It didn’t become fashionable, it became profitable.
I remember a congressman saying on the floor of the house once, he]] they are retired at 18, who can beat a deal like that. He was describing the benefit package for an unwed mother.
My initial reference was to the “Murphy Brown” tpe situations, liberate, career women who wanted a baby but not the ‘nuisance’ of the husband.,
But the more dangerous is the ‘unintended consequences’ of the “Great Society.” That was a major turning point in the downslide of the USA, amidst all the tumoil of the 60s. Now you have third/fourth generation who’ve figured out that scam.
A woman I once worked with always railed about her granddaughter’s mother: younger than 30, had something like 7 kids with God knows how many fathers. This woman was never quite sure the girl was her granddaughter, but paternity was acknowledged. That young woman spends the day watching soap operas with her mother whose path she had followed. When the aforementioned granddaughter @ age 9 mentioned that mom should stop having all those babies, the mother threatened the child with abandonment (shipping off to the other grandmother who had become fully disabled and was unable to help raise her granddaughter).
The system that rewards that lifestyle has to end.