This is the second in a series of four articles examining four critical family formation trends: marriage, children living with married parents, divorce, and cohabitation. This report gives the overview of fertility and marital parenthood from various academic and government sources.
No society can survive without a growing population and that requires men and women becoming fathers and mothers. Secular, academic research is clear: children thrive when born into and live in intact, married families with their own mom and dad. Tragically, fertility is declining dramatically of late in the United States and married parenthood is very weak.
The U.S. Census Bureau explains (May 2024) that single adult households are growing and married homes with children are shrinking dramatically, shown here:
Pew Research Center tells us the U.S. has the highest rate of children living in singe-parents in the world.
Almost a quarter of U.S. children under the age of 18 live with one parent and no other adults (23%), more than three times the share of children around the world who do so (7%) [emphasis added].
In a 2018 report, Pew adds,
The share of U.S. children living with an unmarried parent has more than doubled since 1968, jumping from 13% to 32% in 2017. That trend has been accompanied by a drop in the share of children living with two married parents, down from 85% in 1968 to 65%. Some 3% of children are not living with any parents.
The University of Virginia National Marriage Project’s (NMP) most recent State of Our Unions report (2022) explains, “the percentage of children growing up in fragile – typically fatherless – families has continued to grow over the past several decades, although trends suggest a leveling off over the past 10 years.”
As NMP’s graph below shows, the decline in children living with two married parents started in the early 1960s and continued declining sharply until the beginning of 2000 where it has largely leveled off at a low level.
However, Professor Brad Wilcox shows in his important book, Get Married (2024), how the percentage of children living with married, biological parents has increased slightly since 2012.
He explains in Get Married (p. 7),
So, less divorce and no increase in children born outside of marriage equals . . . more stable, married families for our kids. In fact, figure 1.3 indicates that the share of children being raised by their own married biological parents has ticked up from 57.8 percent in 2012 to 58.9 percent in 2022.
This is a very modest increase and we will have to see if it continues. But Wilcox adds,
To be sure, the nation witnessed a dramatic decline in the share of children raised in an intact, married family across their entire childhood from about three-quarters in 1960 to about 51 percent today. Still, what we are now seeing is that a slim majority of children today are reaching adulthood in a home headed by their two married biological parents. This matters because those kids are much more likely to flourish than their peers raised outside of intact home [emphasis added].
Similarly, the National Marriage Project reports that the rate of births to unmarried women has stabilized, but at a very high rate, as shown here by race:
Scholars at Cornell University find that “the majority of all nonmarital births (roughly 60%) occur within cohabiting unions.”
The NMP scholars state,
Since 1960, the percentage of all live births that were to unmarried women has skyrocketed from around 5% to 40.8% today. Fortunately, these numbers seem to have levelled off in the wake of the Great Recession. But the large majority, nearly 70%, of births to Black and American Indian/Alaska Native women were nonmarital, compared to 29% among white women, 53% among Hispanic women, and just 14% among Asian women [emphasis added].
They also note how the percentage of Americans who believe it is morally acceptable to have a child outside of wedlock has seen a steady increase over the two decades of this century. This is very concerning as people tend to act on their beliefs.
These overall declines in marital childbearing have taken place as the overall U.S. fertility rate has declined, substantially.
Deeply Declining Fertility
University of Maryland economist, Melissa S. Kearney, explains our current national birth rate has declined “about 20 percent over 13 years” demonstrated in this chart:
The truth is, you simply cannot sustain a nation with such declining fertility rates.
Professor Kearney explains “while the decline is concentrated among women in the under-30 age group, the decline is generally widespread across demographic subgroups…” She adds, “We see no indication in the data that there is likely to be a reverse of these trends in the near future.”
Conclusion
It is an inescapable truth: The future of a nation and a people is driven by their mindfulness about children. Are they having them? Are they raising them in the setting most likely to ensure their own mother and father stay together and cooperate in healthy ways to love, provide, teach and raise them to healthy adulthood. Marriage does this better than any other alternative family form.
This is why these declines in fertility and marriage in the U.S. are so concerning. It is imperative our nation find sure ways to reverse and strengthen these trends.
Image from Shutterstock.
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