Welcome!
Log In | Register for a User Account
Click To Submit Your Family
My family tree is like a squid that losses arms and grows new one. The days of families having one branch that makes sense and is easy to follow are pretty much over. American households have never been more diverse, more surprising, more baffling. The current family structures are changing because of may reasons. These reasons include such things as divorce rates, Single parents, adoptions, same sex families, economics, religion and many others.
The typical American family, if it ever lived anywhere but on Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving canvas, has become as multilayered and full of surprises as a holiday turducken the all-American seasonal portmanteau of deboned turkey, duck and chicken.
Families, they say, are becoming more socially egalitarian over all, even as economic disparities widen. Families are more ethnically, racially, religiously and stylistically diverse than half a generation ago than even half a year ago.
Maternity is often decoupled from matrimony: 40 percent of women with some college but no degree, and 57 percent of women with high school diplomas or less, are unmarried when they give birth to their first child.
More than one-quarter of these unwed mothers are living with a partner who may or may not be their child's biological father. The rise of the cohabiting couple is another striking feature of the evolving American family: From 1996 to 2012, the number jumped almost 170 percent, to 7.8 million from 2.9 million.
If all you did was watch television commercials for minivans, you might think that the traditional All-American family was still intact -- Mom, Dad, dog, and the 2.5 kids buckle up and drive off every day on TV. But ads (depending on your perspective) are either selling aspirations or guilt: This is the family you're supposed to have, supposed to want.
In real life, in big cities and in smaller towns, families are single moms, they're step-families, they're boyfriends and girlfriends not getting married at the moment, they're foster parents, they're two dads or two moms, they're a village. In real life families are richly diverse.
With that said please enjoy the site and contribute what you can as we all search our past and document for our future.
Contact Us
If you have any questions or comments about the information on this site, please contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.