Did you know that half the babies born to American women under 30 are born outside of marriage? Yes, half. Let that sink in.
More alarming, nearly three-quarters of the pregnancies to single women under 30 are not planned. Most say they didn’t want to have a child at that stage of their life, as documented by Brookings economist, Isabel Sawhill, author of “Generation Unbound,” based on hard data from a government survey of 20,000 women. And it’s not just young and poor minority women who regard pregnancy and marriage as separate decisions, or “drift” into one without the other, as Sawhill describes it. This new social norm is spreading fast and has moved up the class ladder to include all racial groups and many in the middle class.
Why? My sense is that the Millennial generation in the Trying Twenties has no “shoulds.” Individualism has trumped all the old social boundaries. So, what is our society doing to support it? Why do decades of well-documented needs for safe and affordable child care, longer maternity and paternity leave—even sick leave for God’s sake!—go down to defeat? On the day of celebration of mothers, how many solo moms feel overwhelmed? The sting of guilt?
I do. I was a single mother, product of an early divorce.
[For more of this story, written by Gail Sheehy, go to http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...a-single-mother.html]
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