For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage

Talk about women taking their lives into their own hands!! This is what happens when there's no moral guidance. 

LORAIN, Ohio — 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.

This is not good for the future of those kids who are growing with one parent. Their chances in life has been minimised greatly.

But the demographics of such a "phenomenon" has shifted, as we can see:

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. 

Well, how could they finish a four year college, if they got pregnant!!! And here it's the brake down of the figures:

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. 

So this is a generational change? You can see that this will be a generation of kids who will be short of the opportunities they would have otherwise in a complete family.

The shift is affecting children’s lives. Researchers have consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problems. 

There are some mothers who intentionally bring children to the world, without a father, and they are now paying the price. Wait, not them, their children!!

And as in all issues, there are two sides of the issue:

The forces rearranging the family are as diverse as globalization and the pill. Liberal analysts argue that shrinking paychecks have thinned the ranks of marriageable men, while conservatives often say that the sexual revolution reduced the incentive to wed and that safety net programs discourage marriage.

Well, liberals are happy to have a group of men who are effeminate,  while the conservatives, don't take into consideration that even men inside the church are not as strong as they used to.

There are towns that are suffering for lack of jobs for the men.

Over the past generation, Lorain lost most of two steel mills, a shipyard and a Ford factory, diminishing the supply of jobs that let blue-collar workers raise middle-class families. More women went to work, making marriage less of a financial necessity for them. Living together became routine, and single motherhood lost the stigma that once sent couples rushing to the altar. Women here often describe marriage as a sign of having arrived rather than a way to get there. 

Meanwhile, children happen.

Like I said, conservatives don't take into consideration those issues, and I think they don't understand them, since they are mainly well to do.

The issue is so bad, and the lines of risk are divided along racial lines:

Large racial differences remain: 73 percent of black children are born outside marriage, compared with 53 percent of Latinos and 29 percent of whites. And educational differences are growing. About 92 percent of college-educated women are married when they give birth, compared with 62 percent of women with some post-secondary schooling and 43 percent of women with a high school diploma or less, according to Child Trends. 

If these figures are correct, Blacks will never, ever, get out of poverty as a group. This is something that conservatives ignore, since when it comes to abortion, they don't take into consideration that due to poverty, people take the decision to abort their child. And it's the black community who aborts the most, and who gives birth the most outside marriage. This is bad for their community.

But for those who say they want to wait until they feel sure about getting married, I have some bad news for you:

Almost all of the rise in nonmarital births has occurred among couples living together. While in some countries such relationships endure at rates that resemble marriages, in the United States they are more than twice as likely to dissolve than marriages. In a summary of research, Pamela Smock and Fiona Rose Greenland, both of the University of Michigan, reported that two-thirds of couples living together split up by the time their child turned 10.

Well, this may happen over here in Australia as well, where so many people just "shack up" together, and live, have kids, and then separate.

But the whole issue, I think, is summed up in the coming paragraph:

Even as many Americans withdraw from marriage, researchers say, they expect more from it: emotional fulfillment as opposed merely to practical support. “Family life is no longer about playing the social role of father or husband or wife, it’s more about individual satisfaction and self-development,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University. 

Yes!!! And there's a great movement to redefine the meaning of marriage as well. Once the roles are thrown out, only selfish fulfilment is expected.  Marriage is only for self-development? Marriage is not something to cherish but only a tool to get ahead in life. No wonder so many people don't care if same sex marriage happens!!!

Read the whole of the article. This trend is truly alarming.