Mark Harris for BI
For most of the 20th century, the word "family" in America evoked a predictable picture of cookie-cutter cleanliness: the happily married husband and wife, their 2.5 kids, and one improbably well-behaved golden retriever, all under the same roof. But the nuclear family has steadily eroded over the last 50 years.
The first major death knell came with the 1973 oil crisis and the two-year recession that followed, which signaled the end of the West's postwar prosperity boom. Since then, the nuclear family has crumbled piece by piece. In 1970, more than two-thirds of American adults between 25 and 49 lived with a spouse and at least one kid. By 2021, only 37% of adults fit the bill, Pew Research found.