I'm not sure this belongs here but it's an interesting series of statistics from 1965 through 2000 on USA marriage, divorce and unwed mothering.  I found them in an article on Culture Wars in the January/February 2006 Atlantic Monthly.

What can be drawn from these statistics?

If the trend continues, is that a bad thing?

1965
Married 72.6% of all households
Divorces 2.5 per 1000
Out of wedlock births 7.7% of all unmarried women

1970
Married 70.5% of all households
Divorces 3.5 per 1000
Out of wedlock births 10.7% of all unmarried women

1975 *
Married 66% of all households
Divorces 4.8 per 1000
Out of wedlock births 14.3% of all unmarried women

1980
Married 60.8% of all households
Divorces 5.2 per 1000
Out of wedlock births 18.4% of all unmarried women

1985
Married 58% of all households
Divorces 5 per 1000
Out of wedlock births 22% of all unmarried women

1990
Married 59% of all households
Divorces 4.7 per 1000
Out of wedlock births 28% of all unmarried women

2000
Married 52.8% of all households
Divorces 4.1 per 1000
Out of wedlock births 33.2 of all unmarried women

* Roe V Wade = 1973

This discussion could go in a political/religious direction. Or maybe not. I just see it as a negative trend to have diminished marriage from nearly 3/4 to just over 1/2 in 35 years; and for out of wedlock births to have increased from around 8% to a whopping 33% in the same amount of time as very harmful to a society. Divorce, surprisingly, had the scantest upward trend before the rates started to diminish after 1985. It makes you wonder where those 50% stats come from too.

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

No, I haven't read it, LetsRoque, but I see stacks of them every time I go to Costco. I've heard it discussed on this weekend radio show -- "Money Talk" -- too, but I don't remember much about it. In fact, I only listen to that radio show is to force feed myself knowledge on a subject that I generally find too arcane to comprehend.  Hoping that somehow subliminally, I might catch on.

I'll take a look at it, though. I am curious HOW Roe V Wade would impact crime rates. Hmmm.

Right you are that data and stats can produce controversial conclusions. I found these particular statistics interesting in forecasting the future of the American family. Of course there's always the possibility of a pendulum swing the other way rather than an endless continuum of decline in marriage, rise in unwed mothering and divorce. There are many reasons for the state of affairs which seem to reinforce the Giant Calder Mobile theory of touch one end here and every other piece shifts as well. Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

lol @ force feeding information, you should give your brain a rest from time to time!

quote - 'I'll take a look at it, though. I am curious HOW Roe V Wade would impact crime rates. Hmmm.'

He basically suggested that some of the crime drop in the US in the 1990's could be accredited to legalised abortion. He claimed that 'unwanted' children were now not being born on the same scale as before the ruling. Since the type of children born into an environment adverse to their prospects of remaining law abiding citizens were now simply not being born, a positive effect on crime data could be the result of legalising abortion in 1973. Controversial! 

He makes some other surprising observations and backs them up with vigourous econometric number-crunching but avoids coming across as pious. He puts it out there and provokes debate, without claiming to have all the answers. some of his analysis definitley warrants further examination.

More on Marriage and what we can draw from its demise, this time from Europe.  And in the category of gratitude for small favors, this time through the perspective of Tracy Wilkerson, whom the LA Times (mercifully) has reassigned from her former Mid-East assignment desk.  

This cannot be a good thing. I know I'm a stodgy conservative but I really don't like this change in tradition, but FEH! -- I hope I die before I get young.  What can I say?  I agree with the Pope!

Susan

Southern Europe Seeing a Breakup Boom
Divorce rates are rising across the continent, but the three most Roman Catholic countries are exceeding the pace.
By Tracy Wilkinson
Times Staff Writer

May 21, 2006

ROME — When the Vatican looks out at the state of the Western European family, it is alarmed. It sees parents and children at the mercy of overly secular nations awash in laws and practices that liberalize evils, from abortion to gay marriage.

Church officials now have another trend to fret about. Divorce has been marching ever upward everywhere in Europe, but nowhere more so than in the continent's three most Roman Catholic countries.

Portugal, Italy and Spain, in that order, have registered the highest jump in divorce rates in the last decade, according to a new study.

The institution of marriage, says Eduardo Hertfelder, the study's director, "is in crisis." It is not that these countries have the most divorces (Germany and Britain hold the lead) but that they registered the largest percentage increase. In Portugal, divorces rose 89% from 1995 to 2004, according to Hertfelder's Institute for Family Policies, a nongovernmental organization based in Madrid; the jump was 62% for Italy and 59% for Spain in that period.

In a sense, these Southern European nations are catching up to the breakneck pace of breakup seen elsewhere on the continent.

In addition, Hertfelder and other experts say, Southern Europe has lagged behind the north in legislation, programs and attitudes that assist the family. Women get little support in the workplace, for example, and child-care options are more limited, placing stress on marriages.

Stable families headed by married couples have been taken for granted in nations such as Italy, Spain and Portugal, Hertfelder said in a telephone interview from Madrid.

"The rest of Europe has realized the social benefits of [stable] families, but in Southern Europe we don't see the same resources, financial assistance, laws and economic benefits that help families in crisis," he said.

Some experts said it should not be surprising that traditionally Roman Catholic countries report growing rates of divorce. Strict adherence to Catholicism's tenets has been on the wane for many years, even here in the land of the Vatican.

"There is a discrepancy between our values and our behavior," said Rossella Palomba, with Rome's Institute for Population Research and Social Policies. "People get married, get divorced and still go to church."

In fact, the gap has widened between the numbers of Catholics in Southern Europe who declare their faith and those who practice it.

A recent survey of Italians, for example, showed nearly 88% identifying themselves as Catholic believers in God. But only about 33% said they attended Mass every Sunday. And about two-thirds disagreed with Vatican positions opposing divorce and assisted fertility, according to the survey by the Eurispes research center.

People are divorcing more in Portugal, Italy and Spain for the same reasons they are divorcing everywhere else, Palomba and others said. Women have more freedom, demand more from spouses than their grandmothers did, are putting jobs ahead of marital bliss, and realize they can end unhappy unions with less stigma.

Recognizing a potential market when they see it, a group of editors this month launched a magazine billed as the first publication in Italy aimed exclusively at women who have split with their husbands or partners.

Armed with statistics that show roughly a third of now-married Italian women will face divorce, the publishers say they hope to fill a void, hitting newsstands with a first run of 230,000.

The first issue of Starting Over Woman contains relatively upbeat articles about how to remain friends with an ex, what to tell the kids, how to travel alone, and the usual self-improvement fare. (Plus the requisite-in-Italy article on George Clooney.)

"A woman who is divorced or separated is someone who has invested in a relation that failed, so she has taken an incredible slap," the editor, Francesca Ressa, said. "But she has to start again. She has to cheer up, take care of herself, not become fat."

Ressa, 40, who is single but whose boyfriend is divorced, is bracing for a possible backlash from the church, and plans to invite a priest or bishop to write an advice column. The magazine isn't so much telling women to divorce as it is confronting reality, she said.

That reality is precisely what the church wants to change. Officials of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, holding a congress in Rome this month to mark the organization's 25th anniversary, argued that lack of education left too many Catholics unable to appreciate the meaning of "true, sacramental" marriage. Confusion over alternative lifestyles and same-sex unions — legalized in Spain and under consideration in Italy — has weakened the institution of marriage, church officials say.

Speaking to the congress, Pope Benedict XVI again emphasized marriage as an essential good for society. "Only the rock of total and irrevocable love between a man and a woman," he said, "can be the foundation for building a society that is home to all mankind."

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

It's funny you have raised this issue as we have alot of stuff going on in the UK press at the moment about how the institution of marriage is at serious risk due to the ridiculos divorce laws that are being passed by our government.  This is mainly due to the outrageous settlement figures being dished out here.   It is all too easy to 'opt out' and take the cash express.   'spesh if your hub is minted !!

All I know is I would find things really hard being a single mum and I would never have chilluns out of wedlock.  Just a silly old tradition I like and stand by.

I mean it like it is .... like it sounds ...