What does it tell us about America’s future when the just-released CDC report reveals that for the eighth straight year, more than 40 percent of births occurring in the U.S. have been to unmarried women — that’s more than 1.6 million annually. To put that into perspective, unwed births jumped from 3.8 percent in 1940 to 10 percent in 1969; then they doubled to 20.3 percent by 1983 and grew to 30.1 percent by 1992. Since 2008, the percentage has ranged from a low of 40.2 percent to a high of 40.8 percent in 2010. Since then, it has gradually and marginally declined but has remained above 40 percent (40.2 percent in both 2014 and 2015).
Despite the stresses that go with growing up in poverty and the fact that those children living in a home with only one parent are three to five times as likely to live in poverty as those living with both parents, there are still many people who are blasé about these percentages — claiming that family structure is irrelevant as long as the child is surrounded by “love.” Scholars and social scientists who do not have an ideological axe to grind understand that these numbers are tragic for the future of the vast majority of those children, their mothers, and the nation. Evidence continues to accumulate at a shocking rate that a married mom-and-dad family is not just better for raising children, but the absolute best family structure for nurturing children to be well-adjusted, productive adults, for women’s well-being and equality, and for producing a citizenry, society and culture that is the necessary foundation for a successful nation.
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