Single Motherhood In Decline, Rises For Women 35 & Older

Jennifer Williams, 43, at home in Pleasant Hill, Calif.,
with Maya, the daughter she conceived through sperm donation. 

Single parenthood was on a “mysterious and alarming rise,”
becoming a “huge problem,” according to studies in 2013. A lawyer defending
same-sex marriage bans before the Supreme Court last month argued that
out-of-wedlock births were growing rapidly.

In fact, however, the birth rate for unmarried mothers,
which had been steadily increasing since the early 1980s, peaked in 2008 and
has declined 14 percent since, more than the decline for all women.

The recent declines were sharpest among teenagers; black and
Hispanic women; and those without a college degree,  all of whom have typically had the highest
rates of single motherhood according to data from the Census Bureau and the
National Center for Health Statistics.

There was only one group of unmarried women for whom the
birth rate increased in recent years: those 35 and older. In many cases, they
are having babies outside of marriage by choice, with more resources and education
than the typical single mother.

They are still a small minority. But if these trends
continue, single motherhood could become less of a sign of family instability.
It could increasingly become one of the new ways people are choosing to form
families, in an era when both marriage and divorce are declining

New York Times.