Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Back in the early 70s I worked part time for a couple with 2 children. They said they had been together for 25 years. Everyone just assumed they were married. They owned a business, a home, and had children, but one day the woman told me they never never legally married because they did not believe in a government piece of paper. Still, they referred to each other as my husband or my wife.
Way back in the old days, they would have had a legal "common law" marriage. Very, very few states today recognize that. Maybe many of these unmarried cohabitating couples with children today are just harking back to the old days? The term "fiance" has just replaced the term husband or wife?
Can this be good for the country? Studies have shown that raising a child without a father is usually detrimental to the child in the long run.
That does not necessarily mean the Father is not living in the household or taking an active role in their life. If you were going to break this down for a study you can just throw marriage out the window. Instead:
1. Two parent household.
2. One parent household where both parent are taking responsibility.
3. One parent household where one parent is taking responsibility.
That does not necessarily mean the Father is not living in the household or taking an active role in their life. If you were going to break this down for a study you can just throw marriage out the window. Instead:
1. Two parent household.
2. One parent household where both parent are taking responsibility.
3. One parent household where one parent is taking responsibility.
There is enough evidence that cohabitating couples are in practice far less stable than married couples. Clearly not in all cases, but ON AVERAGE, married couples will last longer than cohabitating couples.
I would argue:
1. Two parent household where parents are married.
2. Two parent households where parent are not married.
3. One parent household where both parent are taking responsibility.
4. One parent household where one parent is taking responsibility.
5. Other (married couples with children from different marriages)
I would assume the "commitment and stability" of the relationship matters far more than the legal status of the relationship. Nothing magical happens when couples marry, but more stable and committed couples are more likely to marry.
The decline in the 2-parent married families wouldn't be cause for concern if people were replacing "stable and committed marriages" for "stable and committed cohabitation." But, all the evidence indicates that is not the case. Marriages aren't prefect, but the are better ON AVERAGE than any of the alternatives.
At the end of the day, it seems society should encourage childbearing inside a stable and committed relationship.
OP, out of wedlock only means no marriage before childbirth. It doesn't mean the father is not involved.
Very true, but that is most likely the case. I would say with my friends that maybe only twenty percent of them have the Father involved in the life of their child. Young men seem to have a harder time wanting to be a parent at a younger age than young women. Maybe it's because her bond is natural due to having to carry the child for nine months.
Can this be good for the country? Studies have shown that raising a child without a father is usually detrimental to the child in the long run. I am a "Millennial" man who is engaged and we decided to not have kids until we get married and it seems that we are no longer the norm. Why is this happening?
It's skewed due to the fact that most women who have births outside of marriage have traditionally been young. This creates a lot of issue with finances that make it difficult for a young woman to overcome. The thing is the youth birthrate is dropping a lot more women who are financially able to are having children outside of marriage. Whether or not those children will run into problems is hard to say. Although I doubt they will.
Being honest if you don't have your together you shouldn't have kids at all. Making mistakes in life when you are young especially having children can and when it comes to children usually will haunt you throughout your life. You have a child with someone who is abusive, is addicted to drugs and alcohol, and has mental health problems when you were young leaving that relationship doesn't solve the nightmare. In fact the true nightmare hasn't even begun since your child is very likely to have mental health issues like the father did since that is hereditary and is likely to be abusive as well as suffering from addiction.
Last edited by Oldhag1; 03-05-2015 at 08:50 PM..
Reason: Language
There have been a lot of good arguments made thus far, but there are reasons for this trend.
I would like to offer another reason that this is happening. First, Americans aren't as religious as we once were. There is less pressure to get married just because someone is pregnant. And I think this is a good thing. The divorce rate is dropping, and people are waiting to marry and make a life-long commitment to someone until they are old enough to know what they actually want in a partner. Sometimes that is the other parent of the child, sometimes it isn't.
I'll even give myself as an example right now. I am in my twenties and I have been in a relationship with a man I love for over two years. If I were to accidentally get pregnant right now, I would have the child. However, I see no reason to rush the wedding because of this. I would rather not have a massive belly in my wedding dress. I would like my wedding to be a celebration of love between me and my husband, not a rush job because I got knocked up.
And I know that is the way that a lot of millenials feel too. The average wedding in America costs over $25k and is planned for a lot longer than a month in advance. If people rush to get married, they risk losing what many expect to be the happiest day of their lives.
Another reason may be a bit greedy, but a lot of my generation doesn't have that much money to throw the wedding they want. This also means that they cannot set up a wedding registry and fully expect friends to come from out of town if the wedding is just thrown together. My closest friends are spread out between Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Washington DC, New York, and Boston. Most of us can't afford to be traveling for a wedding right now. So some of the though may be that if you wait until you are older, you will probably be able to afford a wedding much closer to your idea of the way, get better quality gifts, and increase the likelihood that more of your friends will be there.
And my final reason for why some of the better-off millenials may put off marriage even if they can afford it, is for tax reasons. In a household with two salaries, over an combined annual household income of about $75k-$100k, there is basically a marriage tax. I know that if my boyfriend and I get married now, we will be increasing the amount of money we pay in taxes by about $5000/yr. And that is not a negligible amount of money, especially as we are paying off our student loan debt and beginning to save for retirement. Even if we had a kid now, it would make more sense for us to remain unmarried and have one person claim the child tax credit.
Summed up, marriage is a lot less about religious values and a lot more about logic and economics within the millenial generation.
I am ultra conservative on this issue and believe having kids out of wedlock is morally wrong. It's not just a piece of paper, it is important. However I look at a couple raising a child together out of wedlock together differently than what we usually see where it's a single mom, usually on welfare. I think it's especially heinous if there are kids by multiple people. Yes I would expect to marry before a pregnancy, even if it means a courthouse wedding and the fancy one years later. We are going to pay for this choice for years to come.
I am ultra conservative on this issue and believe having kids out of wedlock is morally wrong. It's not just a piece of paper, it is important. However I look at a couple raising a child together out of wedlock together differently than what we usually see where it's a single mom, usually on welfare. I think it's especially heinous if there are kids by multiple people. Yes I would expect to marry before a pregnancy, even if it means a courthouse wedding and the fancy one years later. We are going to pay for this choice for years to come.
Good on you. There are plenty of people in this country who retain traditionalist values. I was raised in a to simply say 'to each his/her own' on most issues like this. There are so many differing views in America, I figured I would share a perspective on marriage that others may not have been considered.
I respectfully disagree with several of the points you made. There have been a lot of comments on single moms and welfare in this thread, including yours, so I figure I will jump in to the discussion and perhaps introduce another perspective.
Honestly, I expect to see the percent of single mothers on welfare go down in the coming years. Many of the single mothers those single mothers had their children young, and perhaps didn't finish a high school or college degree because of it. In 2003, 78.8% of teenage mothers received public assistance (1). The teen pregnancy rate has dropped at a startling rate in recent years, and is now less than half of what it was 20 years ago (2). The demographic of single parents on welfare may change significantly in the coming years if birth trends continue as they have.
And I will leave that point with this excerpt from "This Week in Poverty: US Single Mothers—'The Worst Off'" (3):
"Using data from government agencies, social scientists and researchers worldwide, the report shows that single mothers in the United States—most of whom are either separated or were previously married—are employed more hours and yet have much higher poverty rates than their peers in other high-income countries. Let me run that by you again—because it’s generally not what you’ve been reading of late in the news: the majority of single mothers in the United States are separated, divorced or widowed; and they work more hours and yet have higher poverty rates than single mothers in other high-income countries.
The employment rate for US single mothers during the mid- to late-2000s was 73 percent, compared to an average of 66 to 70 percent in peer countries. In a 2000 comparative study of nine peer countries, 87 percent of employed US single parents were working thirty or more hours a week, compared to just an average of 64 percent of jobholding single parents in the other countries."
Welfare is an essential part of any country. There are countless stories of it helping families get through a rough patch, and in reality, abuse of most welfare programs is pretty low. I feel particularly strongly about programs that help children, because no child should have to suffer because of their parents mistakes. And that means helping single mothers.
But back to your comment. The final point you make is that it is 'heinous' for women to have children with different men. Do you still feel this way in cases where the woman is a widow? Or in cases of domestic abuse, if the woman finds love in a safer relationship?
Don't judge until you've walked a mile in someone else's shoes.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
