Mona Charen discusses some disturbing statistics about marriage and child-bearing in America:
The number of babies born to unmarried women in 2007 (over 1.7 million) was 26% higher than it was in 2002.
Forty percent of all births in America are to unwed mothers.
Unwed motherhood is primarily a phenomenon of those who can least afford it. In 2000 less than one mother in ten who had 16 or more years of education was unmarried, but 36% of mothers with between 9 and 14 years of schooling were living without husbands.
By the age of 12, 78% of children living with no live-at-home father have experienced one or more years of poverty. For children living in intact families it's only 18%.
Babies born to unwed mothers are more likely to be premature, suffer low birth weight, and other pathologies. They will have poorer school performance, be in more trouble with the law, suffer more emotional and mental disturbances, more physical and sexual abuse, and more likely to become unwed parents themselves.
I remember reading somewhere that the one thing most men have in common in our prisons is not race, socio-economic background, or level of education. It's that almost uniformly they grew up without a father at home.
A lot of people seem to think that having two biological parents at home with their children is optional, but unwed motherhood is, according to the statistics, a form of child abuse and should be stigmatized. Our cultural elites, however, are so heavily invested in the idea that a diversity of family structures is a proper goal of a progressive society that it'll be a long time before unwed motherhood is treated with the same degree of opprobrium as is, say, exposing a child to second-hand smoke.
RLC