"...67 percent of the nation's 73.5 million children under 18 lived with two married parents in 2005. About 20.7 million children under 18 lived with one parent; 17.2 million with their mother and 3.5 million with their father.

...About 8 percent of all children (6.1 million) lived in a household that included a grandparent."

"'Jewish wisdom holds that our children don't belong to us...They are both a loan and a gift from God, and the gift has strings attached. Our job is to raise our children to leave us. The children's job is to find their own path in life. If they stay carefully protected in the nest of the family, children will become weak and fearful or feel too comfortable to want to leave.'"

Find a young man or young woman happy with life and you've likely found someone who grew up in an intact two-parent family. The relationship between young adults' happiness and the type of family that reared them receives attention in a study recently published in Psychological Reports by psychologist Kevin Marjoribanks.

Examining data collected from an Australian national probability sample in 2000 (3,580 men and 3,991 women with an average age of 20.2 years), Marjoribanks finds that on a 14-item survey, young men and women reared in two-parent families are significantly more likely to express greater happiness than peers reared in one-parent families. Because the differences in the reported levels of happiness are not very large, Marjoribanks highlights as "meaningful" only the largest two differences for women (happiness in contemplating their future and happiness with their standard of living) and the three largest differences for men (happiness with where they live, happiness with their standard of living, and happiness with the way the country is being run).

Still, Marjoribanks acknowledges that ten other differences in happiness scores for women and eight other differences in happiness scores for men-all "statistically significant," though relatively small-favor those reared in two-parent families over peers reared in single-parent homes. And even if it is not large, one of the psychological advantages enjoyed by young men and young women who have grown up in two-parent families encompasses a great deal. Compared to peers reared in single-parent families, young men and young women from two-parent homes are significantly more likely to say they are happy with "life as a whole."