Posted on 02/20/2012 8:04:28 AM PST by bigbob
It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.
Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.
Among mothers of all ages, a majority — 59 percent in 2009 — are married when they have children. But the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.
One group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. That is turning family structure into a new class divide, with the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education.
“Marriage has become a luxury good,” said Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Just think of all the lesbos having children. We are in the hand basket....towards hell.
This current culture is sick, sick, sick.
[Does this trend represent a new tipping point?]
We are hitting a bunch of tipping points, this is just one ofthem.
I think you have just given me the title for a new book.
This is the end result of the whole “sexual revolution” of the ‘60s and ‘70s.
So we have normalized illegitimacy, and the whole host of problems spawed by that.
I have heard of studies, which don’t get much press, that children raised in intact, married couple households, have the best outcomes, in terms of education, staying out of trouble with the law, and the whole area of becoming well adjusted responsible adults.
Those same surpressed studies indicate that children raised in single parent homes are much more prone to the whole range of social pathologies, such as drug use, teen pregnancy, dropping out of school, and getting in trouble with the law.
I say those studies are surpressed because, as society has become more liberal, we’re not supposed to talk about the difficulties involved with children raised outside of traditional families. Per liberal ideology, that would be passing judgement on that situation, and liberalism calls on us to be non-judgemental of situations such as illegitimacy.
I didn’t read this whole article, but, is there anything in there that talks about the difficulties of raising children outside traditional families, or does the article take a non-judgemental approach? I would bet on the latter.
I’ve been noticing this trend for the past decade or more. This is happening in middle class America, not just in the inner cities or in lower income families.
Have the baby, then think about marrying the baby daddy later. No one seems to have a problem with this anymore...sigh
Mission accomplished.
So there we have it! If ever a 'Government Study' was needed, this should be the subject matter. In the meantime, voluntary single parenthood should be discouraged by whatever means available. This is a result of the Leftist trait of being 'non-judgemental.' The h*!! with that, let's be judgemental and try and put society back on track again.
The convoluted thinking in that article gave me a migraine
It used to be that men felt a responsibility to support, care for and teach values to their children. This is no longer true among young people. The second was marriage was a sacrament and the vow “for better or worse till death do you part” was taken seriously. No marriages were perfect, but both partners put in the effort to make them work. People did without, families scrimped and saved and children all helped around the house.
Today young people have been poisoned with victim mentality and entitlement mentality. They don't want to make a commitment to anything. Government handouts encourage single women to sponge off the taxpayers. The popular culture poisons them with the message of self-gratification and using other people. Divorce is so common and so unfair to men that most men don't want to be providers anymore.
The marriage rate for college graduates has also gone down. People with traditional values are becoming a smaller percentage of young people.
This trend continues to accelerate.
You hit the nail on the head.
We’re supposed to be liberal and non-judgemental about this situation.
We are in a far different world now than the old days. I know that there were some difficulties in the old days, in which some young people were compelled by social pressures that they “had to get married” if the girl was pregnant.
But my answer to that is: is our current way of dealing with this issue really an improvement??????
The interesting question is: How many of those unwed mothers are on welfare? Wrong incentives, again?
This is simply the result of sin. Sin is growing more and more because it’s appears to be acceptable. It is not.
I had a child when I was 25 out of wedlock. I knew it was a sin. I asked God for forgiveness. I got married and had my second child when I was 29.
The only thing they will stop this is if Christians share the God grace to everyone everywhere.
We live in a broken world. I pray for us all. Children deserve better then single moms and dads.
I think that the way that sex permeates the whole culture is a factor too.
Back in the old days, most people supported the idea that sex outside of marriage was wrong. I know that many people crossed those lines in the old days, but there was still a line to cross.
Nowadays, the whole culture sends the message that sex is okay, with any number of partners, any gender of partners, and that marriage has nothing to do with it.
Sexual expression is taken as some kind of civil right nowadays.
How people think about sex is a factor because of the way the babies are conceived.
What I wonder is, in an era of readily available birth control, why do we still see so many unplanned pregnancies? Or are many of these pregnancies planned outside marriage?
Whatever the case, I’m clealy just not “with it” anymore, as I see what’s happening in the culture.
Where is dad? Well, in the instances where there is even a fait clue as to who he is, he is in another class room.
I have not heard the term “unwed mothers” in years.
Probably that sort of language is offensive to liberals. The liberal view being, that it suggests that a mother should be married. But that is a value judgement, and we can’t have value judgements in our social policies. (sarcasm)
Met a woman about 12-13 years ago who had a cat. As I was sitting there the cat meowed and she smacked it on the head. Not long after that I heard she felt her biological clock was running out so she decided to have a child and become a single mother.
Hey, no problem, the “state”, i.e. we the taxpayers, will be supporting all these kids.
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