The Rest of the Story
More from the State of the Union:
“...the number of children born to teenage mothers has been falling for a dozen years in a row.”
That’s a good thing. But there’s still a marriage crisis, and part of it is related to birth rates among unmarried women: Births to unmarried mothers reached a record high of almost 1.5 million and made up 35.7% of all births in 2004. Unmarried births made up the majority of Black (69.2%) and American Indian (62.3%) births, nearly half (46.4%) of Hispanic births, and 23.5% of Caucasian births. Source: Marketing to Women (Kaplan, 2006), p.3.
This phenomenon of course has many social effects, not the least of which is the increase of children born into poverty. More from the NYT on marriage and birth rates here.
“...the number of children born to teenage mothers has been falling for a dozen years in a row.”
That’s a good thing. But there’s still a marriage crisis, and part of it is related to birth rates among unmarried women: Births to unmarried mothers reached a record high of almost 1.5 million and made up 35.7% of all births in 2004. Unmarried births made up the majority of Black (69.2%) and American Indian (62.3%) births, nearly half (46.4%) of Hispanic births, and 23.5% of Caucasian births. Source: Marketing to Women (Kaplan, 2006), p.3.
This phenomenon of course has many social effects, not the least of which is the increase of children born into poverty. More from the NYT on marriage and birth rates here.
Comments
#1 2006-07-18 11:53 (Reply)
“This is the free market talking. It’s the Argos-catalogue approach to family life in which wanting is sufficient justification for having.” In her Guardian commentary (http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1821002,00.html) on recent relaxations in UK legislation, Yvonne Roberts warns IVF for single women will turn family life into a consumer choice. We should pity the children. Where are the arguments that set limits on consumerism? How do we defend natural law in democracies who deny its existence? Acton has an important role to play, I look forward to your contributions in this area!