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Shifting Demographics

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 stepfamilies, 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, in 2005, families are richly diverse.

And are only getting more so.

In fact, the very definition of "family" is changing dramatically. The year 2000 marked the first time that less than a quarter (23.5 percent) of American households were made up of a married man and woman and one or more of their children -- a drop from 45 percent in 1960. This number is expected to fall to 20 percent by 2010.

Why the Changes?

The change in the makeup of the American family is the result of two primary factors, says Martin O'Connell, chief of fertility and family statistics at the U.S. Census Bureau, which collects such figures every 10 years. First, more babies (about a third) are now born out of wedlock, and second, divorce rates continue to climb so that nearly half of all marriage contracts are broken.

What's Normal Now?

The overall attitude toward relationships and commitment has shifted. More than half of female high school seniors say that having a child outside of marriage is acceptable, according to a recent poll from the University of Michigan Survey Research Center. And census data shows that 26 percent of all households are made up of a single person, living alone (as opposed to 13 percent back in 1960).

While a good portion of these singles are likely senior citizens, others are younger career folks who don't feel yesteryear's societal pressure to rush into partnerships.

"In 2002, the median age for a woman's first marriage was 27," says O'Connell. That's five years older than it was even in 1980. Sometimes young singles establish their individual identities so solidly that they never marry, even if they have children. These couples may partner up -- but without the papers.

Adoption, no marriage: Such was the case with Steve Wilson and Erin Mayes, a couple in their mid-30s living in Austin, Texas. They've been together for 10 years, own a home together, and though they've talked about it, have decided it isn't necessary to get married. Still, they wanted a family and, last June, adopted a baby boy.

Wedding after baby: Another example is Jared and Lori Goldman, of San Mateo, California. Their relationship was relatively new when Lori got pregnant in 2000. They agreed to raise the child together but didn't get engaged. But not long after their daughter was born, Jared proposed. "Reverse order worked better for us," he says. Lori agrees: "Our wedding felt more meaningful happening on its own time instead of on the traditional schedule. What girl wants a shotgun wedding?"

Single moms on the rise: Of course, because currently one-third of all babies are born out of wedlock, it's no surprise that many mothers remain single. When she got pregnant, Pam Hansell says her boyfriend initially seemed supportive. Then he began dodging her phone calls and e-mails, and eventually cut contact. Deeply hurt but determined to give her child a good life, Hansell moved in with her parents, outside of Philadelphia, and gave birth to a daughter in March. "When I realized I couldn't count on the father, it was devastating. I'm so thankful that family and friends have stepped in," Hansell says.

Two dads: Finally, Dean Larkin and Paul Park are living out another common-in-today's-world scenario. They live together in Los Angeles, and Larkin has a 21-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. Now he and Park are planning a second child, via a surrogate mother. They'd like to marry, but gay marriage is not legal nationally.

Reactions from the Trenches

Perhaps no one has a better ringside seat to all these untraditional family setups than those involved in the childbirth industry. "I've seen unmarried couples come in, lesbian couples, mothers who have been here with one father and then come in with a new father -- the family dynamics and structures have changed a lot over the past 25 years," says Barbara Hotelling, president of Lamaze International and a long-time childbirth instructor.

Based in Rochester Hills, Michigan, Hotelling probably sees a good cross section of American families and, while she doesn't ask the marital status of her students, estimates that around 20 percent are unmarried, compared with maybe 5 percent when she first began her career.

Hotelling has shifted her language with the times. She says she used to call her students moms and dads, but now, "I say 'moms and partners' and hope nobody screams."

The Marriage Advantage

According to 1999 figures from the Population Resource Center, families in which the mother is the head of the household are, by and large, living on less. Because of the wage gap, female-headed households earn, on average, $26,164 a year; male-headed households earn $41,138 per year; and married households earn $56,827 per year.

Then, there are the more than 1,100 federal benefits that married households can take advantage of during a lifetime.
Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, married partners can take leave from work when their spouse gets sick; unmarried partners cannot. Federal Medicaid laws permit only married couples to keep their homes when one partner needs nursing home care; an unmarried partner can lose the house. When a married person dies, the spouse inherits Social Security benefits; an unmarried partner gets nothing.

All told, according to the Los Angeles-based American Association for Single People and cited in an October 2003 Business Week article, with health benefits, retirement, and so on, married families can "earn" 25 percent more than unmarried ones.

Marriage Penalties

How does this stack up with the so-called "marriage penalty" that people complain about at tax time? Two of the major tax penalties were eliminated in 2003, says Fred Grant, a senior tax analyst at Turbo Tax, a corporation that produces electronic tax preparation programs.

Used to be, married couples filing jointly had a lower standard deduction than two singles living together, and married couples (in the lowest two income brackets) got bumped into a higher tax bracket on a combined income, thus paying more taxes overall. Now, only the richest three tiers pay more as marrieds than as cohabiters.

There are a few other penalties married couples face (for example, they need a lower combined income to qualify for a $1,000 per-child tax credit), but, Grant warns, taxes are such a complex soup incorporating home ownership, itemizations, and more, it's almost impossible to state assertively which type of family comes out ahead tax-wise.

Money, Marriage -- and Children

What is safe to say is that the kids of untraditional families can wind up penalized. Of course, there are many possible scenarios. In the best cases, kids living with, for instance, only their mother also receive financial support from a father. But as many single moms will tell you, not all fathers pay their full share of childcare costs.

Statistics also show that there are many kids lacking basic health insurance -- at last count, about 8.4 million, according to the U.S. Census. All told, there are 11 million children (16 percent) living at or below the poverty line, and while that's not broken down into the number of kids with married or unmarried parents, it's a sure bet that many impoverished kids are in untraditional families.

Single and Satisfied

Though a growing number of couples are fine with never getting married, the vast majority of cohabiting relationships change into either marriage or separation after an average of 18 months, says Susan Brown, PhD, associate professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University's Center for Family and Demographic Research and a contributor to the 2002 collection of essays and studies Just Living Together. She says that according to some research, there may be a psychological cost to raising a family without the mental safety net of marriage.

"I've found that cohabiters are more depressed than married people, and it seems to be because of relationship instability," Brown says. That means most unmarried parents who live together get married eventually -- or break up and seek other potential spouses.

The Growth of Gay Families

According to the Urban Institute, 2 in 5 gay or lesbian couples live in a house with children under age 18. But because the U.S. Census Bureau doesn't figure same-sex relationships into their data, it's hard to pinpoint exactly how many children are living with gay or lesbian parents.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) places its bet between one and nine million children, which means somewhere between 1.4 percent and 12.5 percent of all kids. While the AAP issued a statement saying that children of same-sex couples deserve two legally recognized parents, no state can grant federal marriage benefits to these couples, and only these states -- California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Vermont -- allows state rights, such as the guarantee that unmarried parents can visit a child in the hospital.

Two moms, one donor: One couple, Sue Hamilton and Christy Sumner, used a sperm bank when they decided to have a baby. While the couple isn't able to marry in their home state of California, Hamilton recently adopted their daughter, which is legal there. Negotiating state laws puts extra stress on gay and lesbian families, but Hamilton and Sumner have encountered a few sympathizers. "One of the hospital workers fell in love with our family," Hamilton says.

"She thought it was nutty that birth certificates have to read 'mother' and 'father,' and typed up a mock certificate that just has our names on it."

Can Your Employer Help You?

Some large employers are scrambling to catch up to how families are changing. Traditionally, companies required workers to be married if they wanted benefits for household members. But now, "in order to attract and retain quality employees, the benefits need to be more flexible," says Kevin Marrs of the American Society of Employers, an organization that tracks information for firms in the Detroit area. He concedes, however, that because domestic partner benefits can cost a company more money, many small independent businesses don't yet offer them.

Families, Privileges, and the Law

Few laws protect untraditional families. In fact, at this point federal laws don't prohibit discrimination based on marital status, so unmarried families can and do face discrimination in these key areas:

housing

employment

adoption

insurance

child custody

hospital visitation

the ability to make a decision for a partner or child in an emergency

Wilson and Mayes are lucky -- their decision to not get married is made easier by the fact that their state, Texas, permits common-law marriage status. Declaring that lets them enjoy joint health coverage through Mayes's employer, and it smoothed the adoption process. If all states had such laws, a great many people would benefit. But only 16 states recognize common-law marriage -- and three of those require couples to prove they've been living together since the '90s, according to Nolo Press, which publishes plain-English legal information.

Why Aren't Laws Catching Up to How We're Living?

To many politicians, pushing for marriage is easier than changing laws. President Bush proposed spending $1.5 billion over five years on a Healthy Marriage Initiative to encourage couples (especially in poor communities) to marry. The money hasn't been approved, but the Department of Health and Human Services is running the program.

"Bush [advocates] marriage among low-income populations as a way to ameliorate poverty. But I'm not sure that's the answer," Brown says.

Daniel Lichter, a sociology professor at Ohio State University, goes even further. In his 2003 study, "Is Marriage a Panacea?" he shows that poverty rates for disadvantaged women who marry and then divorce are actually higher than for women who never marry in the first place. (One thought is that the loss of financial stability as a direct result of divorce -- which costs money in itself -- may set women back.) So getting married doesn't always ease the financial burden of raising kids, and it certainly doesn't help open the rigid boundaries of what "counts" as a family.

The answer probably lies in making sure all families -- whether Mom and Dad drive the minivan to soccer practice or Mom piles her stepkids onto the city bus -- receive the same kinds of rights, benefits, and treatment. Access to affordable childcare and living wages are also more direct solutions.

Discrimination against unmarried families is still real. But those families also have the love and courage it takes to press for change. Says Hamilton, "It really doesn't matter what kind of relationship the parents are in -- what matters is the love they have for their child. That is what makes a family."
Cris Beam is a writer in New York City.
Originally published in American Baby magazine, May 2005.

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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.

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Senior Group Fitness Classes | Senior Citizens Exercise Classes & Senior Workout Programs from 24 Hour Fitness

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Keep active and stay young at heart with senior group fitness classes at 24 Hour Fitness. Improve muscle tone, strength, coordination and build cardio fitness in our senior workout programs. Senior exercise classes are fun for all levels and abilities - 24 Hour Fitness

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Article about physical health decline in age

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Article about physical health decline in age

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Typically, studies that have looked at age-related physical ability focused on testing those in their 70s and 80s. This study tested a wider age range - 775 subjects from age 30 to 90-plus - and found that exercise to offset physical decline needs to start before people are AARP-eligible.

"Our research reinforces a life-span approach to maintaining physical ability - don't wait until you are 80 years old and cannot get out of a chair," lead author Katherine Hall, assistant professor of medicine at Duke, said in a statement. "The good news is, the ability to function independently can often be preserved with regular exercise."

In the study, published in the Journals of Gerontology, all participants were given simple tests to measure their strength, balance or endurance: rising from a chair repeatedly for 30 seconds; standing on one leg for a minute; and walking for six minutes. Walking speed over a distance of about 10 yards was also measured.
Among the results:

Both men and women in their 50s began to slip in their ability to stand on one leg and rise from a chair, and the declines continued in the next decades.

Declines in walking speed and aerobic endurance became evident in the 60s and 70s.

More physical activity was associated with less physical decline, especially in ages 60 to 79.

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Fitness And Physical Decline At Stages Of Aging

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Typically, studies that have looked at age-related physical ability focused on testing those in their 70s and 80s. This study tested a wider age range - 775 subjects from age 30 to 90-plus - and found that exercise to offset physical decline needs to start before people are AARP-eligible.

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Welcome to Tulsa Nursing Center

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Tulsa Nursing Center is a senior living community offering comprehensive skilled nursing care and rehabilitation services in a comfortable setting. We offer professional and compassionate care to seniors in Tulsa and the surrounding areas.

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Coming together with family and friends will give each person the opportunity to begin healing in their personal journey with the loss. The people in attendance will greatly appreciate a place to express emotions, hear and share memories, and reach out for support. Regardless of the type of service you choose to have, the need for honoring and acknowledging the life remains.

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Coming together with family and friends will give each person the opportunity to begin healing in their personal journey with the loss. The people in attendance will greatly appreciate a place to express emotions, hear and share memories, and reach out for support.

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Meredith tells Zola her dads dead

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Meredith tells her Kids Derek is Dead Scene Grey's Anatomy 13x08

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No copyright intended. Amazing song, but old. R.I.P. Papaw.

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A call for solutions

Across the country, lawmakers are starting to recognize the need to ensure better care for homebound seniors.

With money from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), six states, including Michigan and California, are working to develop more rigorous standards for training and assessing home-care workers. And several nonprofit groups have created registries to match the needs of seniors living at home with aides who have specialized skills, such as working with people with dementia or Alzheimer's.

The Elder Justice Act, which Congress approved as part of the ACA, called for spending $500 million to help state and local adult-protective services better detect and prevent elder abuse. But lawmakers have yet to authorize any money for the program. That lack of funding has also stalled plans to conduct a comprehensive study of elder abuse.

In what labor groups saw as a major step toward improving the lot of workers and their patients, the Obama administration approved regulations in 2013 that would require home-care agencies to start paying overtime to their employees, reversing a decades-old exemption under federal law. But the home-care industry filed suit, and a federal judge in Washington struck down the new rules, which were scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, ruling that the Labor Department had exceeded its authority.

Phil Bongiorno, executive director of the Home Care Association of America, a trade group that represents 2,500 home-care businesses with some 300,000 employees, says the industry was concerned that the requirement to pay overtime would make care less affordable as higher costs were passed on to consumers. He adds that the trade group has developed "best practices" for training and screening employees, although they are not currently a condition of membership in the organization. "We are trying to set the standard in home care," Bongiorno says.

'She was like a sociopath'

Denise Goodwin, 47, had worked as an assistant in an animal hospital before seeing the profit potential in working with humans. Prosecutors say she preyed on older men, trolling online senior dating services to find victims. She applied at a San Diego home-care agency, specifically requesting hospice duty. After she passed a background check, the agency assigned her to the Rabourn home in 2010.

In short order, Goodwin plundered the estate, charming Gerald Rabourn into giving her control over his finances after his wife died. She sold the house and liquidated his stocks, pouring the money into condos. A suspicious neighbor called adult protective services, but the agency closed an investigation after Rabourn refused to cooperate.

Based on phone and bank records, police believe Goodwin murdered Rabourn a month after arriving on the scene, although his body has never been found. She covered her tracks for several months by telling people that Rabourn had remarried and was on vacation. Mary Weaver, Rabourn's daughter, who lived in Kansas City, filed a missing-persons report with San Diego authorities in February 2011 after her birthday passed without a card from her father, a missed ritual that to her was a telltale sign that something was profoundly wrong.

Goodwin was convicted of murder by a San Diego County jury last October. She was sentenced Jan. 30 to life imprisonment without parole. Weaver, a chaplain who ministers to people at assisted living facilities, attended the sentencing and used the occasion to eulogize her father. Weaver was hoping that Goodwin would reveal the location of her father's body so he could be laid to rest, but instead, Goodwin sat emotionless in the courtroom. "She was like a sociopath," Weaver says. "Most people should understand, when you are putting someone in your home, you need to be sure this is who they say they are."

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Elder Abuse in Caregiving and Hospice Situations

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Across the country, lawmakers are starting to recognize the need to ensure better care for homebound seniors. With money from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), six states, including Michigan and California, are working to develop more rigorous standards for training and assessing home-care workers.

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Info on activities and hobbies for seniors

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Info on activities and hobbies for seniors

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Finding A Hobby - Activities for Seniors

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Finding a hobby just right for senior activities, will give you such enjoyment in retirement. Here's the coolest list of hobby ideas to do alone or in a group.

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Why were so many babies born in the United States after World War II?

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Learn more about low or not cost senior services and assistance offered at INCOG Area Agency on Aging in Tulsa, OK.

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Members Health Insurance offers Oklahoma residents top medicare supplement plans! See how we have you covered today!

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Everything seems to happen at mid-life: The empty nest, menopause, affairs, financial concerns, and a growing unhappiness with the daily grind. No wonder that red convertible looks tantalizingly good. At this point in life, you tally your failures and disappointments, and cannot muster a smidgen of gratitude.

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Consumer Fraud Against Elderly Victims - Lawyers.com

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Regardless of whether fraud is actually suspected, loved ones should broach the subject of consumer fraud with elderly friends and family members. The strongest weapon against consumer fraud is a savvy consumer. However, if any of the warning signs of fraud are actually present, immediate action should be taken.

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Oklahoma Home Health Services. Complete Home Health is known for providing high-quality Oklahoma health care services right in the comforts of home. Call today for your FREE in-home consultation.

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Community resources for senior citizens 

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Pines Village celebrates your lifestyle. You choose the space and lifestyle that works for you, whether you prefer a freestanding or paired home or an easygoing apartment. You may cook for yourself or enjoy our dining services. Drive your own car or take advantage of our transportation services.

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Senior Citizens' Center, 723 Commercial St, Oswego, KS 67356

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Nationwide offers IRAs and employer sponsored plans like 401k, 403b and 457.

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Hospice definition, a house of shelter or rest for pilgrims, strangers, etc., especially one kept by a religious order. See more.

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Social security definition, a program of old-age, unemployment, health, disability, and survivors insurance maintained by the U.S. federal government through compulsory payments by specific employer and employee groups. See more.