The Changing American Family

24      In the new environment, nuclear households will no doubt continue to sur­vive. For many people, they work. But this Second Wave family form will hardly dominate the future, as it did the recent past.

25           What we are seeing today, therefore, is not the death of the family, but the rapid emergence of a Third Wave family system based on many different types of family.

26      This historic shift to new, more varied and flexible family arrangement's is rooted in and related to parallel changes now fast developing in other fields. In fact, we find the same push toward diversity at every level.