Per the attached MSNBC article discussing Moniyhan’s report on the Black family 40 years ago relative the the situation today, one third of ALL (black, white, hispanic etc) new births are to single females. Is this necessarily a worrisome thing? If it comes to the point that one third or more of all children are raised in single mother households will the pathologies that afflicted the black single mother households ripple across these households as well?
Reading the linked article it’s not totally clear to me if the statistics refer to births to single or to unmarried women - the article seems not to make that distinction. If it’s the latter - well, in Sweden more than half of births are to unmarried mothers, and it doesn’t look like Sweden is going to the dogs.
On the bright side, maybe certain people won’t try to blame this on homosexuals wanting to get married… Also, if the notion that spouses should be in love undermines the institution of marriage, then the institution isn’t worth dirt.
I read that too and did an immediate WTF? What are they talking about?
Good point. Per your note I found an article discussing just that issue.
As this is from a to be published book there’s no text to reference, but in looking at the context of things being discussed I’m guessing that this relates to the (fairly recent) notion of leaving or dissolving a marriage when the parties are no longer in (romantic) love, even there are children involved.
very good point tschild. I don’t know if its still the case, but California used to assume that you were unwed if you had a different last name than the father or the baby (that’s somewhere in Coontz’s “The Way We Never Were” which I don’t have access to right now). Meaning both my children (I kept my maiden name) would be counted.
My cousin is expecting her first. She is 22, will graduate before delivery as an RN. She has been cohabitating for two or three years with a guy she has been with for five or six years. He is apparently looking forward to being a dad. I don’t think the birth was planned, and I don’t doubt they will get married in a year or so (will it last is another question) unless the baby significantly changes the dynamics of the relationship for the worse, but she isn’t single.
Yeah, I’ve known two couples that have had unplanned births and are living togeather to raise the child despite not being married. One couple intends to marry, but wanted to wait until they were on financially more stable ground. The other couple didn’t marry until later because it made it easier to get help from the state if they looked single on paper.
Another women I knew stayed “single on paper” when her partner and hers child was born because she had friends back in Vietnam and she wanted to enter a sham marriage with someone there so that they could come to the U.S.
It would be interesting for a study to find what precentage of single moms are really single.
I agree. I spent a few minutes puzzling over the difference between “single” and “unwed” moms, because I’ve always considered myself both, interchangeably. Yet, I’m in a long-term, committed, living-together relationship with the father of my youngest son. So I guess I don’t qualify as “single,” but if some government form asks, that’s what I usually check.
(Actually, I’m divorced, so that makes it even messier. I’ve been divorced for 8 years, and my oldest child is 3. I just call myself single, implying that I am not currently married to anyone.)
I suspect that the number of truly “single” moms, meaning those who are not involved in a relationship with the father of the child, is far lower. Most, I would wager, are moms who are involved with or living with a partner, just not married to him.