Births to Unwed Mothers Reaches All-Time High

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this week that births to unwed mothers in the U.S. during 2007 reached an all-time high of about 40 percent. More than three-quarters of these women were 20 or older.

Data showed that more babies were born in the United States in 2007 than any year in the nation's history — 4.3 million births — topping the peak during the baby boom 50 years earlier. CDC officials noted that, despite the record number of births, this is nothing like what occurred in the 1950s, when a much smaller population of women were having nearly four children each, on average. Today, U.S. women are averaging 2.1 children each.

David Popenoe, founder and co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, called the rise in births to unwed mothers bad news and one of the greatest family changes of our time. "Children born out of wedlock tend to have a much harder time in life on average than children born in wedlock," he told Family News in Focus. "I wish we as a nation were speaking out more forcefully against this trend." Popenoe added that many of these out-of-wedlock births are the children of people who are cohabiting. "We know that those people are going to break up at a much higher rate than married couples." In 1940, only about 4 percent of births were out of wedlock. [OneNewsNow.com]