Colorful homes in the Adams Morgan area in Washington, DC
© AFP/File Leslie KossoffWASHINGTON (AFP) - The figures, pieced together from data from the last US Census in 2000, sparked alarm among family values campaigners, and a sense that the traditional community backbone of the United States may be under threat.
In 2000, 27 million Americans were living alone, an increase of 4.8 million or 21 percent on the figures over the previous time the census was conducted in 1990.
Meanwhile, 24.5 million Americans were living with a spouse and one or more children, according to the figures, a drop of 1.7 percent or 420,000 people.
A further 22 million people were living with a spouse but no children, an increase of 11 percent on 1990.
"Householders living alone had become the most common specific household structure in 2000, replacing the 1990 combination of householder, spouse and natural and/or adopted children," the bureau said in the report, Examining Household Composition.
The findings dismayed family groups.
"Experts saw it coming, but the nation's not ready to face the ramifications of single-adult households replacing the traditional mom and dad family in America," said Dr. Janice Crouse, of the Beverly LaHaye Institute, a think tank linked to the Concerned Women for America group.
"No commitment binds them. No shared history bonds them. Our lack of connectedness is withering both our capacity for compassion and our passion for justice," Crouse warned.
© 2005 AFP. All rights of reproduction and distribution reserved. All information displayed on this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.