A recent study released by Child Trends showed that more than four out of ten births, or 41 percent, were to unmarried women in 2013, and that a majority of births to unmarried women were to cohabiting parents.
The study stated that children born to unmarried mothers are “more likely to grow up in a single-parent household, experience unstable living arrangements, live in poverty, and have socio-emotional problems.” These children are also more likely to “engage in sex at a younger age, and have a birth outside of marriage,” the study explained.
Children born to cohabiting parents are also more likely to experience “higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage, an fare worse across a range of behavioral and emotional outcomes than those to married parents.”
The percentage of children born to unmarried and cohabiting parents has been increasing dramatically. According to the study, in 2002, the percentage was 40 percent; and between 2006 and 2010, it went up to 58 percent.
“What’s happened is the percent of nonmarital births within cohabiting unions has been increasing, but now it’s increased to the point where the majority of nonmarital births are to women that are cohabiting,” Sally Curtin, one of the report’s authors, told USA Today.
One of the goals of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PROWRA) was to reduce “the number of out-of-wedlock births,” and that “annual bonuses were awarded to states that reduced the percentage of births to unmarried women by the largest amount (without increasing abortions),” but no specific numbers have been set as of yet, the study stated.
