David AkinVerified account @davidakin 41% of all U.S. births to unmarried moms; 72% of all black U.S. births to unmarried moms
Few institutions in America have evolved over the last 50 years quite like motherhood. More women are having their children later in life. Or they're doing so in less traditional ways: before marriage, without marriage, or with unmarried partners. Single motherhood has grown so common in America that demographers now believe half of all children will live with a single mom at some point before the age of 18.
The implications of this seismic shift in family structure are broad and deeply debated. Research suggests that children with two parents fare better in many ways — in school, in their own relationships — than children with only one at home. And those implications are unevenly distributed in society: A black child today is much more likely to be born to a single mom than a white child, or the child of a mom with a college degree.
You've likely heard these trends before, but the sweep of how dramatically they've occurred over the last half-century is breathtaking. Consider this chart, from Princeton's Sara McLanahan and Harvard's Christopher Jencks. It shows that more than 70 percent of all black children today are born to an unmarried mom, a three-fold increase in that rate since the 1960s:
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The unbelievable rise of single motherhood in America over the last 50 years - The Washington Post
