The Shriver Report

More than half of babies born to women under age 30 are born to unmarried mothers.

Fifty years ago, the pioneers of the War on Poverty saw no need to call for a strengthening of the American family as a critical component to combating poverty. At the time, marriage—centered around motherhood and the man of the family—was still the prevailing norm for raising children and staving off poverty.

The goal of the War on Poverty was to assist families in poverty with greater access to basic food, education, housing, and job training to increase their economic prospects,¹ and to enable nuclear families to thrive. Families were the first line of defense against poverty.²

But one year after President Lyndon B. Johnson officially launched the War on Poverty, a young government official at the U.S. Department of Labor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, began to look at trends in the African American community. He worried that the rise in the number of children born to unmarried mothers and the increasing number of households headed by single mothers would lead to persistent, generational poverty.³ The report was rightly met with severe criticism for the tone and the blame it placed on the African American community.

Julie Kaas eats lunch at home in Graham, Washington with sons Danny, Joey, and Jesse, and Danny’s girlfriend, Jessica Bailey. Julie is divorced and takes classes she hopes will give her the skills and confidence to land a higher-paying job. {BARBARA KINNEY}

Yet 50 years later, we must confront the reality that the trend that Moynihan first noticed in the African American community—the decline in the proportion of nuclear families—has since extended across all racial and ethnic groups.⁴ Of course, there have been many positive trends in the past 50 years that have allowed our society to move beyond the constraints of the so-called traditional family, and for families to diversify, flourish, and form in ways that strengthen the fabric of America. No-fault divorce has allowed women to exit abusive and unhealthy marriages. The opening of the labor market, the evolving economy, and the civil rights movement made marriage more egalitarian, with men and women more likely to share fluid roles as both breadwinners and caregivers. Marriage is now open to same-sex couples in a growing number of states. Single parents are no longer shunned by society. And women are no longer pressed into marriage by necessity, or to gain access to economic resources and benefits.

But in spite of these positive shifts, the trend Moynihan identified has only gotten worse—unplanned births to unmarried mothers who are living in poverty or on the brink continue to rise. And while not accepted as a national crisis then, it should be today. In too many cases, parents who had not intended to get pregnant are unprepared for the responsibilities associated with raising a child alone, and society thus far has been unwilling or unable either to curb the rise in unplanned pregnancies or to accommodate fully this change in family makeup.

In too many cases, parents who had not intended to get pregnant are unprepared for the responsibilities associated with raising a child alone, and society thus far has been unwilling or unable either to curb the rise in unplanned pregnancies or to accommodate fully this change in family makeup.

What has happened? Why have so many women begun the journey of motherhood without marriage? And where are the men in this equation? This chapter focuses on the fact that many women are not “deciding” to have babies before marriage—in fact, women living on the brink of poverty are the most likely to have babies as a result of unplanned and unintended pregnancies. And when they do so outside of marriage, they discover the support they need is missing: Men are largely absent from providing economic support to raise the child, and society offers little support to help these women gain the education they need or to help them balance their work with their family obligations.

Rather than indulging in the moral handwringing and judgment that often accompany investigations into changes in the marriage rate, this chapter argues that our country will be better served by doing the following:

If we do not take these steps, the United States will soon have a generation of children who were raised without the full support of our society, and who are not fully prepared to have jobs that will allow them to compete in the 21st-century global economy.

The roles of marriage, motherhood, and men in America have changed dramatically in the past several decades. The short narrative is that a rising number of women (and men) are increasingly having children before they get married. Everyone—across race, education, and class—is marrying later than they did 50 years ago. Women are more likely to be working in the paid labor force while caring for their children, often juggling both on their own without the support of a husband or a stable partner. And more men are living apart from their children than ever before. At the same time, those men who are living with their children are more active and involved in their children’s lives than ever before. However, there are serious class divisions in family structures, with women in poverty or on the brink of it much more likely to give birth before they marry and to be raising children outside of marriage.

Americans have not given up on marriage, but women of all educational and income levels are marrying later in life. And although most will marry at some point in their lives, for some groups of women, childrearing is more likely to come first.

College-educated women are much more likely to have their first babies later in life, after completing their education. But for women with only a high school diploma or a little college—those most likely to be living on the brink—marriage often comes after children. In fact, although single motherhood has risen substantially in the population as a whole, different patterns emerge among women by education levels, class, age, and race.

Snapshot: The trend in unplanned births to unmarried mothers

In 1964, less than 10 percent of all births were to unmarried mothers.⁵ Today, that number is more than 40 percent, and more than 50 percent for women under 30 years old.⁶ In fact, for women as a whole, the median age at which women give birth to their first child (25.7) is now, on average, lower than the median age at which women marry (26.5).⁷

Accompanying the decline in marital births is the rise of unmarried mothers in cohabiting relationships. For many couples, cohabitation has become a replacement (or lengthy prerequisite) for marriage. In fact, most nonmarital births occur to cohabiting couples—almost three in five nonmarital births from 2006 to 2010 were to cohabiting couples.⁸ But cohabiting couples often have less stable and lasting relationships than married couples,⁹ and on the whole, the shift away from the traditional family structure has left more women and children in a state of vulnerability and financial insecurity. In fact, sociologist Andrew Cherlin has documented that the nature of cohabiting relationships in the United States is less stable than in Europe, and that Americans are much more likely to change partners several times over their lifetimes, leaving both the adults and the children in the relationship in more financially and emotionally precarious situations.¹⁰

It is still quite rare for a woman with a college degree to have a child outside of marriage. Ninety-one percent of all births to women who have completed college occur within marriage.¹¹ Yet only 39 percent of births to women with less than a high school education occur within marriage.¹² This maps neatly along the age divide as well: 83 percent of older moms (ages 35 to 39) are married when they first give birth, whereas only 38 percent of younger moms (ages 20 to 24) are married upon giving birth.¹³ The educational divide also closely tracks the class divide: Of women in households making more than $200,000, 91 percent were married when they gave birth, but for women in households making less than $10,000, only 31 percent were married upon giving birth.¹⁴

The race divide is not as clear as it is often portrayed in the media. It is true that white children are most likely to be born to married parents (71 percent), black children are least likely to be born to married parents (28 percent), and Hispanic children fall somewhere in the middle (47 percent are born to married parents).¹⁵ But in terms of sheer numbers, most children in the United States born to unmarried parents are white, non-Hispanic children, followed by Hispanic children of any race, and finally by black children.¹⁶ This shows, importantly, that large swaths of our society are bearing children outside of marriage and that the trend persists across all racial and ethnic groups.

What about women on the brink—those who are on the edge of poverty, just one paycheck away from falling in, or constantly churning in and out? Women who are living in poverty or just above the poverty line are about evenly divided—half are having babies within marriage and half are not.¹⁷ But again, the trend falls along lines of educational attainment. It is the less-educated and younger women living in poverty or on the brink of poverty who are more likely to have children outside of marriage.¹⁸

Currently, only 7 percent of women with a college degree have a child outside of marriage. {BARBARA KINNEY}

Consider these statistics that show the breakdown of who is having children outside of marriage:

As these statistics show, a mother’s education level is by far the most significant predictor of whether she will have children within marriage or not, with income levels and age also playing important roles. However, it is difficult to disentangle which comes first. Are women with less than a college degree more likely to have a child before marriage, or does having a child prevent women from completing their education? There is evidence to support both arguments.¹⁹ It is clear that encouraging women’s educational attainment and supporting their ability to attend and complete college are in the best interests of individual mothers and their families, as well as the economy as a whole.

A mother’s education level is by far the most significant predictor of whether she will have children within marriage or not.

These early patterns of mothering and marriage—those established at the birth of a child—do not paint the complete picture of the trends of marriage, motherhood, and men in America.

Among babies born in 2002, more than half of births to unmarried women who were cohabiting at the time of birth and more than two-thirds of births to women who were not married and not cohabiting were a result of unintended pregnancies.

First, women who are unmarried when they give birth are not necessarily without a partner. Fifty-eight percent of the births to unmarried women were to women who were cohabiting at the time of birth.²⁰ Taking a step back, this means that roughly 60 percent of all births are to married mothers, 23 percent are to unmarried women who are living with the father of their child, and only 17 percent are to mothers who are unmarried and not living with a partner.

Despite the fact that around 80 percent of new mothers are either married or cohabiting, we know that these cohabiting relationships are often less stable and economically secure than marriages, leaving many women to start motherhood with a live-in partner and then find themselves being single after a few years.²¹ For unmarried women who had their first baby in their 20s while living with the father of their child, nearly 40 percent had split up by the child’s fifth birthday, compared to only 13 percent of married mothers divorcing the father of their child by the child’s fifth birthday.²²

This is not to say that marriage is a guaranteed pathway to stability. Most mothers will be married at some point in their lives, but marriage is not necessarily a permanent relationship. After 10 years, about one-third of all first marriages end in divorce,²³ with divorce even more common among women who marry early in life or who have less than a college degree.²⁴ Still, the fate of couples who live together without marrying is by contrast much worse, with 62 percent of such relationships having ended after 10 years.²⁵ Marriage is no guarantee, but it is much more stable than cohabitation.

Dolliethea Sandridge, a single mother, walks her son, Josiah, through the halls of the Chambliss Center for Children in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Before she got pregnant and dropped out of school, Dolliethea was studying sociology at Tennessee State University. {BARBARA KINNEY}

Single mothers and cohabiting mothers are at the heart of women living on the brink with low incomes and few safety nets. Of all single mothers, nearly two-thirds are working in low-wage retail, service, or administrative jobs that offer little flexibility, benefits, or economic support that would provide and allow for needed family time with children.²⁶ Similarly, cohabiting mothers experience a great degree of financial insecurity: More than half of cohabiting mothers live in poverty, in spite of the fact that the majority—about two-thirds—are employed.²⁷ Because single mothers so often rely on only one income and may not have a partner to help shoulder the responsibilities of childrearing, the lack of policies around paid sick days, paid family and medical leave, workplace flexibility, and affordable and accessible child care solutions have a disproportionately negative effect on unmarried parents. In fact, in polling conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and TargetPoint Consulting for The Shriver Report, 96 percent of working single mothers identified the ability to take up to 10 paid sick leave days to care for themselves or an ill family member as the workplace policy that would help them most.

In all American households with children under the age of 18, more than one-quarter are supported primarily or solely by the income of a single mother.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the number of women having children outside of marriage does not fully shine a light on one variable that, more than any other, is almost entirely within the parents’ control: the intention to conceive a child. Most unmarried mothers report that their pregnancies were unintended, which is in stark contrast to married mothers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2002, less than one-quarter of the births to married women were a result of unintended pregnancies, whereas more than half of births to unmarried women who were cohabiting at the time of birth and more than two-thirds of births to women who were neither married nor cohabiting were a result of unintended pregnancies.²⁸

Single parenting is not just a women’s issue. Clearly, more men are also having children outside of marriage, and their profiles are similar to the women’s: Less-educated and lower-income men are much more likely to have a child out of wedlock.²⁹

In 1960, only 11 percent of fathers did not live with their children. Today, 27 percent do not. And for low-income and the least-educated fathers, about 40 percent do not live with their children.³⁰

Fathers across the income spectrum who do not live with their children have a varying degree of involvement in their children’s lives in terms of time and connectedness with their children,³¹ but for fathers who do live with their children, involvement with the children’s daily lives has more than doubled since 1960.³² Kathryn Edin describes in her essay in this report how noncustodial fathers in low-income communities are placing increasing importance on their relationships with their children, even if they are unable to provide for them financially.³³

Sources: Census Bureau, Current Population Survey (U.S. Department of Commerce, 2013); Census Bureau, (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1960).

The breadwinning necessary to support children in families where the father is absent is left largely to the mother—the very woman who is in poverty or on the brink of it. In all American households with children under the age of 18, more than one-quarter are supported primarily or solely by the income of a single mother.³⁴ Oftentimes, women are left with no economic support from the absent father. Only half of custodial mothers have a formal court agreement for child support, and of those with a formal agreement, only 41 percent receive the full amount of payment.³⁵

There is widespread agreement that some combination of shifts in culture have led to the surge of women having babies outside of marriage and raising children on their own.³⁶ These societal changes include an evolution in attitude (regarding sex outside of marriage); advances in technology (the birth control pill contributing further to the acceptance of sex outside of marriage); and the transformation of the economy (with a decrease in the ability of men to be the sole breadwinner in a family and an increase of women in the workforce).

The overwhelming evidence regarding women having children outside of marriage, however, points us back to two trends. First, these births are overwhelmingly the result of unplanned and unintended pregnancies. And second, the United States stands out distinctly in its failure to provide information about and access to fail-safe contraception that can stop unintended pregnancies. Women in the United States have much lower rates of contraceptive use in their teens and 20s and are half as likely as their European counterparts to use more effective contraceptive methods, such as IUDs. ³⁷

Unmarried women with children are at the heart of women living on the brink, pushing themselves to the max to earn family income and provide care for their kids. {BARBARA RIES (LEFT X2), BARBARA KINNEY (RIGHT)}

In addition to the failure of our society to address unplanned and unintended pregnancies through greater access to contraception, there remains widespread disagreement over the extent to which cultural shifts impact our society. Can or should the government intervene to try to reverse this trend? And, if so, at what axis point could the government most impact this problem either to reverse the trend or ameliorate its effects?

A comparison of the United States and other developed nations shows that on nearly every support measure meant to benefit children and families, from child care to income support to family-friendly workplace policies, the United States lags far behind.

Indeed, in the polling conducted for The Shriver Report, a solid majority—64 percent—of the public believes that the government should set a goal of helping society adapt to the reality of single-parent families and use its resources to help children and mothers succeed regardless of their family status. Also, a majority—51 percent—believe that the government should set a goal of reducing the number of children born to single parents and use its resources to encourage marriage and two-parent families.

The social science literature is quite clear that children of single-parent families, particularly those living in low-income households, do not fare as well as their peers living in two-parent families, and that these poorer outcomes persist, even when you control for socioeconomic differences.³⁸ The United States also appears to be unique in comparison to other countries, where researchers have found that the poor outcomes for children from single-parent families are almost entirely correlated with income.³⁹ International measures also note stark differences. On international tests of reading, for example, American children in single-parent households score 23 points lower than their peers from two-parent families—far worse than the average differential of five points in other developed countries—even after accounting for socioeconomic background.⁴⁰

Of course, marriage is not the panacea for improving child outcomes. A comparison of the United States and other developed nations shows that on nearly every support measure meant to benefit children and families, from child care to income support to family-friendly workplace policies, the United States lags far behind.⁴¹ The importance of this finding cannot be overstated. While the popular narrative often implies that single mothers are somehow “worse” than married mothers or single mothers in other countries, the truth is that they are often simply without any support. Moreover, this outcome does not reflect public policy choices.

What can we learn from the marriage equality debate?

The country has been engaged in an important national conversation about marriage, spurred in part by the debate surrounding same-sex marriage equality and the two cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2013. Those for and against marriage equality disagreed strongly over who should be able to marry and have the legal rights and benefits that go along with it. But in the course of this tense and heated debate, both sides agreed that marriage offered the greatest stability for children because legal recognition of a relationship grants stability and resources to its partners, which can have particularly strong benefits for children.⁴⁵

In their opening brief, the opponents of marriage equality argued that “Government from time immemorial has had an interest in having … unintended and unplanned offspring raised in a stable structure that improves their chances of success in life and avoids having them become a burden on society.”⁴⁶ At the same time, the proponents of marriage equality also placed primacy on the benefits that a stable marriage imparts to children, regardless of how children enter a family.

Many medical and psychological associations also agreed on the positive effects. The American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics, among others, submitted a joint brief saying that “family instability and parental divorce are often associated with poor adjustment and problems that can last into adulthood.” They described the medical community’s view that “in order to further enhance child outcomes and wellbeing, we should encourage stable and financially secure family units.”⁴⁷ The American Sociological Association also weighed in, arguing that:

… in order to further enhance child outcomes and wellbeing, we should encourage stable and financially secure family units—including same-sex parented families—rather than exclude the hundreds of thousands of children living with same-sex couples from the stability and economic security that marriage provides.⁴⁸

Although the two sides fundamentally disagreed on federal recognition of marriages, the debate served to bring to light key areas of agreement on the importance of stable family structures and parental resources to the well-being and future prospects of our children. Certainly not all marriages are stable, and in abusive or dysfunctional families, children are often markedly better off along a variety of dimensions in the wake of a divorce.⁴⁹ But marriage can provide structures and benefits to help families gain stability and economic security to better support their children.

In the poll conducted for this report, there was strong public support for policies designed explicitly to increase support for nontraditional families, including increasing access to child care—79 percent in favor—and increasing the number of low-income single mothers who go to college by providing them financial assistance and child care—77 percent in favor.

It is also clear that financial insecurity negatively impacts the health and well-being of women who are pushing themselves to the max to earn the family income and care for their children on their own.⁴² Never-married single mothers are also more likely than not to rely on some form of public assistance.⁴³ The poll showed that a majority of women living on the brink report feeling elevated levels of stress. High levels of interpersonal stress and financial strain have been shown to have negative impacts on mothers—effects that transfer to their children.⁴⁴

In short, we have compelling reasons to figure out how to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies to unmarried women, and how to better support single parents and their children. If we do not, this underperformance of children raised by single parents will become an economic problem and the educational achievement gap will lead to an unprepared workforce. To avoid this future, we must consider how best to educate tomorrow’s children, including children born to unmarried parents, so that we have the human capital we need to compete in the 21st-century global economy.

Fifty years ago, when marriage was more prevalent across all socioeconomic classes and levels of education, it was widely accepted—both through government policy and social norms—that both adults and children were best supported economically within a stable family structure. It was also recognized as the first line of defense against economic catastrophe.

Social policy—from the Social Security Act to tax laws—was constructed on the assumption that married families would support children, and that the government would step in only if there were a catastrophe, such as unemployment, long-term disability, or death, and the breadwinner could no longer earn an income. When less catastrophic events occurred—a temporary job loss for the breadwinner husband, for example—the stay-at-home wife often entered the labor market to make up for lost wages.⁵⁰

Caitlin Bell of Chattanooga, Tennessee, drives daughters Zoey and Kessler McCarver to the Chambliss Center for Children. Caitlin planned to attend college, but dropped out of high school during her senior year after she met the father of her children. {BARBARA KINNEY}

As the norms of marriage, divorce, and childbearing outside of marriage began to change, the laws—originally constructed to provide for women who lost the income of their husbands through death or disability—soon had to accommodate a growing group of women who had never married or who became single through divorce or separation.

Our social welfare policy at first discouraged cohabitation and marriage—economically punishing women on welfare for getting married or having a man in the house by reducing or even taking away their benefits. This was unsurprising given prevailing norms around women’s sexuality and the notion of men as the usual breadwinners within families. But in 1996, welfare was reformed. It was no longer an entitlement—in which all economically disadvantaged single parents received cash assistance to provide support for their young children—but rather a time-limited program requiring single parents to work in order to receive benefits. At the same time, many lawmakers also shifted their stance on marriage promotion. Recognizing that the government’s prior policies may have discouraged marriage, some members of Congress made strong statements about the importance of marriage, kicking off a trend of altering social policy not to penalize marriage.⁵¹

Welfare reform was the first major attempt by the government to address the growing number of children born to unmarried parents. It promoted marriage as the ideal family structure in which to raise children, harkening back to previous social policy programs that took for granted the family as the first social safety net. In fact, the findings of the welfare-reform legislation start by stating that “Marriage is the foundation of a successful society” and “Marriage is an essential institution of a successful society which promotes the interest of children.”⁵² The findings also pointed out the concern over the increase in “out-of-wedlock births” and the negative consequences of such births on the mother, the child, the family, and society.

Yet this course shift was also a drastic move away from ensuring a safety net for single mothers—and, in the eyes of many, an unrealistic assumption that public policy could effectively shift responsibility to the family by encouraging marriage. Peter Edelman, in his essay for this report, provides an eloquent description of the fallout from these assumptions and course shifts resulting in a serious hole in our country’s safety net.⁵³

Welfare reform is now widely accepted as successful in increasing single mothers’ participation in the labor force, while simultaneously being widely accepted as having failed at reducing either childhood poverty or the overall rate of births to unmarried mothers.

Recognizing that the changes in welfare were not affecting the overall trend in births to unmarried mothers or the marriage rate, in 2005, President George W. Bush advocated for Congress to enact the Healthy Marriage Initiative and fund $150 million worth of programs to support marriage as a poverty alleviation policy.⁵⁴ The initiative was aimed at promoting the stability of existing marriages and increasing the rate of marriages. But rigorous evaluations of the funded programs have found them to be unsuccessful in meeting either of these goals.⁵⁵

Those who criticized the initiative as Congress was considering it now seem prescient. Stephanie Coontz, contributor to this report and professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College, and Nancy Folbre, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, both argued strongly that government efforts to encourage lower-income women to marry were out of touch with the reality faced by many of these women. The men in their prospective marriage pools are unlikely to find or hold on to steady work, incarcerated, using drugs or alcohol, or abusive, leaving low-income women unable to find partners who can provide economic stability.⁵⁶

Strikingly, very few divorced, now-single moms in the poll conducted for The Shriver Report regret leaving their marriages (15 percent). A 63 percent majority, with the clarity of hindsight, tell us they would have delayed getting married, and 47 percent would have delayed having children. Among lower-income women, just 19 percent regret leaving their marriages. In contrast, 53 percent of lower-income men said they regret leaving their marriages.

Further research has shown that they were right. Low-income women state that they would like to marry but that economic stability for both partners is an important prerequisite to marriage.⁵⁷ And research on financially secure men shows they are much more likely to choose to marry women who are similarly economically stable, as opposed to “rescuing” a woman from poverty.⁵⁸ Indeed, it is telling that cohabiting families with children are more likely to be living in poverty than single-mother families.⁵⁹ A partner with little to no income can quickly become just another mouth to feed, rather than an equally contributing member of the household. Our poll shows that 53 percent of women on the brink are not satisfied with the level of financial support they receive from their child’s other parent, and 58 percent are unsatisfied with the level of caretaking by the other parent.

We must confront the fact that our public policies to curb unintended and unplanned pregnancies and those aimed at ameliorating the economic precariousness of single-parent households have largely failed to affect demographic trends in the timing of marriage and motherhood. While access to and use of contraception have increased, use and access for young American women are still much lower than in other developed nations. Welfare reform has not alleviated the burdens on low-income women and children, and the Healthy Marriage Initiative did nothing to reverse the trend.

We must also re-enter the marriage debate with a shared understanding that legally recognized relationships are granted social and economic benefits that tend to make them, as a whole, more stable and financially secure. This stability and financial security, which is often correlated with marriage, can have a deep impact on parents’ ability to raise healthy children with bright futures, as well as promoting women’s economic security and prosperity.

In addition to economic incentives to promote marriage among low-income communities, the government should focus its efforts on reducing unplanned births to unmarried women and increasing the educational and economic prospects of single moms. Specifically:

By working to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies to unmarried parents, policymakers must also acknowledge the lack of economic and educational opportunities afforded to low-income young adults. While we should encourage young women to get an education before having a baby and encourage both parents to be economically secure before entering into parenthood, this suggestion must come with real policies to support these efforts, as outlined in the Education chapter.

Over the past 50 years, there have been key moments—from the Moynihan Report to the 1996 welfare reform law to the Healthy Marriage Initiative—in which the government recognized and responded to the challenges faced by women living in poverty or on the brink of it and women faced with raising and supporting children on their own. None of these efforts, however, have resulted in a reversal of the trend of more and more women having children outside of marriage with limited support for raising and caring for their children.

Kristeen Rogers, 23, puts her daughters to bed in Clermont, Florida. She works multiple jobs, so time with her girls is limited. On this night, she read them a book, sang them each a song of their choice, and helped say prayers before kissing them goodnight. {MELISSA LYTTLE}

Low-income single mothers are more likely to wish for more caregiving help than more money from their children’s fathers.