No husband? No problem! How having babies before marriage is now 'usual' for Millennials with no college degree
For less educated Millennials, waiting until marriage to have babies is now 'unusual'.
According to a study from Johns Hopkins University, which looked at data from a sample of 9,000 'early adults' aged between 26 and 31, 74per cent of mothers and 70per cent of fathers with no college degree had at least one child outside of marriage.
'It is now unusual for non-college graduates who have children in their 20s to have all of them within marriage,' sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin told Hub.
A study from Johns Hopkins University, which looked 9,000 'early adults' aged between 26 and 31, 74per cent of mothers and 70per cent of fathers with no college degree had at least one child outside of marriage
'Clearly the role of marriage in
fertility and family formation is now modest in early adulthood, and the
lofty place that marriage once held among the markers of adulthood is
in serious question,' he added.
The study, which used data from the
National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and was published in Changing
Fertility Regimes and the Transition to Adulthood: Evidence from a
Recent Cohort, shows that the percentage of unwed pregnancies rises as a woman's education level declines.
Mothers with four or more years of college tend to wait until marriage before giving birth (68per cent) followed by mothers with one to three years of college (33per cent), and mothers with a high school diploma (29per cent).
Lastly, among mothers with no high
school diploma, only 13per cent waited to get married before they had their first child.
'If marriage retains its place anywhere it would be among the college graduates...they do not begin to have children until after they are married'
'The
literature on early adulthood often suggests that this period can be a
valuable time of self-exploration free of adult responsibilities,' Mr
Cherlin said.
'But this characterization would seem to better apply to well-educated, middle-class early adults with their typically long period of college attendance, perhaps followed by graduate school, and their postponement of childbearing until after marriage.
'If marriage retains its place anywhere it would be among the college graduates, because most of them do not begin to have children until after they are married,' he explained.
'The difference between them and the non-college educated with regard to the percentage of births within marriage is so striking as to suggest a very different experience of early adulthood.'
Overall, by age 31, 53per cent of the women had given birth to at least one child, and 64per cent of those mothers had at least one baby when they weren't married.
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