Health & Fitness
Husband Before Baby? You Must Be A College Grad!
Unmarried women are delivering the majority of babies born to women under 30. But the new dividing line is that only college grads wait to have a husband first.
"Motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America." So announces the NY Times, reporting a new study. After crunching government data, researchers at Child Trends reveal that for the first time, more than half of births to American women younger than 30 are occurring outside marriage.
That whole "illegitimate" label is now statistically dead and buried, though we all know it still lives in ugly little pockets wherever meanness thrives. And we can bury the notion that the majority of single moms are poor or minorities: In the last 20 years, 20-something white women with some college but no four-year degree represent the fastest growing group of younger moms.
OK, so the whole idea of the Supremes' shame-faced Love Child (below) doesn't exist anymore. = Great news.
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DIANA ROSS AND THE SUPREMES by huntylch
But...
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Because college grads "overwhelmingly marry before having children," the study discovered the beginnings of a new class divide: people who gain the "economic and social rewards of marriage" are the ones with the best education.
Just as I hoped the acceptance of unmarried women and their kids might drip some of that halo onto NotMoms, it seems that women in general are being splintered and separated once more.