More surprising, perhaps, than the current difficulties of traditional marriage is the fac

t that marriage itself is alive and【B1】. As Skolnick notes, Americans are a marrying people:【B2】to Europeans, more of us marry and we marry at a younger age.【B3】, after a decline in the early 1970s, the【B4】of marriage in the United States is now【B5】. Even the divorce rate needs to be taken in this pro-marriage context: some 80 percent of【B6】individuals remarry.【B7】, marriage remains by far the preferred way of life for the vast majority of people in our remarry.

What has changed more than marriage is the nuclear family. Twenty-five years ago, the【B8】American family consisted of a husband, a wife, and two or three children.【B9】, there are many marriages in which couples have decided not to have any children. And there are many marriages where at【B10】some of the children are from the wife's【B11】marriage, or the husband's, or both. Sometimes these children spend all of their time with one parent from the【B12】marriage;【B13】they are shared between the two former parents.

Thus, one can find every type of family arrangement. There are marriages【B14】children; marriages with children from only the【B15】marriage; marriages with "full time" children from both the present and former marriage;【B16】with "full-time" children from the present marriage and "part time" children from former marriages. It is not all that【B17】for a child to have four parents and eight grandparents! These are【B18】changes from the traditional nuclear family.【B19】even so, even in the midst of all this,【B20】one constant: most Americans spend most of their adult lives married.

【B1】

A．surviving

B．thriving

C．booming

D．existing