Sunday, June 23, 2002

A story published today by the Hoosier Times reports that across the nation, the number of babies born to unmarried women is on the increase. And it's not teen-agers and older mothers contributing to this nonmarital baby boom.

It's women in their 20s who are among the 33 percent of women in the United States giving birth without being married to the fathers of their children.

What's called the "nonmarital birth rate" increase is great in the counties of Indiana. For instance, births to unmarried women from 1990 to 2000 increased 49 percent in Monroe County, 46 percent in Morgan County and 31 percent in Lawrence County.

In Indiana, teen births are on the decline as nonmarital births increase. In 1990, 14.5 percent of births were to teen mothers, according to statistics from the Indiana State Department of Health. In 2000, the rate was down to 12.4 percent.

In 1990, 26 percent of Indiana births - 22,523 - were to unmarried women of all ages. By 2000, state statistics show, the number had increased to 35 percent - 30,319 babies.

Indiana's trend mirrors what is happening across the nation, said Jennifer Manlove, senior research assistant for Child Trends, a nonprofit organization that studies and gathers statistics about children and families.

"One in three births in the United States is to an unmarried woman, so a big proportion of children are being born outside marriage," Manlove said. "The largest increases in nonmarital births are to women in their 20s, and the vast majority of the births are not intended."

According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, nearly half of all 1999 births to women aged 20-24 were nonmarital. Almost one-fourth of women aged 25-29 who gave birth that year were not married.

Manlove said common stereotypes do not apply. "There are two public images — the disadvantaged minority teen mother and the older affluent woman whose biological clock is ticking — when the reality is somewhere in between, to women in their 20s."

These mothers may not be married, but there often is a father close by. Nearly half are living with the child's father when the baby is born.

"There is this perception that the mothers are not in touch with the fathers when in fact, a substantial percentage are living with them or are at least in a romantic relationship with the father," Manlove said.

But what are called "cohabiting families" are fragile, she said, more likely to split up, leaving children more likely to live in single-parent homes where the mother struggles to make ends meet.

Manlove said it's difficult to assess the impact on children whose parents live together but don't marry. "We have found that children born to an intact family with two biological parents show more positive outcomes, but with the recent increase in cohabitation, there is not enough research to show the long-term effects on children," she said.