There was a stat that we have half as many households with children today as in the 1970s. That seemed over stated to me, so I searched for where the statistic came from. According to Reuters, we have indeed seen the number of households with two married adults and children decrease in half from 40% of all households to 20% of households. However, there has been an increase in single parent families and the population of children in the US has increased over 15% sinced 1970.

The shift to smaller households (2.6 members v. 3.1), both from having more single person household and fewer married couples with children, who themselves have fewer children, are part of what’s driving the end of the suburbs. But I hope the suburbs are also dying because they represent a totally unsustainable cost structure.

And maybe, just maybe, information technology clobbered so many of our informal, personal relationships that we can’t stand the idea of also isolating ourselves in single family homes and lose the informal interactions that living in an urban city provides.