America's Families - Same-sex Partners And Families

In Census 2000, 5.2 million households were classified as unmarried-partner households, representing 4.7% of all households in the United States. According to the Census Bureau, these figures may have underrepresented

FIGURE 1.2

the true number of cohabiting couples. Same-sex partners in particular may have been reluctant to identify themselves as such and thus described themselves as roommates or friends. Census 2000 counted a little more than 650,000 households, or 12.6% of unmarried partner households, as same-sex partners. (See Table 1.11.)

The sexual revolution of the 1960s ushered in an era of more liberal societal attitudes about male and female relationships, and it also brought a new tolerance toward the gay community. The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, an advocacy organization supporting the civil rights of gay men and women, sought to have same-sex couples included in the popular definition of family. It claimed there were between six and ten million same-sex parents in the United States who were the mothers and fathers of an estimated six to fourteen million children.