1970s and 1980s were attributable to an increased permissiveness in state

divorce laws. Garand and his wife, LSU human ecology professor Pam Monroe,

have used data on divorce rates in every state and every year from 1990

to 1995 to determine whether state adoption of no-fault divorce laws increased

state divorce rates.

Garand and Monroe have determined

that an increase in divorce rates can be directly attributed to adoption

of no-fault divorce laws. "In particular, we find that when states

adopt no-fault divorce laws there is typically a sharp immediate increase

in divorce rates, followed by a tapering off of the upward trend. Eventually

divorce rates return to what they would have been had the no-fault laws

not been adopted, but it does appear that pent-up demand for divorce is

released when states adopt no-fault laws," said Garand.