• Young people report that they can turn to their parents for advice (68 percent strongly agree) 
  • few are terribly worried about their relationships with their parents (18 percent very worried).
• The connection to family is stronger among youth with married parents (71 percent strongly agree that they can turn to for advice) than young people with unmarried parents (63 percent strongly agree they can turn to for advice
• After family, religion and sexual preference rank second and third as a way youth would like to describe themselves.
• 33 percent of young people say they are very worried about finding a job (60 percent very and somewhat worried) 

• "Busters" are those born between the years of 1965 and 1983. Currently, Busters are ages 23 through 41.  
• Among the 32 factors examined in the research, eight of them related to such topics as extramarital sex, pornography, homosexuality, and sexual fantasies.
  • In all eight of these areas, Busters were significantly different from older Americans.
• Busters were twice as likely to have viewed sexually explicit movies or videos
  • Two and a half times more likely to report having had a sexual encounter outside of marriage
  • Three times more likely to have viewed sexually graphic content online.
• Busters were more likely than older adults to say that in the past month they had used illegal drugs and had gotten drunk. (Smoking rates, however, were comparable between the generations.)
• Busters were twice as likely as their parents’ generation to use profanity in public, to say mean things about others behind their back, to tell something to another person that was not true, to do something to get back at someone who hurt or offended them, to take something that didn’t belong to them, and to physically fight or abuse someone.

In 1970, only 15 percent of Americans 25 to 29 were unmarried. Now nearly half are, according to 2005 census numbers. Census statistics suggest that young adults living in states where there is a high cost of living and a competitive career market often wait longer to marry. Statistics also show that today's young adults are making less, when adjusted for inflation, than people their age did 30 years ago.

Americans have become less likely to marry and this is reflected in a decline of 50% from 1970 to 2004

Read more from The State of Our Unions Survey