Alone The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness.

In 1950, 20 percent of marriages ended in divorce; today, it’s approximately 40 percent. Four in ten American children are now born to unmarried mothers, up from about 5 percent in 1960. In 1970, 84 percent of U.S. children spent their entire childhoods living with both bio-parents. Today, only half can expect to do the same.

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According to the 2018 Cigna study, single parents are about the loneliest of Americans.

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For a fuller picture of the brave new kinless world, consider Japan, a country now in the throes of an epidemic of kodokushi, roughly translated as “lonely deaths.” Local Japanese papers regularly publish stories about kinless elderly whose deaths go unnoticed until the telltale smell of maggot-eaten flesh alerts neighbors.

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The Second Demographic Transition offered relief from many of life’s most palpable miseries: hectoring or depressed wives, abusive or sullen or just hapless husbands, controlling relatives, and taboos on premarital and gay sex.

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 Opioids are now the leading cause of death for people under 50: a majority of them are unmarried or divorced men. Though only 32 percent of the population, that group of adults accounts for a stunning 71 percent of opioid deaths.

https://www.city-journal.org/decline-of-family-loneliness-epidemic