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The Daily Signal
Nearly Half Of
American Children Don’t Have Married Parents. Here’s Why It Matters.
Grace Carr
October 18, 2018
For the first time in U.S. history, out-of-wedlock births in America
are largely a result of cohabitation, according to the United Nations
Population Fund 2018 State of World report released Wednesday. Single
mothers had nearly 90 percent of out-of-wedlock births in 1968, but
that number decreased to 53 percent in 2017, according to the Pew
Research Center.
“Compared to children of married parents, those with cohabiting parents
are more likely to experience the breakup of their families, be exposed
to ‘complex’ family forms, live in poverty, suffer abuse, and have
negative psychological and educational outcomes,” according to the
Institute for Family Studies (IFS).
Roughly 14 million American adults cohabited in 2007, and that number
rose to 18 million in 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Half
of cohabiting couples in the U.S. are younger than 35, according to
Bloomberg Quint. Cohabitation has increased about 2,000 percent since
1960, according to the American Enterprise Institute.
Two-thirds of U.S. adults said increasing numbers of single women
raising children by themselves was bad for society, according to a 2015
Pew Research Center survey. Nearly 50 percent of those surveyed also
said greater numbers of unmarried couples raising children is not good
for society, according to Pew.
Children with single parents have the highest rates of poverty followed
by children living with unmarried, cohabiting parents, the IFS reported.
Between 2006 and 2010, 23 percent of births to married women were
unintended while 51 percent of births to unmarried cohabiting women
were unintended. That number rose to 67 percent for unmarried women not
cohabiting.
Two-thirds of cohabiting parents split up before their child reaches
age 12, while only a quarter of married parents divorce, according to
an April 2017 Brookings Institution report.
Over 40 percent of married mothers and fathers have a bachelor’s
degree, according to a March 2016 U.S. Census Current Population
Survey. Only 8 to 10 percent of cohabiting mothers and fathers with one
or more biological child have a bachelor’s degree.
Children living with their biological cohabiting parents are also more
than four times as likely to be physically, sexually or emotionally
abused as kids living with their married parents, according to the
Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect.
Married parents are on average older, better educated, and earn more
money than their unmarried cohabiting peers. Some scholars have
suggested awarding tax bonuses of upwards of $4,000 per child in order
to incentivize people to marry before having children.
Since 1990, marriage rates have also continued to decrease, while those
that do marry are delaying.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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