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Fewer Tennessee kids living in married homes
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NASHVILLE (AP) — Fewer Tennessee children live in homes with married parents and more children are living with a single parent or with a grandparent compared to a decade ago, newly released census data shows.The state-level data reflects broad, gradual changes to the structure of American families as divorces have increased, marriages are on the decline and couples are putting off marriage until later in life, experts say.According to the data released by the U.S. Census Bureau this month, 58 percent of children lived in a married family household in Tennessee in 2010, which includes remarried parents and stepfamilies. That's down from 64 percent in 2000.Laura Carpenter, associate professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University, said the declining rate of children living in married households is not surprising."Nuclear families are not as typical as we think they are," said Carpenter. "They haven't been typical for a while particularly because of high rates of divorce."Increasingly, children are living in single-parent households, which rose from 25 percent in 2000 to 28 percent in 2010 in Tennessee.