Out-of-Wedlock Births Hit Record High

The numbers keep on climbing :

Nearly 40 percent of babies born in the United States in 2007 were delivered by unwed mothers, according to data released last month by the National Center for Health Statistics. The 1.7 million out-of-wedlock births, of 4.3 million total births, marked a more than 25 percent jump from five years before.

Statistics such as these, which include for the second year in a row a bump in teen pregnancies, after a 14-year decline, leave Sarah Brown concerned. She worries about the children born to unwed parents—about the disadvantages they often face, including increased likelihood of poverty and greater high school dropout rates.

“I wish people spent as much time planning when to get pregnant, with whom, under what circumstances as they do planning their next vacation,” said Brown, the CEO and founding director of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “The stigma [of out-of-wedlock births] has eroded, and these numbers made me feel perhaps it’s disappeared altogether.” . . .

“Culturally speaking” taking vows wasn’t expected, said LaShanda Henry, who runs the Black Moms Club, an online social network, and the Web-only Mahogany Momma Magazine. “Do we want to spend that money on a wedding or a house? . . . I guess it’s about priorities. I was never one of those girls that dreamed about the wedding dress.”

“I guess it’s about priorities.” Ms. Henry is right about that. Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding, she decided instead to avoid the altar altogether and put a down payment on a house. Notice, however, that the real conflict here isn’t between marriage and a house, at all, but between an expensive wedding dress and a house. Weddings, after all, are about dresses and flowers, not covenants and prayers.