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Editorial
Paying for the death of the family
Friday, May 3, 2013
There's no reason to worry about the demise of the traditional family; it's already dead.
According to a report released by the U.S. Census Bureau, 62 percent of women age 20 to 24 who gave birth in the previous 12 months were unmarried.
In 2011, 4.1 million women reported that they had given birth in the last year. Of these women, 36 percent were unmarried at the time of the survey, an increase from 2005 when an estimated 31 percent of recent births were to unmarried women.
The American Community Survey division of the Census Bureau is interested in the information because it needs to help make projections to carry out programs required by law, such as child welfare.
It will make a difference.
According to the statistics, more than half -- 57 percent -- of women with less than a high school diploma in 2011, who gave birth in the previous year were unmarried. In contrast, only 9 percent of recent mothers with a bachelor's degree or higher were unmarried.
Sixty-nine percent of the unmarried women who gave birth showed household incomes of less than $10,000 per year, and only 9 percent came from households with annual income of $200,000 or more.
Recent moms who were native-born were more likely to be unmarried than women born outside the United States (39 percent compared with 24 percent).
Among black women who had a birth in the last year, 68 percent were unmarried. The corresponding percentages were 11 percent for Asians, 43 percent for Hispanics and 26 percent for non-Hispanic whites.
The states with the highest percentages of unmarried women with a birth in the last year who were unmarried include the District of Columbia (51 percent), Louisiana (49 percent), Mississippe (48 percent) and New Mexico (48 percent).
Among the states with the lowest percentage of unmarried recent mothers were Utah (15 percent) and New Hampshire (20 percent).
We're a generation or two beyond the changing mores promoted in the 1960s and 1970s, but we're paying the financial and social costs today.