10 Ways American Childhood Has Changed

You may have recently seen a striking statistic: the sharp decline in the proportion of small liberal arts college students who pay the full sticker price for their education.

In 2012, 41 percent of those who attended a liberal arts college in the top 50 of the U.S. News rankings paid full freight. In 2022, the figure was 36 percent, a small but noticeable decrease. The decline was far steeper at the next tiers of schools, those that are more desperate to attract students. Among those ranked 51 to 100, 15 percent paid full price in 2012; 10 years later, the figure was just 3 percent. Among those ranked 101 to 150, 2 percent.

No wonder these colleges go out of their way to try to recruit students from more affluent families.

Several years ago, Mark Kantrowitz, a leading authority on student financial aid, reported that the students most likely to pay full sticker price attended Ivy League and other highly selective private colleges and public four-year schools. Using 2015 IPEDS data, he found that 56 percent of Harvard’s undergraduates, 48 percent of Yale’s and 42 percent of Princeton’s paid full price.

According to IPEDS, at the University of Michigan today, 40 percent of all undergraduates receive no grants or financial aid. At UT Austin, the comparable figure is 48 percent. It’s not a surprise that in terms of family income, these institutions are not especially diverse.

In stark contrast, students at HBCUs—which, of course, charge much lower tuition—were about half as likely to pay full price as compared with students at other public or private nonprofit four-year colleges and universities. These institutions dedicate a much higher proportion of their resources to financial aid.

Wait a second. Isn’t it striking that the very institutions with the greatest financial resources have the lowest share of students who need financial support? As the old Laugh-In catchphrase had it: “Verrry interesting!”

Let me shift gears and turn to a not wholly unrelated topic: the changes in American childhood that will have a powerful impact on college life in the years ahead. The essential point is that the student body of the future will have greater needs—financial and otherwise—and that our institutions need to take steps now if they are to better serve these students.

How, then, has childhood changed over the past half century? Let me count the ways.

1. Children make up a much smaller share of the U.S. population. Children made up 35.7 percent of the population in 1960 compared to 22.1 percent in 2020. Whereas a slim majority of households in 1960 (51 percent) contained at least one child, the overwhelming majority of households today (71 percent) contain no children. As a result, the United States is less child-centered and more adult-focused than it used to be.

2. Childless households are now the norm. In 1960, almost half of all households were families with children under 18. Today, over 70 percent are living without children. One likely consequence: a society that cares more about the elderly and less about the young.
3. Fewer women bear children. It’s estimated that about one in four of today’s young women will never bear a child, compared to one in 10 during the baby boom era and one in six currently. According to a 2018 survey, only 40 percent of men and 33 percent of women said that having children was essential to living a fulfilling life. The declining birth rate is greatest among those women with higher incomes and more education.

One likely consequence: a student body with greater financial needs. Another implication: the share of women and men approaching retirement age without children to help care for them is expected to rise steeply. That’s yet another reason to think that society will increasingly fixate on the older population, not upon children.

4. Over half of all children (53 percent) are children of color. That compares to 26 percent in 1980. When demographers speak of a racial generation gap, they’re referring to a divide rooted in differing backgrounds and cultures. This leads me to wonder if the older generation is going to be as willing to invest resources in a generation that less and less resembles them.
5. Parents are, on average, much older than in the recent past. Whereas the average age at first birth for women in 1970 was 21.4, today it’s 30. Delayed childbirth means that mothers tend to have more education and greater financial security than in the past. But older parents also tend to treat their children as more fragile and vulnerable and are much more willing to intervene on their behalf, whether in K-12 schools or college. In other words, prepare yourself for even more parents who will advocate aggressively for their children’s interests.
6. Growing up with two married biological parents is no longer the norm. Roughly 40 percent of births take place outside of marriage, and over half of all today’s children spend a part of their childhood in a single-parent household or with unmarried cohabiting parents. Since cohabiting partners are, on average, substantially less willing to invest financially and emotionally in their partners’ children and often have children of their own living with another partner, families may have less money to invest in a college education.
7. Family relationships are more complex and diverse than in the past. One child in six lives with a stepsibling, a half sibling or an adoptive sibling. A higher proportion (21.2 percent) have a stepparent or partner who has had children with more than one person. More than one in five (22 percent) are only children, double the 11 percent in 1976. Over a third (35 percent) live with a relative other than a parent or sibling (typically a grandparent, aunt or uncle) by the age of 18. Lacking a well-defined set of norms about how complex families should operate, it seems likely that a growing share of those entering college will not be able to rely on a high level of family support.
8. Most children experience a major disruption in their family arrangements during their childhood years. A majority of children experience either a parental separation, divorce, a shift in partners or a parent’s death before their 18th birthday. About half live at some point with a mother’s cohabiting partner. Young people are resilient, and it’s certainly much better to live with a happy parent than in a conflict-riven, loveless or abusive home. Still, many entering students will bring various psychological and emotional issues to college that will need to be worked through.
9. Childhood experiences are increasingly stratified along class, racial and ethnic lines. Gaps by race, ethnicity and class in income, wealth, job and housing stability, and family structure have never been wider. Among the consequences: Black, Latino/a and lower-income students regardless of race or ethnicity are more exposed to parental separation, father absence and a parent’s repartnering and are less likely to receive parents’ financial support if and when they go to college. These issues are not irrelevant to student success, and colleges and universities will need to devote more resources to providing the stability that students need if they are to persist and graduate.
10. A substantial majority of children grow up in families that are dysfunctional in one or more ways. Surveys that ask adults whether, as children, they witnessed or experienced domestic violence; verbal, sexual, emotional, physical or psychological abuse; drug addiction; alcoholism; estrangement and alienation; or physical or emotional neglect report very high rates of what social scientists call adverse childhood experiences. The most reliable and representative studies have found that nearly 70 percent experienced at least one such stressful, potentially traumatizing event and over 20 percent had experienced four or more. Over a quarter reported living with a problem drinker or alcoholic or drug abuser, and 28 percent of women and 16 percent of men reported experiencing childhood sexual abuse.

A recent CDC survey that reported an epidemic of teenage depression and anxiety also reported sharp increases in physical and emotional abuses and other adverse childhood experiences. When these young people arrive on campus, they need to receive higher levels of understanding, support and mentoring than institutions have provided in the past.

We’re all vulnerable to self-deception, delusion and magical or wishful thinking, and it’s all too easy for faculty to fall prey to the illusion that our only responsibilities are narrowly academic. But students don’t arrive on campus unscathed. For some, the problems are mainly financial, but for many others, the challenges that they confront are more holistic, with intense emotional and psychological dimensions. Our campuses will never have sufficient resources to provide the level of services that our students need, which make it all the more essential that faculty do much more to serve not only as instructors, but as mentors.

There’s a term, cicerone, once used to describe the guides who introduced young upper-class British men to Italian art and architecture. Now, the word sometimes designates the beer equivalent of a sommelier. Faculty, I think, need to reimagine their role and think of themselves more like a cicerone.

Almost all of us who made it in the academy owe a huge debt to a mentor who guided us, counseled us, inspired us and stood behind us. That person was our second mother or our second father. I know no better way to repay that debt than to pay it forward by paying back in kind.