In medical school, we were taught between 1 in 10 and 1 in 7 babies in Ontario was illegitimate in the sense that the biological father was different than the “perceived” father. Americans were supposedly shocked in the 1960s by the fact blacks had an illigitimacy rate of 26%. I have heard more recently that the rate for American whites now exceeds 26% and that of blacks is around 32%. Are these numbers accurate? Does it make any difference?
I come from one of those minority areas. The girls there aren’t having kids to keep the man around - they’ve probably been raised by a single mother, or seen plenty of friends and neighbors become single mothers. They know perfectly well that the fathers frequently don’t stick around.
Many of these girls don’t use birth control because they want to get pregnant. Some of them see it as a rite of passage, some of them just want someone to love. A few (much fewer than the Republicans think, but more than the Democrats like to admit) do it for the welfare benefit. There are any number of reasons, really.
Back to the OP - I never heard of illegitimacy being defined by the whether the father was “real” or “perceived”. But if you’re asking about out-of-wedlock births, I can answer your question. According to CDC statistics in 1998, the most recent year for which data are available, the rates for percentages of births to unmarried women were as follows:
White (non-Hispanic): 21.9 %
Black (non-Hispanic): 69.3 %
Hispanic: 41.6 %
Native American: 59.3 %
Asian/Pacific Islander: 15.6 %
For an overall rate of 32.8%.
Hell, I usually go Democrat (I label myself as a “liberal”.) and I don’t doubt that there are morons who have kids strictly for the welfare benefits. I work retail, and let me tell you-there are all kinds of stories about this very issue on Customer’s Suck-having kids for the welfare benefits. Which disgusts me to no end.
I think maybe the 1 in 10 to 1 in 7 number applied to cases where the spouse was cheating on their current spouse and the higher number was out of wedlock. Not sure, though.
Yeah, that was just a generalization, Guinastasia.
By way of comparison here’s the official stats from a few other countries:
Ireland (1998) - 28.3 %
England and Wales (1998) - 38 %
Scotland (1998) - 39 %
Northern Ireland (1998) - 28 %
Australia (1997) - 28%
So as you can see, the US seems to be pretty average in this regard.
Yes, we all know there are no middle-class white deadbeat dads. :rolleyes: