Despite a 53 percent divorce rate in the United States, ours remains a "marriage-happy" society, says UD assistant professor Bahira Sherif. In fact, two-thirds of those who divorce go on to remarry.

"People in the U.S. expect to get married. It's associated with stability, with happiness. And, even though families are having less children, we are still a very child-friendly society," says Sherif, who holds joint appointments in the departments of Individual and Family Studies and of Anthropology and in the Center for Community Development and Family Policy.

Sherif, who joined the University faculty in 1997, is a specialist on ethnically diverse families and public policy, intergenerational transmission of cultural values, gender and work and immigration. She was recently quoted in a national news story reporting the changes in American households. Among the surprising findings of the survey by University of Chicago researchers is that the percentage of American households made up of married couples with children dropped from 45 percent in the early 1970s to just 26 percent in 1998.

Born of German and Egyptian parents, Sherif has lived and conducted research in the U.S., Germany, Egypt and Turkey. Her current research focuses on working women of Puerto Rican, Chinese and Italian immigrant families. She also is writing a chapter on sexuality in Egypt for the fourth volume of the International Encyclopedia of Sexuality, edited by Robert T. Francoeur, AS '67PhD.

Americans continue to be more conservative about marriage, religion, sexuality and contraception than people in such areas as Northern Europe, where long-term cohabitation and having children outside of marriage are quite common, Sherif says. Even so, families and marriage in the U.S. can't help but be affected by the tremendous social and technological changes taking place.

Greater acceptance of divorce and remarriage (or serial monogamy, as sociologists term it) is reflected in a steady, high divorce rate and a growing number of stepfamilies and single-parent households. Sherif points out the divorce rate in 1992 was 22,000 per week. "That's something we never could have predicted," she says. Today, the number of stepfamilies in the U.S. is almost equal to the number of intact families, she adds.

Among the other major changes in marriage in the United States: Age at first marriage continues to rise; couples are having fewer children later in life; and society is becoming more accepting of interracial marriage, gay couples and single-head households. Today, 32 percent of all children in the U.S. are born out of wedlock, Sherif notes. "We won't and we can't go back to the idealized families of the 1950s, with a working dad as the decision-making head of the household; a mom at home as caregiver and several children."

Women with children under age 2 make up the fastest growing population in the workforce, Sherif says. With dual-income families the norm, schools of the future will need to adapt by lengthening the school year and providing daycare, after-school activities, parent education and counseling, she says.

Fewer children and longer life spans have led to what Sherif terms "beanpole families." In the past, families were "horizontally broad," with two or three generations living in the same residence and many children in each nuclear family. Now, couples may have just one or two children, but it's not uncommon for as many as four generations to be alive at one time, though usually not residing together. The positive side of today's reality is more intergenerational contact, she says. The challenge is that baby boomers and the generations that follow will have to deal with issues of elder care in addition to child care.

And, what of the vast changes brought about by technology? Reproductive technology has led to medical, legal and ethical dilemmas regarding frozen embryos, cloning and infertility treatments that lead to multiple births.

As our society transforms ever more rapidly, she says, our ideals, our mythologies, even our laws cannot keep up, a situation known as cultural lag. As such, Sherif says, Americans' current idealization of marriage is more a reflection of the past than of the present realities of marital and family life. The biggest challenge in the 21st century may be adjusting to the tremendous changes that are already taking place, she says.