More than half of young mothers give birth out of wedlock

More than half of young mothers give birth out of wedlock
By KAREN UHLENHUTH
The Kansas City Star


Think of it as a new “normal” in American family life.

After creeping slowly and steadily upward most of the last 50 years, the number of babies born to young unmarried women quietly crossed a troubling threshold in 2006.

For the first time in a half-century of record-keeping, a majority of babies born to women younger than 30 were out of wedlock.

That year, women such as Sara Bell of Lexington, Mo., delivered 50.4 percent of the children born to those under 30, according to Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University in Boston.

Last week, the nation got a reminder that unwed pregnancies can happen anywhere when Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin announced that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant. The family said Bristol will keep the baby and marry the baby’s father.

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http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/785681.html

Nothing to do with morality... everything to do with economics.

A woman having a child alone is subject to all of the economic cruelties of the current "Hooray for me and fuck you" attitude. The safety nets are gone, and if a woman doesn't have family support, she is screwed. Not every woman having a child without a partner is truly alone, but enough of them to constitute a disaster.

Every woman who has a child - even in marriage - is doing the most economically dangerous thing she can do. Divorce can make her a single parent, and all the stats show women fare worse in divorce if kids are involved.

If the standard of living of a large number of women goes down, it effects the economy as a whole.

None of this, of course, even touches on the real human suffering involved.

Read "Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Going Broke", by Elizabeth Warren, if you need a downer on the subject.

I don't wring my hands and despair about our country going down the shitter because of unwed mothers, but until we have some kind of safety net, moms without partners are in real danger.

I don't feel like I am in any "danger". What's the big deal?

You in this world. No problemo then.

To the point that I am assumed to be unmarried until I state otherwise.
Although I don't necessarily think that a couple should marry just because they have a baby, I think that they should consider it. One of my husband's friends' girlfriend recently had a baby and are living together. My husband asked if he was considering marrying her, which she wants. He said that although he loved her. He really didn't want to be tied down. In our opinion, having a baby already ties you down.

They have two kids together. He has two from a previous relationship and she has a son from a previous relationship. When asked about marriage, niece's boyfriend said that it's a big step. I made the comment to my sister, "and having a baby isn't a big step."

All I know is that if I had teenage daughters I'd rather have Michelle Obama as their role model than Sarah Palin.

How did they come up with this 50%+ number? Did they survey a representative sample of new mothers? Or did they just look at the public record - i.e., birth certificates?

California used to report any child whose birth certificate showed different last names for mother and father as having been born out of wedlock. This changed when a state legislature - Jackie Spier, IIRC - noticed that her newborn was counted as an out-of-wedlock child because she did not have the same last name as her spouse.

It's becoming more acceptable for single parents to raise childern, people who do marry are marrying later - there are probably many reasons why patterns are changing.

married first is always a good idea, but that's just me.

Interesting point about different last names being assumed to be an out-of-wedlock birth. I didn't change my last name when I got married, and I'm not quite the only one out there. I'd have to dig up copies of my kids' birth certificates to see if it actually indicates the mother and father were legally married to each other.

1. It's becoming more normal for people in long-term partnerships to delay or forego getting married. Any kids still gain the advantages of parents in a long-term relationship.

2. Marriages, judging by their failure rate, are not a promise of a lifelong two income household. Any woman contemplating motherhood should know she may have to go it alone, including the married ones, because divorce or death of the spouse are always possible future options.

3. As a society, we need to be doing more to increase the earning capacity of women and providing better support for working mothers. Expecting individual men to fill in the economic and social gap is not reasonable in many cases, nor is blaming the mothers when that does not happen.

Isn't he the one who considers out of wedlock birth the moral decline of our society? It's weird how a Republicans 17 year old daughter getting pregnant can turn this country into the twilight zone, Republicans are all of a sudden sounding liberal and liberals are sounding conservative.

is disturbing. Medical advancements allow women to carry children safely at pretty much any age they chose now. These young women not taking advantage of all life offers them and us missing out on what they can offer is what's really sad.

Embracing Bristols pregnacy as the repug party did upset many women! Listening to the mothers at the gym, they are very angry over the message it sent out to thier young daughters. I did not hear any positve remarks about Palin at all, and ladies of all ages were discussing her.

There is nothing wrong with having children without getting married first.

Having children too young, or with someone you later split up with, is usually (not always) a very bad idea both for you and for them.

And both of those correlate with not being married.

In itself, it means nothing.