The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Even more on out of wedlock births

Re: Even more on out of wedlock births

Victoria — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:31:15 -0000

I've gotta get to work, but I'll drop two anecdotal stories on you:

1. My cousin's 28-year-old daughter is pregnant and unmarried. But she and the baby's father are MBA grads, in a committed relationship, raising his son from a previous marriage, and planning to tie the knot when she can once again fit in a small, cute dress (only half joking about the dress).

2. Another cousin and her family (joined by their church and me) for years have been helping a single mother of SIX out-of-wedlock children, several of whom she can't even identify the father. We haven't had the guts to come out and ask how on earth she could get pregnant over and over again, by one no-count man after another (believe me, the ones we can identify as fathers are indeed no-count), and give birth to children she has no means of raising properly.

It is only by the grace of God that my cousin found this family -- otherwise those kids might be just more statistics: dropouts, aimless, in trouble, begatting more out-of-wedlock children. Now, one lives with my cousin's family, and attends the same private school (on scholarship) that her son attends. The rest come over on weekends, and get a glimpse of life they would have seen only on The Cosby Show: middle-class black family with all the requisite details that "middle class" implies: loving, married husband and wife; two respectful, smart, goal-oriented children; church on Sunday; athletic events that Mom and Dad attend/coach; doting grandparents. Thanks to my cousin, her policeman husband, and the rest of our family, these wonderful kids are going to summer camps, to outings around town, and talking about staying in school so they "can live like Aunt Debbie and Uncle Daryle." I call my cousin St Debbie.

But I digress. All this to say that, yes, the statistics can be misleading (witness Cousin #1). But there is still far too much truth in the numbers -- and the devastation behind those numbers.

Re: Even more on out of wedlock births

alkali — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:25:27 -0000

T-N.C.: "I'd love to hear a take on why that would be..."

My guess:

1) Relatively good economic times means better job prospects, which discourages having children

2) Social norms evolving under pressure of self-interest, which is a longwinded way of saying that young people see what the previous generation did, and on that basis modify their behavior to avoid doing things that they suspect will make them unhappy

Re: Even more on out of wedlock births

zak — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:22:32 -0000

It seems like the missing piece of data here is the trend in the rates of marriage, in the black community & outside it. How does the percentage of black women (to keep it simple) who are married today compare with 20 years ago, or 50?

Re: Even more on out of wedlock births

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:53:52 -0000

Saw that Brookings piece. But we according to the CDC data, the actual birth rates for unmarried black women has actually declined. I'd love to hear a take on why that would be...

Re: Even more on out of wedlock births

Kiril — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:45:36 -0000

Here's a Brookings paper from 1996 that has data on black and white out-of-wedlock births rates from 1965-1985. Black rates down 9.3%, white rates up 6.2% to 1985. Brookings blames reductions in shotgun weddings.

http://www.brookings.edu/papers/1996/08childrenfamilies_akerlof.aspx

My guess is rates are linked to the marriageability of poor fathers. If people feel like they can't afford to get married, they don't, although they remain sexually active. And simultaneously, the kinds of habits that make people more prosperous make childbirth less likely. Birth rates go down when prosperity increases all over the world.

Re: Even more on out of wedlock births

Kerry — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 11:25:59 -0000

Is there any way to find numbers about the number of children born out of wedlock but raised in wedlock? It seems like a lot fewer couples are rushing to get married before a baby is born these days and instead opting to get married afterwards (at least among the white people that I know). If you combine that with a trend towards only one or two children per family, you can see how that 70% number could get fairly misleading.

Re: Even more on out of wedlock births

alkali — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:13:33 -0000

A table on page 59 of this PDF has births-per-thousand data going back to 1980: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_06.pdf

A table on page 26 of this PDF has some further births-per-thousand data going back to 1969:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr48/nvs48_16.pdf