Every year for several years there have been around 1.6 million babies born out of wedlock in the United States. Last year was no exception. Every year for several years, approximately 40% of all children born in this country had mothers who weren’t married to the kids’ fathers. Again, 2014 was no exception.
When a child is born out of wedlock, the mother is a baby mama. The father is a baby daddy. I call the problems caused by unmarried births The Baby Mama Syndrome. It adversely affects the unmarried parents, their families, their intimate partners, their romantic rivals, their kids, and the rest of us.
Last week, the National Vital Statistics System at the CDC released its preliminary report on 2014 births (Volume 64, Number 6). Most statistics were more or less unchanged from the previous year, 4 million births of which 1.6 million were to unmarried mothers. That’s slightly over 40% of all the births.
Teenagers
The teen birthrate and total number of births to teenagers has been creeping down for several years, and that trend held for 2014. Just over a quarter of a million births were to girls 19 and under, including 2771 to girls under 15. Almost all mothers under 18 were unmarried, and 88.6 percent of the 18 and 19 year-olds were not married.
Unmarried births by age of mother
By the mothers’ age group, the percentages of unmarried births in 2014 were:
- 20-24 65.7%
- 25-29 36.6%
- 30-34 22.5%
- 35-39 21.6%
- 40 & over 24.3%
By far the largest percentage and number of births were to women 20-24. The rate of unmarried births in that group is in part due to people, both male and female, waiting till later in life to get married. They aren’t, however, waiting to have babies. Nearly 580,000 babies were born to unmarried women ages 20-24 last year.
Total unmarried births by race
I am often asked if unwed pregnancies are a product of race. Actually, instead of being asked, I’m often told that it’s the black people producing all the children out of wedlock. That isn’t true. Black mothers are very unlikely to be married, but there are more white children born out of wedlock than any other race. Of the three major race and ethnic groups, unmarried white mothers have the most babies, followed by Hispanics, then blacks:
- White 627,541
- Hispanic 483,900
- Black 417,531
Percentage of unmarried births by race
Although the total number of babies born to black mothers is the smallest of the major race/ethnic groups, the likelihood that a black mother will be unmarried is an entirely different story. In speaking and writing about The Baby Mama Syndrome, I often use a 70/50/30 rule of thumb to compare the percent of children born to unmarried black, Hispanic, and white mothers, respectively. That rule proved to be in the ballpark again in 2014:
- Black 70.9%
- Hispanic 52.9%
- White 29.2%
The NVSS report supports the idea that black parents are far less likely to be married than white, but contradicts the notion that most of the unwed births are in the black community. Hispanic mothers are also much more likely than whites to be unmarried, but less likely than blacks.
So what? Why do I report on the NVSS stats? I want people to know the magnitude of the problem, 1.6 million new baby mamas each year. The Baby Mama Syndrome is a real problem, but there is no concerted effort anywhere even to report on the issue, let alone try to do something about it. Publicizing the prevalence of unwed births and identifying the problems they cause is why I wrote The Baby Mama Syndrome and started this blog.
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