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Whoa, I am out of the loop/information. > By 1990 the [out-of-wedlock birth] rates were 64 percent for Black infants, 18 percent for whites. WOW, so in 1990,

Whoa, I am out of the loop/information. > By 1990 the [out-of-wedlock birth] rates were 64 percent for Black infants, 18 percent for whites. WOW, so in 1990, 64% and nearly 20% of births of those groups were (ok, we are grouping here and it might not be totally true) fatherless? I mean, I have a relative with a out-of-wedlock birth, but dad is being a dad and they just do not want to get married right now. I wonder if those stats from way back took those cases into account? Still, those numbers seem pretty high. Am I out of touch?

jstanley 4y ago
Given that the only out-of-wedlock birth you know is not in fact fatherless, why do you assume that almost all out-of-wedlock births are fatherless? I think it's more likely that people just aren't getting married.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Me and my two brothers are all out of wedlock births...to two parents who have been happily unmarried for over 30 years.
- readingnews 4y ago
  I literally was not assuming that. That was part of my question... I wonder if they take into account the ones that are NOT fatherless, just not getting married.
iso1631 4y ago
As you say, just because you aren't married doesn't mean you aren't a nuclear family, and even if you aren't married it doesn't mean there's no father.
Bostonian 4y ago
For the U.S. in 2020, "Percent of all births to unmarried women: 40.5%" https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/unmarried-childbearing.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/unmarried-childbearing.htm
bombcar 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_absence#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_absence#United_States > Based on the 2018 U.S. Census Bureau 11 million single parent households, 80% of them are fatherless, breaking down to 1 in every 4 children born; totaling a percentage of 81.5%. Out of that 81.5% that were raised by single mothers, 34 % were poor, 26.8 % were jobless the entire year, and 30.3 % suffered from food insecurity; ⅔ of theses families were white, ⅓ were black, and ⅓ were Hispanic defined. It did not take into account the 53% of American Indians and Alaskan Natives as well as the 17% Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders children recorded within these single parented homes.
- 55555 4y ago
  Those racial numbers are correct, but might be misleading if not looked at in the context of the population size of each race. It's an issue that cuts across all races though: a quarter of white children, a quarter of hispanic children, and nearly 3 quarters of black children are currently born to single mothers.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yep, it's a very serious issue with no easy answers.
  - gammarator 4y ago
    If you control for income, though, out-of-wedlock birth rates for black and white mothers are now very similar, though. “Our Kids” by Robert Putnam is a good summary.
    - efitz 4y ago
      Is this cause or effect? Unmarried motherhood has a very high correlation with poverty but I always assumed that poverty was the effect, not the cause.
      - bombcar 4y ago
projektfu 4y ago
They're lower than the current statistics, but overall births are going down and yet the fertility rate of married women is much higher than the fertility rate of unmarried women. It's a complicated picture. There are likely lots of cohabiting parents but also lots of families with various levels of paternal involvement. The statistics obscure more than they show, I think.
- derefr 4y ago
  > and yet the fertility rate of married women is much higher than the fertility rate of unmarried women. It's a complicated picture. Doesn't sound complicated to me? People think of "get married and have kids" as a single, atomic life stage. People not only wait to have kids until they get married; they wait to get married until they're ready to have kids. But really, it's not that either of those is the blocking factor per se; rather, they just don't identify yet as being "an adult" of the kind that gets married and has kids — i.e. they don't think that they're yet at the maturity+stability threshold that they observed the previous generation of "adults" as having while growing up. (One crucial factor in that model per the current generation modelling on the previous generation: "can I buy a house to have a family in?" Keeps getting more out-of-reach!) Until they pass this threshold into whatever their mental-schema-model of adulthood entails, they will probably continue to think of themselves as "a young adult" — a very accessible concept in our culture — even well into their 30s. "Young adults" don't get married or have kids; they just work for a living, have fun in the evenings, and try to find someone to cohabitate with. As long as people identify more closely with the "young adult" schema they've built than the "adult" schema, the "young adult" things are all they'll do. Once they do pass this threshold and identify as "an adult", though, they're fine with doing the things that "adults" do. (One thing that makes this narrative/hypothesis compelling, to me, is that in cultures that place an emphasis on religion + family values + etc, where there isn't really a concept of a "young adult", people are much more willing to both get married and have kids as soon as they're teenagers — because by doing so they aren't skipping a societally-glorified "young adult" stage, but rather just stepping into the stage they expect to come next after teenagerdom: "adulthood".)
- anovikov 4y ago
  Interesting. If we correct for this factor (increase of proportion of out of wedlock births), how does the dynamic of fertility of married vs unmarried women look like over years? Is it still decreasing, or is the whole decrease of overall fertility is explained by increase of proportion of unmarried women? If so, decline in fertility is not a bad thing at all.

jstanley 4y ago

Given that the only out-of-wedlock birth you know is not in fact fatherless, why do you assume that almost all out-of-wedlock births are fatherless? I think it's more likely that people just aren't getting married.

XorNot 4y ago
Me and my two brothers are all out of wedlock births...to two parents who have been happily unmarried for over 30 years.
readingnews 4y ago
I literally was not assuming that. That was part of my question... I wonder if they take into account the ones that are NOT fatherless, just not getting married.

iso1631 4y ago

As you say, just because you aren't married doesn't mean you aren't a nuclear family, and even if you aren't married it doesn't mean there's no father.

Bostonian 4y ago

For the U.S. in 2020, "Percent of all births to unmarried women: 40.5%" https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/unmarried-childbearing.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/unmarried-childbearing.htm

bombcar 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_absence#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_absence#United_States > Based on the 2018 U.S. Census Bureau 11 million single parent households, 80% of them are fatherless, breaking down to 1 in every 4 children born; totaling a percentage of 81.5%. Out of that 81.5% that were raised by single mothers, 34 % were poor, 26.8 % were jobless the entire year, and 30.3 % suffered from food insecurity; ⅔ of theses families were white, ⅓ were black, and ⅓ were Hispanic defined. It did not take into account the 53% of American Indians and Alaskan Natives as well as the 17% Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders children recorded within these single parented homes.

55555 4y ago
Those racial numbers are correct, but might be misleading if not looked at in the context of the population size of each race. It's an issue that cuts across all races though: a quarter of white children, a quarter of hispanic children, and nearly 3 quarters of black children are currently born to single mothers.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yep, it's a very serious issue with no easy answers.
- gammarator 4y ago
  If you control for income, though, out-of-wedlock birth rates for black and white mothers are now very similar, though. “Our Kids” by Robert Putnam is a good summary.
  - efitz 4y ago
    Is this cause or effect? Unmarried motherhood has a very high correlation with poverty but I always assumed that poverty was the effect, not the cause.
    - bombcar 4y ago

projektfu 4y ago

They're lower than the current statistics, but overall births are going down and yet the fertility rate of married women is much higher than the fertility rate of unmarried women. It's a complicated picture. There are likely lots of cohabiting parents but also lots of families with various levels of paternal involvement. The statistics obscure more than they show, I think.

derefr 4y ago
> and yet the fertility rate of married women is much higher than the fertility rate of unmarried women. It's a complicated picture. Doesn't sound complicated to me? People think of "get married and have kids" as a single, atomic life stage. People not only wait to have kids until they get married; they wait to get married until they're ready to have kids. But really, it's not that either of those is the blocking factor per se; rather, they just don't identify yet as being "an adult" of the kind that gets married and has kids — i.e. they don't think that they're yet at the maturity+stability threshold that they observed the previous generation of "adults" as having while growing up. (One crucial factor in that model per the current generation modelling on the previous generation: "can I buy a house to have a family in?" Keeps getting more out-of-reach!) Until they pass this threshold into whatever their mental-schema-model of adulthood entails, they will probably continue to think of themselves as "a young adult" — a very accessible concept in our culture — even well into their 30s. "Young adults" don't get married or have kids; they just work for a living, have fun in the evenings, and try to find someone to cohabitate with. As long as people identify more closely with the "young adult" schema they've built than the "adult" schema, the "young adult" things are all they'll do. Once they do pass this threshold and identify as "an adult", though, they're fine with doing the things that "adults" do. (One thing that makes this narrative/hypothesis compelling, to me, is that in cultures that place an emphasis on religion + family values + etc, where there isn't really a concept of a "young adult", people are much more willing to both get married and have kids as soon as they're teenagers — because by doing so they aren't skipping a societally-glorified "young adult" stage, but rather just stepping into the stage they expect to come next after teenagerdom: "adulthood".)
anovikov 4y ago
Interesting. If we correct for this factor (increase of proportion of out of wedlock births), how does the dynamic of fertility of married vs unmarried women look like over years? Is it still decreasing, or is the whole decrease of overall fertility is explained by increase of proportion of unmarried women? If so, decline in fertility is not a bad thing at all.