I'm not sure what to make of this, but I think it is worth discussing. I am not an expert, have no background, and no formed opinion at this time, but it strikes me that this is an important issue for Liberals and Democrats to be addressing. This is being widely reported in papers, most but not all from one AP article, since the announcement yesterday that nearly 1.5 million babies were born to unwed mothers in the United States last year.
USA Today: Births to unmarried women hit record
Boston Globe: More unmarried women, but fewer teens, giving birth
Washington Post: Unwed Births Hit Record But Decline Among Teens
Seattle Post Intelligencer: Births to unmarried US women set record
Henry Herald: South leads nation in number of unwed mothers
Mobile Register: Alabama high in unwed mothers
From the
USA Today article:
"This is not a teenage issue," says Stephanie Ventura,. a demographer with the National Center for Health Statistics. "Women in their 20s are accounting for a huge percentage of these births."
The data show that 35.7% of all births were to unmarried women. Births last year to both married and unwed mothers totalled more than 4 million.
By age group, almost 55% of the births for mothers ages 20-24 were to unmarried women. For those between 25-29, almost 28% of the births were to single women.
Teenagers, who accounted for 50% of unwed births in 1970, accounted for 24% of unwed births in 2004.
Sarah Brown, director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, says she's thrilled about the decline in teenage mothers, but she worries about the trend for those ages 20 and above.
"It's not going in the right direction," she says. "The right direction would be non-marital childbearing in all groups to be going down."
Instead, the numbers of unwed births has increased slightly each year since 1990. But Ventura says "a steep increase in a short period" -- the last two years -- "caught our attention."
There was a general trend of decline in the rate of abortions and teen pregnancies during the 90's while Clinton was President after a steady increase during the 80s and early 90s under President's Reagan and Bush I (see "US Teen Pregnancy Statistics (PDF)). It is my understanding that this trend has ceased for abortions over the last two to three years and that the teen pregnancy rates while still declining nationally have grown in Southern states.
An interesting ranking from the year 2000 of state-by-state teen pregnancy rates is the following top 10 states:
- Nevada
- Arizona
- Mississippi
- New Mexico
- Texas
- Florida
- California
- Georgia
- North Carolina
10.Arkansas
Missouri is ranked 29th and that "liberal bastion" state of Massachusetts is ranked 40th.
As I stated in the beginning, I have no background on this issue, but it is apparent to me that this is an issue, which needs to be addressed.