Unlike decades ago, teens not driving rise in unwed mothers

Chicago Tribune

(MCT)

CHICAGO - Kimberly Dearth's biological clock was beginning to tick pretty loudly. So when she discovered she was pregnant, she had no problem putting diapers before a diamond ring.

"It was unplanned but not unwelcome," said Dearth, 37, who is raising her 15-month-old daughter, Samantha, as a single mother. "Two different doctors told me that I would need fertility treatments. So when I found out that I was pregnant, I was shocked, I was frightened, but I was also very happy."

Dearth, a medical assistant from Cedar Lake, Ind., is among a growing number of women over 35 - when fertility rates begin to steeply decline - to become single mothers.

The number of out-of-wedlock births has reached a record high in the U.S., with nearly 4 in 10 babies born last year to unmarried women, according to a recent report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase was seen in all racial groups.

Unlike two decades ago, teenagers - who are having fewer babies - are not driving the trend. It is fueled, in part, by women in their 30s and 40s, many of whom had put off marriage and family for careers. And single mothers have fought to remove the stigma of raising children out of wedlock.

Married women also are having babies later, researchers said. More than a quarter of the 4.1 million babies born in 2005 were to women ages 30 to 54.

"This is continuing a trend that has been going on for quite a number of years," said Stephanie Ventura, a statistician with the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, speaking of unwed and married older mothers. "We've only seen greater rates in the 1950s when people tended to have larger families."

Fourteen years after actress Candice Bergen drew the ire of Vice President Dan Quayle and other conservatives when her TV character, Murphy Brown, got pregnant and decided to raise the baby alone, single women are helping redefine the typical American family.

Despite efforts by social conservatives to promote traditional marriages, the Ozzie and Harriet stereotypes of the 1950s - a mother who stays home with the children while the father works - have long vanished from most American households. With nearly half of marriages ending in divorce and more couples in non-traditional relationships such as cohabitation, married couples have become a minority, accounting for 49.7 percent of households, according to the U.S. Census.

With marriage no longer considered by many a prerequisite for having children, single mothers are integrating into the mainstream and getting attention in the media, including celebrities like Angelina Jolie and photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Though some pregnancies are unexpected, many older women have gone to great lengths to give birth, such as turning to in-vitro fertilization using sperm banks or donor eggs, health officials said.

"Society's attitude has changed a little in that people understand that this is an option for single women who have not found the right man, or were divorced in their 30s, and really do want to be a mother," said Jane Mattes, 62, who founded the networking group Single Mothers by Choice.

According to Mattes, the Internet-driven group has grown from eight members in 1981 to 2,000. Most are college-educated women age 35 to 45 with established careers, debunking the negative stereotype of struggling young mothers on welfare.

"When you hear the term `single mother,' most people think of teenagers or a divorced woman who was left with children, but most of these women aren't either," said Mattes. "They are choosing to become single mothers. ... This is about making a personal choice."

As births among unwed mothers rose 4 percent last year to 1.5 million, births to teenagers - who two decades ago were considered synonymous with unwed mothers - continued a downward spiral that began in 1991, according to health officials. Girls ages 15 to 19 accounted for 40.4 births per 1,000 females, the lowest ever recorded.

Black teenagers ages 15 to 19, who historically have held the record for out-of-wedlock births, have charted the biggest decline. Last year the percentage of births to black teens in that age group dropped by 3 percent, tying them with the decline among white teens. The biggest drop, 6 percent, occurred among black teenagers ages 15 to 17, marking a 59 percent decrease since 1991. Hispanic teens saw a 1 percent decline last year.

Part of the reason is that young people are having less sex and using more contraception, said Bill Albert, spokesman for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, a non-profit, non-partisan group. Experts said programs targeting teenagers also have contributed to the decline.

"There's a real concern about (sexually transmitted diseases) in general and AIDS. That has had a sobering effect on teen sexual behavior, and it's a way to focus young boys' attention that just wasn't there 20 years ago. It's no longer just a `girls' problem,'" Albert said.

Albert said a relatively healthy economy in the last 10 to 15 years has also affected black girls. "Those who see a successful future are less apt to derail it with teen pregnancy and parenthood," he said.

The CDC's Ventura said the research tends to indicate teenagers are waiting until their 20s to have a child. More than half the births to women ages 20 to 24 were to unmarried women.

When Jenni Young became pregnant, she decided to have the baby, regardless of whether she had a future with the child's father. Now 1-year-old Fiona is the light of her life, she says, and she has no regrets.

"I was at a point in my life where I knew I could support her," said Young, 31, an attorney who works in the Loop. "It didn't matter if I had a man, because I knew I could do it alone."

Child care is the biggest hurdle, but Young said she has her mother, who lives with her, and a nanny to help her.

Karen Brown had heard the statistics about how hard it is for professional black women to find a husband. So she decided that if she did not conceive by age 40, she would adopt. She transferred from her job in Chicago to be near her sister in Greensboro, N.C., bought a house and started decorating a nursery. The only problem was there was no man in her life.

"A year later, I became involved in a relationship," she said. "We never specifically talked about the future, but he knew I wasn't taking birth control and he was like, `if it happens, it just happens.'"

Brown, a sales analyst for a computer services firm, said she always intended to raise her child alone, without financial assistance from the man, with whom she no longer has a relationship. Today, she said, her priority is providing a nurturing environment for her 9-year-old daughter, Mariah Addison.

"She does cry sometimes about not having her dad around, but we talk about it," said Brown. "These feelings are uniquely hers because I always had a dad at home. I do feel guilt sometimes, but we don't let it overwhelm us."

While mothers such as Brown are financially secure enough to care for their children, statistics show that is not the norm, said Kay Hymowitz, a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.

She said children raised by single moms "have a greater risk of poverty, emotional problems, school failure and of becoming single parents themselves when compared to children with two parents."

According to Hymowitz, author of "Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age," a traditional family structure gives kids a better foundation.

"People assume the reason married couples' children seem to turn out better is because there are two parents, two incomes and two brains, but that's not true," she said. "Cohabitating parents don't show quite the same strength; neither do stepparents. Marriage carries with it a whole set of messages about how to live, which are consistent with middle-class life in this country."

But for Quinn Ward, 29, of Atlanta, it is just as important to have role models for the child.

Though she became pregnant as a college sophomore, she never allowed it to deter her goals. She graduated and earned her master's degree while shuffling her son, Quint, around campus.

"To be successful and get to the place where I am, sometimes you have to take your child with you," said Ward, who works in marketing for a large insurance firm. "The key is to have a good support system of family and friends, and we have that."

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(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.