{"id":55175,"date":"2013-05-15T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2013-05-15T17:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=55175"},"modified":"2013-05-07T23:33:54","modified_gmt":"2013-05-08T04:33:54","slug":"single-mother-meet-jobless-man-the-connection-between-unemployment-and-unmarried-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2013\/05\/15\/single-mother-meet-jobless-man-the-connection-between-unemployment-and-unmarried-parents\/","title":{"rendered":"Single Mother, Meet Jobless Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0The Atlantic<\/a>\u00a0and Family Inequality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Census Bureau has a\u00a0new report<\/a>\u00a0on nonmarital births. Based on the American Community Survey \u2014 the largest survey of its kind, and the only one big enough to track all states \u2014 the report shows that 35.7 percent of births in 2011 were to unmarried mothers.<\/p>\n

Beneath the headline number, two patterns in the data will receive a lot of attention: education and race\/ethnicity. I have a brief comment on both patterns.<\/p>\n

Education<\/b><\/p>\n

The education patterns show a very steep dropoff in nonmarital births as women\u2019s education increases. From 57 percent unmarried among those who didn\u2019t finish high school to just nine percent among those who have graduated college.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Given the\u00a0hardships<\/a>\u00a0faced by single mothers (especially in the United States<\/a>), it looks like women with more education are making the more rational decision to avoid childbearing when they\u2019re not married. And I don\u2019t doubt that\u2019s partly the explanation. But we need to think about marriage, education and childbearing as linked events that unfold over time. The average high-school dropout mother was 26, while the average college-graduate mother was 33. Delaying childbearing and continuing education are decisions that are made together, based on the opportunities people have. And completing more education increases both the\u00a0likelihood of marriage<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0earning potential<\/a>\u00a0of one\u2019s spouse.<\/p>\n

So I think you could tell the story like this: Women with better educational opportunities delay childbearing, which increases their marriage prospects, and makes it more likely they will be married and financially better off when they have children in their 30s.<\/p>\n

Race\/Ethnicity<\/b><\/p>\n

The differences in nonmarital birth rates between race\/ethnic groups in the U.S. are shocking, from about two-thirds for black and American Indian women to 29 percent for whites and 11 percent for Asians.<\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This pattern is related to the education trend, naturally, but that\u2019s not the whole story. One aspect of the story is race\/ethnic geography of opportunity in this country. I\u2019ve written before about the\u00a0shortage of employed men<\/a>\u00a0available for women to marry, a particular expression of racial disparity first popularized by sociologist William Julius Wilson a\u00a0quarter century ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Using the new numbers on nonmarital birth rates for each state from the Census report, I compared them to the male non-employment rate \u2014 specifically, the percentage of unmarried men ages 22-50 that are not currently employed. Here\u2019s the relationship:<\/p>\n

\"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The states with more single men out of work have higher rates of nonmarital births. Single mother, meet jobless man.<\/p>\n

My conclusion from these patterns is that unmarried parenthood is primarily a symptom of lack of opportunity, especially for education and employment. Surely that\u2019s not the whole story. Maybe we should be persuading people to\u00a0marry younger<\/a>\u00a0or shaming them into\u00a0avoiding parenthood<\/a>. But I think those approaches increase stigma more than they change behavior or improve wellbeing \u2014 Pew\u00a0surveys show that 77 percent of people already say raising a family is easier if you\u2019re married and only 12 percent of single people say they don\u2019t want to marry. So who needs convincing? Meanwhile, if we addressed the problems of education and employment, is there any doubt family security and stability would improve, and with it the wellbeing of children and their parents?<\/p>\nPhilip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality<\/a>. You can follow him on Twitter<\/a> or Facebook<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0The Atlantic\u00a0and Family Inequality. The Census Bureau has a\u00a0new report\u00a0on nonmarital births. Based on the American Community Survey \u2014 the largest survey of its kind, and the only one big enough to track all states \u2014 the report shows that 35.7 percent of births in 2011 were to unmarried mothers. Beneath the headline number, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,55,2088,272,285,1758,1759,1760,1754,1757,76],"class_list":["post-55175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-education","tag-gender","tag-gender-marriagefamily","tag-marriagefamily","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-american-indiansaboriginals","tag-raceethnicity-asianspacific-islanders","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-latinos","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55175"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55239,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55175\/revisions\/55239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}