WASHINGTON (AFP)-It is by no means dead, but for the first time, a new survey has shown that traditional marriage has ceased to be the preferred living arrangement in the majority of U.S. households. The shift, reported by the U.S. Census Bureau its 2005 American Community Survey, could herald a sea change in every facet of American life-from family law to national politics and its current emphasis on family values.

The findings indicated that marriage did not figure in nearly 55.8 million American family households, or 50.2 percent. More than 14 million of them were headed by single women, another five million by single men, while 36.7 million belonged to a category described as "non-family households," a term that experts said referred primarily to gay or heterosexual couples cohabiting out of formal wedlock.

In addition, there were more than 30 million unmarried men and women living alone, who are not categorized as families, the Census Bureau reported. The survey was released last August but not widely circulated until the fall due to the volume of data involved.

By comparison, the number of traditional households with married couples at their core stood at slightly more than 55.2 million, or 49.8 percent of the total.

Unmarried couples gravitated toward big cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, while farm states in the Great Plains and rural communities of the Midwest and West remained bastions of traditionalism, according to the survey published late last year.

The trend represented a dramatic change from just six years ago, when married couples made up 52 percent of 105.5 million American households.

Douglas Besharov, a sociologist with the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said it is difficult for the traditional family to emerge unscathed after three and a half decades of divorce rates reaching 50 percent and five decades out-of-wedlock births.

Besharov predicted in a recent interview with the State Department journal, U.S. Society and Values that cohabitation and temporary relationships between people were likely to dominate America's social landscape for years to come.

"Overall, what I see is a situation in which people-especially children-will be much more isolated, because not only will their parents both be working, but they'll have fewer siblings, fewer cousins, fewer aunts and uncles," the scholar argued. "So over time, we're moving towards a much more individualistic society."

In the opinion of Stephanie Coontz, who heads the Council on Contemporary Families, growing life expectancy as well as women's earning potential is impacting the traditional marriage in unexpected ways. She pointed out in the journal, that today couples can look forward to spending more than two decades together in an empty nest.

"The growing length of time partners spend with only each other for company, in some instances, has made individuals less willing to put up with an unhappy marriage, while women's economic independence makes it less essential for them to do so," Coontz wrote.

Mission Issues in the Dominican Republic

The Protestant church in the Dominican Republic faces major issues in society that impact its life and mission. One is the need for more equality for Protestants and other religious movements in the government run primarily by members of the Roman Catholic Church. While the Dominican Republic espouses no official religion, it has a Concordat with the Vatican, and this is reflected in the leadership of the country.

A second issue is the presence of thousands of Haitian immigrants living in dire poverty and who are not welcomed in the economic and societal network of the country. The church continues advocating for Haitian children, especially for Haitian children born in the Dominican Republic, and is trying to help them obtain legal residential status. The church also works through literacy programs and medical work to assist Haitians, and at present, is establishing communities of faith among Haitian immigrants.

A third issue is the immigration of Dominicans to Puerto Rico, the U.S. and Europe. More than one million people have left because they perceived better economic opportunities elsewhere. The church must be in mission to those people who stay in order to help them improve their lives, and to those who leave and find themselves alone on foreign soil.

A fourth issue is how to nurture and foster a non-violent and democratic society. The Church is struggling with its own past, regarding the impact it has had on public life and the receding role it plays today in public life. In times when the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer in the country, the Church must provide hope to a population living in despair.

Source: United Methodist Church global missions website

More youth in English churches

Figures released early this year by the Church of England continue to show a mixed picture for trends in church attendance with smaller Sunday congregations but more children and young people taking part in parish worship.

Regular Sunday attendance fell by two per cent, while weekly and monthly attendance fell by one per cent or less. This follows two years in which the numbers increased or held steady. Meanwhile, the number of children and young people attending at least monthly increased by one per cent and more than half the parishes reported running or planning a "fresh expression of church."

More children and young people are experiencing parish worship. The latest annual statistics show 441,000 under-16s attending services at some time in the month. The number has increased each year since accurate weekly records were first systematically collated in 2001, adding up to a six percent increase on the 416,000 counted that year.

An extra question in the parish returns for 2005 (the last year for which data is available) shows that 39 per cent of parishes reported starting a "fresh expression of church" since 2000 with 33 per cent starting projects aimed at occasional and non-churchgoers and six per cent starting other fresh expressions. A fresh expression of church is a genuinely new departure for a parish, not simply an additional activity or a stepping-stone to Sunday services. More than two-thirds of the fresh expressions already started involve under-16s and a third involve 16-25 year-olds.