Carol Morello reports for The Washington Post, May 1, 2013, that the latest Census Bureau report shows that single motherhood, while on a steady uptick since the 1940s, has accelerated in recent years. The birth rate for unmarried women in 2007 was up 80% in the almost three decades since 1980. But in the previous five years alone, between 2002 and 2007, it was up 20%.
Today, more than six out of 10 women who give birth in their early 20s are unmarried. Overall, 36% of all births in the United States were to unmarried mothers in 2011, the year that the census analyzed from answers provided in the American Community Survey.
Other findings from the report:
- There are harp discrepancies in single mothers related to income, education and race.Women with college degrees and higher household incomes are far less likely to be single mothers than are women who have lower household incomes and less education.
- In Washington, D.C., more than half of all births, 51%, were to unwed mothers. Maryland also had a higher rate than the national average, with 39% of all births out of wedlock.
- Asian mothers were the least likely to be unmarried, with just 11% of new Asian mothers being single.
- White single mothers also were below the national average, at 29%. Among
- 43% of all new Hispanic mothers were unmarried.
- The highest rate of unwed single mothers is among blacks: 68% of all African American women who had recently given birth were unmarried.
Study after study has shown that single motherhood is a recipe for poverty, which means more and more U.S. children, especially black children, are growing up in poverty.
And for that, there’s no one to blame but pop culture, the welfare state that replaces men as breadwinners, and the women themselves.
The Census Bureau attributes the long-term increase in single mothers in large part to changing norms for sexual behavior and a decrease in marriage rates.
H/t FOTM’s Wild Bill Alaska for the pic.
~Eowyn
