Although two-parent families are still the majority family form, families that include grandparents and their grandchildren have been increasing. The concern over the increase of children living with grandparents, particularly in skipped-generation families, where children lived with grandparents without parents present, was large enough to convene a 1992 hearing  to focus on grandparents and spur research investigating the causes.

In Japan, marriage is changing in fundamental ways. People are marrying later than ever and the average age of first marriage in Japan is now among the highest in the world. It is also clear that a substantial proportion of Japanese adults will never marry, which is a huge change in a society where, until relatively recently, marriage was nearly universal.

In an ideal world, men and women would become parents only when they reached a life stage in which they were prepared to provide children with a stable home environment and the emotional, practical, and financial resources necessary for healthy development. Unfortunately, that is not the reality in the United States. Instead, a third of all births in the United States are considered unintended, and thus many parents may not be fully ready for the sacrifices, demands, and investments children require.