Posts Tagged ‘Census data’

Trending: How Dads’ Roles Have Changed

Sunday, June 16, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments
|
|
Tom Holleman dips his son, Charlie, as his other son, Will, looks on after jumping on their trampoline at their home in Westport on Thursday, June 13, 2013. Photo: Jason Rearick

Tom Holleman dips his son, Charlie, as his other son, Will, looks on after jumping on their trampoline at their home in Westport on Thursday, June 13, 2013. Photo: Jason Rearick

For Westport resident Tom Holleman, raising his children is a full-time job.

A 44-year-old married father of three, he has been staying at home with the herd since his oldest child was born a decade ago.

“I love staying home,” Holleman said last week. “I wanted to be a part of their lives. I wanted to have an active role in their growth, and I do the best that I can just to be involved.”

Across the nation, about 189,000 stay-at-home dads spend their day-to-day lives taking care of their children, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s more than there were generations ago, but it’s still a small fraction of the total full-time parents throughout the country ­– 3.5 percent, to be exact.

“I think when I very first started being a stay-at-home dad, it was interesting, because … there really was no other stay-at-home dad that I could think of that were my friends or anything like that,” Holleman said. “And you have to learn and figure out how to operate in that world.”

Dads these days are, on average, more involved with their children’s lives than a generation or two ago.

Back in 1965, married dads with kids younger than 18 spent an average of 2.6 hours a week taking care of their kids, according to data from the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit fact tank based in Washington, D.C.

That amount of time went up by a matter of minutes through the 1970s and ’80s, according to Pew, before climbing to 4.2 hours in 1995, 6.8 hours in 2005 and 7.3 hours in 2011, the most recent year for which data is available.

Many fathers clock even more hours than that on daddy duty.

Brian Walsh, a stay-at-home dad who lives in Danbury with his wife and two children, estimates he spends about six hours a day with his children.

“I make their lunches, get them ready for school and drive them to school in the morning,” said Walsh, 41, who spends much of his time coaching hockey and soccer.

“After school, if they have hockey that day, we’ll do hockey practice, or soccer on a soccer day. Then we’ll come back, eat dinner, spend time together, do homework and go to bed,” he said.

He and his wife spend most of their Saturdays and Sundays with the kids. And while the kids are in school, Walsh said he takes care of the house and gets the shopping done.

In total, the average American dad contributes more to housework these days than in the 1960s. According to the Pew data, fathers spent 4.4 hours a week on housework, compared with 9.8 hours a week in 2011.

And while dads have become more involved in their children’s lives, mothers’ time spent taking care of children has increased from 10.2 hours to 13.5; at the same time, their time spent doing housework has significantly declined, as paid work has increased. In 1965, women spent an average of 31.9 hours a week on housework and 8.4 hours on paid work. These days, it’s 17.8 hours in the home and 21.4 at paid work.

“With school involvement, I’m probably 80 percent and she’s 20 percent. But with family life involvement, I think we split it pretty well,” said Dominick Bria, 44, of Stamford. Bria, who has three children ­­­­­­­– one in college, one in high school and a third in middle school — has been active in parent-teacher organizations for several years, in addition to working in sales full time.

Being a father in 2013 is totally different than it was in the mid-80s, when he was his children’s age, said Bria.

“What’s different today? My dad loved us no question, but he didn’t listen to us about things that were school-related. The teacher was always right, and that’s not the case anymore. Now kids have a say,” Bria said. “I never remember parents being as involved as they are today — mom or dad. I don’t remember that at all.”

Walsh said when he first made the decision to stay at home with his children after his daughter’s birth in 2000, his own father resisted the idea.

“A lot of people were not big fans of it. Thirteen years ago, it was very rare,” Walsh said. “It was odd. You’d get strange looks and strange comments from people. Back then the economy wasn’t bad either, so people would wonder why I would stay home.” It’s better now that it’s a bit more typical, he said.

It can be financially tough sometimes to rely mainly on his wife’s paycheck from her job as a professor at a local community college, but the benefits of being there for his children’s first words and steps outweigh the financial stresses, he said.

And having the mother as the primary breadwinner is becoming more and more commonplace. In 1960, 3.5 percent of married moms with children under age 18 took that role for their families; in 2011, it was up to 15 percent, according to Pew.

“Nobody ever laid on their death bed wishing they had more money. They wished they had more time or they’d done more things,” Walsh said. “And those things for me, I get to do them. They say you can give a man a fish and he’ll have food for a day, or you can teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life. I get to teach my kids to fish every day.”

Similarly, Holleman and Bria said they place their children’s needs first simply because they want to be there for them as a trusted guide through life.

“I really think it’s fun to be around them, and to watch them be friendly with their friends, watch them grow and learn to do different things,” Holleman said. “I get to get a firsthand look … to watch them become the people that they are.”

And someday, they might just be dads themselves ­– the kind who aspire to give in the style of their own fathers.

“About three weeks ago, I realized my son wants to be me. He wants to do everything I can do,” Walsh said. “He wants to fix cars with me, fix things and use my tools and that’s kind of neat. It was probably one of the scariest moments I’ve ever had when I realized that, but also one of the most rewarding.”

maggie.gordon@scni.com; 203-964-2229; http://twitter.com/MagEGordon; http://facebook.com/TrendingWithMaggieGordon

Trending: Where the Single Dads Live

Friday, June 14, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments(6)
|
|

singledad

Fathers across the nation have stepped up the amount of time they dedicate to raising their children, when compared to dads from previous generations — a trend you can read all about in Sunday’s newspaper. But while the typical dad has tripled the number of hours he spends caring for his children every week since 1965, there’s still one group of dads that tends to surpass all the others in the amount of time they devote to their young ones: Single dads.

Across Southwestern Connecticut, there are thousands of homes where a single father is the only caregiver for children under the age of 18. Check out how common it is in your town here:

Trending: Why We’re Driving Less

Wednesday, June 5, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments(1)
|
|

After decades of faithful attachment to our cars, using vehicles for everything from driving to work to lulling babies to sleep, Americans’ habits are shifting.

From 1970 on, the number of miles Americans traveled in their cars, trucks and SUVs increased by about 1.8 percent every year, as the attachment grew steadily — until 2004 when the average distance driven fell for the first time, according to Ben Davis, a policy analyst with Pioneer Group and author of the non-profit’s recent report “Transportation and the New Generation.”

Since 2004, the amount of miles driven by the typical American has decreased by 6 percent. While the shift can be seen in most age brackets, the millennial generation seems to be responsible for the largest share of the decline, Davis said.

“Back 30 and 40 years ago, people wanted to move out to the suburbs. The American Dream was a suburban area with a white picket fence and all of that,” Davis said this week.

“Now younger people want to live downtown, in places where they can walk, where there’s a lot going on, and there are friends within walking distance,” he said. “That’s not to say there aren’t people who live in suburbs, but there is a shift.”

Here in Southwestern Connecticut, a generational difference is easy to see in many towns.

Take Fairfield, for example. The suburban neighborhood with a buzzing downtown district and close proximity to Metro-North’s railroads has the largest generational shift in the region: While 74.7 percent of employed Fairfield residents between ages 45 and 54 drive to work, only 48 percent of 16-24 year olds do so. That leaves a 26.7 percent gap between the generations.

Stamford has the second largest gap, followed by Redding and Bridgeport.

There are several reasons for the change. Between 2001 and 2009, the number of miles traveled by 16-34 year olds on public transit increased by 40 percent, and they were more likely to ride bicycles to work, citing the environment and fitness as reasons for their choices, according to Davis.

Then there’s technology.

A study published by the car-sharing company Zipcar earlier this year declared that millennials are likely to place more value on their phones than their cars — if they have a car. According to the findings, 65 percent of millennials say losing their phone or computer would have a greater negative impact on their daily lives than losing their car. And one in four members of the generation said transportation apps on their phones have reduced their driving frequency; that’s twice the rate of those over age 45.

“There are some people who have totally dropped a car and they don’t even know how to drive. But I think what technology and a few other things have done is instead of a car being the sole way of transportation, it’s become one option for many people,” Davis said.

For 23-year-old Nicole Portera, who moved from her native Fairfield to Milford a year ago, and takes the train to work in New York City every day, leaning on mass transportation simply gives her the ability to use that technology to complete tasks ‑ and even get some needed relaxation.

“I like that I can read or take a nap or answer emails, things I couldn’t do if I was driving,” said Portera. “I also really hate traffic to the point where if I am driving somewhere and there’s traffic I’ll take back roads to get to where I’m trying to get to. I don’t have to deal with that when I’m on the train.”

In addition to using commuting times to multitask, the technology itself is curbing the need to be onsite for work and social reasons. Now apps such as Facetime, and websites such as Facebook mean people can be social without being in the same spot. And the Zipcar study found that 47 percent of millennials sometimes opt to spend time with their friends online instead of driving to see them.

danburyThat’s no surprise to Brandon Dufour, general manager of All-Star Driver, a Connecticut-based driving school with more than 60 locations.

“I’m 30 now, and I remember clearly the day I turned 16,” Dufour said. “I went to the DMV and waited in line for my permit. And that’s pretty rare now. There aren’t many 16 year olds that are doing that.”

In 1983, 46.2 percent of 16-year-olds and 68.9 percent of 17-year-olds had their licenses, according to a recent study written by Michael Sivak, director of the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan. In 2008, those numbers dropped to 31.1 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

Over the past several years, Dufour said he has noticed his teenage clients beginning the driving process a couple years later, at 18 or 19. Sure, there’s the technology factor, he said, with teens having less of a need to drive themselves since “their mom or dad is willing to drive them when they need to go somewhere, and when they don’t need to go somewhere, they have plenty of alternatives to help them be social.”

Dufour also attributes some of the change to the new driving laws, which went into effect in 2008.

The new laws in Connecticut mandate that drivers under age 18 log 40 hours of on-the-road training before receiving their license, and limits who can be in the car with them after they become licensed.

“Having a driver’s license was once seen as a mark of passage from being a teenager to putting one foot into the adult world,” said Bill Seymour, a spokesman for the Connecticut DMV.

“You were driving an expensive vehicle, and it was taking you places far beyond the immediate zone of your home. You were often alone in the car, or you were taking friends in the car. And it was that major step toward freedom,” Seymour said. “With the graduated driver’s licensing laws and some of the other restrictions such as no electronic devices, you really cut out the perception of it as being a right to passage, and it’s more like a hurdle that you have to get across. There are a lot of hurdles involved.”

As a result, Dufour said his company is “educating more 18 and 19 year olds now than we are 16 and 17 year olds,” signifying a big shift from years past.

And while the drop is most significant among younger drivers, with the average annual number of miles driven by 16-34 year olds decreasing from 10,300 in 2001 to 7,900 in 2009, it’s not strictly a phenomenon for younger people.
Charles Glaser, 70, lives in downtown Stamford and has traded in driving for walking and using his bicycle whenever he can. As an actor, he spends a good portion of his time commuting for auditions, which includes walking a few blocks, hopping on a train and hoofing it through Manhattan.

“If I didn’t have to have a car, I wouldn’t have a car,” said Glaser, who keeps his minivan so he can visit his children in Weston about once a week.

“I walk to the library. I walk to Tiernan’s, to the post office, to the Government Center, to the bank. I can walk everywhere,” he said. “I have to drive to the grocery store because it’s a mile away. But other than that, I enjoy walking.”

While Glaser makes it a point not to be reliant on his car, people in his age group are still more likely to drive themselves to work on a daily basis than younger folks. About 77 percent of Southwestern Connecticut residents over age 65 drive every day, compared with 65 percent of 16-24 year olds, according to census data.

And it seems the younger folks will continue this trend, altering the fabric of post-war American life, said Davis.

“We need to understand what this trend means and plan accordingly. We shouldn’t just keep building infrastructure, assuming the number of miles we travel will increase forever,” he said. “It probably won’t.”

maggie.gordon@scni.com; 203-964-2229; http://twitter.com/MagEGordon; http://facebook.com/TrendingWithMaggieGordon

 

Trending: Where the Veterans Live

Sunday, May 26, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments
|
|
Veterans salute the flag during the Memorial Day ceremony in Trumbull on Monday, May 28, 2012. The town is the only one in Southwestern Connecticut where more of its veterans served in the Korean War than any other ocnflict.

Veterans salute the flag during the Memorial Day ceremony in Trumbull on Monday, May 28, 2012. The town is the only one in Southwestern Connecticut where more of its veterans served in the Korean War than any other conflict.

Memorial Day is set aside every year to remember the lives sacrificed in service to the country. Typically, we celebrate with parades, hot dogs and flag waving, not to mention various events put on by veterans in our communities, who are an integral part of the day in most areas.

We looked through census data to see which towns across Southwestern Connecticut have the largest percentage of living veterans.

Across our 31 towns in our area, there are more than 58,000 living veterans, according to data from the 2011 American Community Survey, a report completed by the U.S. Census Bureau. That accounts for roughly 7 percent of the adult population here, which puts the saturation of veterans in our backyard at slightly less than the 9 percent national average.

Here in Southwestern Connecticut, most veterans served during the Vietnam War era, which stands in line with the national trend. In fact, there are only two towns where the most-common time frame for service was in a different conflict: In Trumbull, more veterans served in the Korean War and in Westport, more veterans served in World War II than any other.

Check out where the veterans live here:

Trending: Where We Spend the Most on Students

Tuesday, May 21, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments
|
|

The U.S. Census Bureau released a report Tuesday that showed the per-pupil expenditure across the nation decreased in 2011, for the first time since the bureau began collecting the data in 1977. On average, districts across the country spent $10,560 per pupil that year, down 0.4 percent from 2010.

96367000We checked out public records of what districts here in Southwestern Connecticut spend per pupil. The most recent data available from the State was from 2010, and it shows that all but one town in our area spent more than $10,560, as well as the roughly $10,600 spent on average in 2010. In fact, the per-pupil spending in several towns wasn’t far off from double that figure.

According to the census, “the top spenders were New York ($19,076), the District of Columbia ($18,475), Alaska ($16,674), New Jersey ($15,968) and Vermont ($15,925).” While Southwestern Connecticut didn’t have any towns with higher rates than New York or D.C., there were several that outspent Alaska. The same wasn’t true on the flip side.

The five states with the lowest per-pupil expenditure were Mississippi (7,928), Arizona ($7,666), Oklahoma ($7,587), Idaho ($6,824) and Utah ($6,212). But the 2010 numbers for Southwestern Connecticut show there isn’t a single district below the $10,000 mark, nor would there be with a 0.4 percent reduction.

Trending: Where the Renters Live

Tuesday, May 14, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments
|
|

Across the nation, renters account for more than one in three residents of occupied housing units, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. But here in Southwestern Connecticut, the rate is a little bit lower at 28.8 percent.

If we were to compare the national rate of renters with the rate in a local community, Norwalk would be the one town in Southwestern Connecticut that comes closest to sharing the national profile. In Norwalk, 34.9 percent of occupied housing units are home to renters, while 65.1 percent are home to owners, making the city just slightly more renter-heavy than the nation, which hovers at 33.9 percent.

While there’s nothing incredibly out of the ordinary about the number of percentage of renters in Southwestern Connecticut when compared to the national figures, the growing share of renters in towns like Norwalk is climbing at a much faster rate than it is nationally. In 2005, only 38.6 percent of Norwalk’s occupied units were home to renters, but an addition of thousands of units to the rental market between then and 2011 helped push Norwalk ahead of the national average.

Similarly, other local cities have seen their rental rates increase at a faster rate than the rest of the nation between 2005 and 2011, according to census data, including Bridgeport, which has climbed from 51.1 percent to 55.4 percent and Stamford, which inched up a bit more slowly from 42.3 percent to 43.6 percent.

But what is it that keeps the overall share of renters in our area so low when such a large share of residents in the area’s biggest cities are renters? It’s those tiny towns, holding down the fort for owners. Fourteen of the 31 towns in Southwestern Connecticut have an 85 percent share of owners or greater, including the town of Easton, where only 2.6 percent of residents are renting.

Trending: When Women Become Moms

Saturday, May 11, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments
|
|

FAIRFIELD – Marisa Torrieri Bloom sat on the kitchen floor of the house she rents in Fairfield, knees crossed and bending over, as she lifted a blue and green spoon to her 10-month-old son’s lips. It was dinner time in the Bloom household, and since her son, Nathan, was feeling under the weather, Bloom took the banana puree to a place he would be more comfortable than his high chair where he usually eats.

Marisa Torrieri Bloom spends some time with her son Nathan, 10 months, after work at their home on Andrassy Avenue in Fairfield, Conn. on Wednesday May 8, 2013. The Bloom family is part of a trend where couples are waiting until later in life to have children.

Marisa Torrieri Bloom spends some time with her son Nathan, 10 months, after work at their home on Andrassy Avenue in Fairfield, Conn. on Wednesday May 8, 2013. The Bloom family is part of a trend where couples are waiting until later in life to have children.

“I never thought this would be my life,” said Bloom, 37, who is originally from Silver Spring, Md., but spent her late 20s and early 30s living in New York City.

“If you’d told me a few years ago that right now I would be in Fairfield County about to buy a house with a little baby, I would have thought that was the most boring thing ever,” she said.

It doesn’t seem so boring this Mother’s Day. These days, it’s pretty blissful — and a little stressful, when she factors in her full-time writing job and part-time gig as a guitar teacher. And after worrying whether she would be able to have her first child at age 36, Bloom said she is thrilled to have Nathan and her husband Zack by her side.

Here in Southwestern Connecticut, women have children later in their lives than in most other parts of the country.

The Bridgeport-Stamford Metropolitan Statistical Area — which covers the same ground as the footprint of Fairfield County — has the second highest percentage of 35- to 50-year-old mothers in the nation. In total, census data shows that a little more than 36 percent of Fairfield County mothers who gave birth within a recent year were in that age bracket, lagging slightly behind the No. 1 metropolitan area: Boulder, Colo.

Nationally, the figure is much lower, at about 20 percent, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“I’ve been working in the Stamford area since 1995, and we have many women who are 35 to 45 having children — not necessarily their first child — but many women having a child then,” said Dr. Elisabeth Aronow, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Fairfield County OB-Gyn, who spends most of her time practicing in Stamford and Darien.

Darien’s rates of new moms between ages 35 and 50 are even higher than the Fairfield County norm. Of the 25 towns in Southwestern Connecticut with at least 100 births in a recent year, the town had the second highest percentage of moms in that age bracket, at 64 percent. It was barely outranked by New Fairfield, where 66.9 percent of births were to women between ages 35 and 50.

Part of the reason there is such a high percentage of older women having babies is likely because women begin the motherhood process at a much later age in Connecticut. While Aronow noted that not all children delivered to an older mother will be the first child in the birth order, the most recent data available from the National Center for Health Statistics shows Connecticut and New Jersey were tied for having the second-oldest average age of a mother at first birth in 2006, at 27.2 years old, just behind Massachusetts’s 27.7 average age.

That year, the average age across the nation was 25, but while the NCHS said there are no more current figures for state-by-state breakdowns, the national average has continued to creep up slowly in recent years, to 25.4 years old in 2010 — a trend that a NCHS spokesman said is likely to be mirrored in Connecticut.

The reason for older moms in the Nutmeg State is multifaceted, but in a paper published by the Pew Research Center on Friday, Gretchen Livingston, a senior researcher at the Washington, D.C.-based “fact tank” wrote that a record share of new moms are now college educated, which can have a significant effect on the age at which mothers give birth.

In 2011, roughly two out of three mothers had at least some college education, up from about one in two in 1990, according to Livington’s report.

“And I would expect that in more affluent areas, where women have more education, it’s not a surprise that they would tend to be older when they have babies,” Livingston said Friday morning.

Fairfield County women, on the whole, are more educated than women across the nation. In this area, 39.7 percent of women who are 18 or older hold at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 25.7 percent nationally.

Not only does earning a four-year or advanced degree often lead to delaying a marriage or the decision to become parents by several years simply to make time for education, there is also a high correlation between well-educated couples and the traditional order of marriage followed by parenthood, Livingston said.

Especially in Southwestern Connecticut.

“A number of people wait,” Aronow said. “Having children is one along the list of things to be ready for. It’s ‘We need our dog. We need our house, and then we can consider having children . . . I think there are many people around here with that Type-A personality, and everything has a time and an order for it to fit in.”

Marisa and Zack Bloom, both of whom hold a master’s degree, followed that order in their relationship, and after beginning to date in May 2008, when Marisa was 32, they found the pressure mounting to kick things into high gear. They were married in August of 2010, and began trying to conceive after about a year.

“I was very tense about the fact that I would be getting married at 34, and 35 was like this number I had in my head: ‘Must start before I turn 35. Must start before I turn 35.’ So I feel like it did start getting more prominent in the back of my head,” Marisa Bloom said.

“I mean, my parents were at my throat. They were like, ‘You know, we had two kids by the time we were 33,’” she said with a laugh.

When Marisa was born in 1976, the average age for a mother to give birth for the first time was 24.6 years old, and her mother was a few years older than that. Nathan is the first grandchild for Marisa’s parents in Maryland, and Zack’s parents who still live in Wilton where he grew up.

The pressure didn’t seem as heavy for Zack, who is seven years younger than his wife, and celebrated his 30th birthday last summer.

“I never had any pressure. I just knew I didn’t want to be an older dad when my kids were in high school and college, and I knew that people around here get married later, so this is more normal,” he said. “I’m a high-energy person, so I wanted to be able to play sports and be an active father with my kids. And in my late 20s and early 30s, I figured then I would be in my late 40s or early 50s when they’re in high school and college, so I could still be cool.”

The timing worked out for the couple, who said they plan to begin trying for a second baby in a few months, when Marisa has finished nursing Nathan.

“It’s funny, like would I space it out if I could?” Marisa asked. “That’s such a hard question to answer, because I don’t have the option of not spacing it out. But it’s good, fortuitous, that I want to try this summer because there really is no other choice.”

It still comes as a shock to Marisa when she examines her life from the outside. After living in the New York City bubble for so many years, where she felt like she was “living in an ageless place,” she still has trouble realizing she is 37 already — and that life is more baby gates and feeding time than Brooklyn bars and concerts.

“Life actually began for me when I was 30,” she said, spooning out another dose of the banana puree, some of which had made its way into her long blonde hair, courtesy of Nathan’s sticky fingers.

“We just had an offer accepted on a house in Fairfield,” she said. “It’s weird because now I feel like I really am a grownup. I have the house, a kid, a husband. It’s like it’s all complete.”

maggie.gordon@scni.com; 203-964-2229; http://twitter.com/MagEGordon; http://facebook.com/TrendingWithMaggieGordon

Trending: Where the Working Moms Live

Thursday, May 9, 2013 by:Maggie Gordon
Comment
Comments(4)
|
|

WorkingMom

Mother’s Day is coming on Sunday, and in honor of the holiday, we decided to take a peek at mothers around Southwestern Connecticut to get a sense for how they compare to mothers across the country.

Nationally, about 6 in 10 new mothers are a part of the labor force, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Here in Connecticut the rate is a bit higher, at 66.9 percent. But you’ll find a lot of variation from town to town — some that you would expect, and some that you wouldn’t. For instance, would you have guessed that working moms are actually less common in Stamford than they are in New Canaan?

We picked through census data to compare the rates of working mothers across the 31 towns in Southwestern Connecticut, but there were a few towns we had to leave off the list, due to a low number of births, which could skew the numbers (Easton, Monroe, Redding, Seymour, Sherman and Weston all had fewer than 100 births registered in the newest census data set and were left off the analysis). On the whole, Southwestern Connecticut lined up with the national trends; 14 of the 25 towns had a higher percentage of working moms than the national average.

But there were also some outliers. Across America, there is only one state with fewer than half of new moms in the labor force: Utah, with 49.1 percent. But here in Southwestern Connecticut, there are six towns with figures even lower than Utah’s, including Westport, which had the fewest working new mothers at 34 percent.

Stay tuned for a special Sunday edition of Trending in this week’s paper for more on motherhood in Southwestern Connecticut!

Page 1 of 41234