(Child Trends) Having children outside of marriage–nonmarital childbearing–is increasingly common in the United States. A new Research Brief, Childbearing Outside of Marriage: Estimates and Trends in the United States, describes how the population of women bearing children outside of marriage has changed, often in ways that challenge public perceptions. Nonmarital childbearing remains a significant public concern as it is linked to negative outcomes for women and their children across a range of measures, as well as with a reliance on public assistance.

In this brief, Child Trends provides up-to-date information about nonmarital childbearing; describes the women who have children outside of marriage; and examines how these patterns have changed over time. Among the findings:

• Nonmarital childbearing has increased substantially over the past several decades for all groups of women. Between 1970 and 2009, the percentage of all births that took place outside of marriage increased from 11 to 41 percent. Increases in nonmarital births have been more dramatic among white and Hispanic women than among black women.
• Women in their twenties have the highest levels of nonmarital childbearing. In 2009, 62 percent of all nonmarital births occurred to women aged 20-29; only 21 percent occurred to teens.
• A majority of all births that occurred outside of marriage were unintended–either mistimed or not wanted (50 percent of all births to cohabiting couples and 65 percent of all births to couples not married or cohabiting).
• The rise in the number of children being born outside of marriage-among all groups-is linked to broader changes in family structure, most notably increases in cohabitation.

One recalls Dubner and Livett’s argument in Freakonomics that the legalization of abortion in the 1970s led to a reduction in crime in the 1990s due to a reduction of unwanted babies and subsequent lower populations of social misfits. Now the tables have turned somewhat. The babies now being born out of wedlock, it can be assumed, are wanted, but to a large degree, they are being born into situations that are not promising:

(Atlantic Monthly) According to a growing body of social-scientific evidence, children in families disrupted by divorce and out-of-wedlock birth do worse than children in intact families on several measures of well-being. Children in single-parent families are six times as likely to be poor. They are also likely to stay poor longer. Twenty-two percent of children in one-parent families will experience poverty during childhood for seven years or more, as compared with only two percent of children in two parent families. A 1988 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics found that children in single-parent families are two to three times as likely as children in two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems. They are also more likely to drop out of high school, to get pregnant as teenagers, to abuse drugs, and to be in trouble with the law. Compared with children in intact families, children from disrupted families are at a much higher risk for physical or sexual abuse.

Statistics are one thing. There is also that issue about education, which doubtless requires ample time and energy, which are deficient in single-parent households. Time will tell if Dubner and Levitt need to write a new chapter.