JESSE POWELL WRITES:

I’ve been digging around in the statistics on the National Center for Health Statistics site, more specifically in their National Vital Statistics Reports area, and I found a goldmine of information on teenage births that I never knew before. I told you I heard someone say once that the out-of-wedlock ratio for teenage births in 1960 was 25 percent? Well, that person was wrong and I was wrong repeating that to others. In reality the out-of-wedlock ratio for teenagers in 1960 was 14.8 percent. That’s right, only 15 percent in 1960! In 1940 the ratio was 13.6 percent so not much change from 1940 to 1960. After 1960 the rate skyrocketed of course, women’s liberation and all. It didn’t reach 25 percent until 1968. In 1967 it was 24.2 percent and in 1968 it was 26.7 percent. It didn’t reach 50 percent until 1982. It reached 75 percent in 1994. In 2008, most recent data available, it was 86.7 percent. In 2008 the age group of women with the lowest out-of-wedlock ratio was 35 to 39 year olds and their ratio was 18.2 percent. So teenagers in 1960 beat out women in every age group, no matter how old, today in terms of commitment and ability to actually get married before they have children. [emphasis added] 

In terms of growth rate the out-of-wedlock ratio in 1960 for teenagers was 14.8 percent. In 2008 it was 86.7 percent. This means the growth rate of out-of-wedlock births among teenagers from 1960 to 2008 was 7.8 percent compounded annually.

The table in this report is great, it actually goes back to 1940, and it includes total number of births to teenagers, the total birth rate to teenagers, defined as being 15 to 19 years old, the birth rate to married teenagers, the birth rate to unmarried teenagers, and the percent of births to teenagers where the mother was unmarried. Total births to teenagers, total birth rate and rate for unmarried teens goes back solid to 1940. The unmarried ratio for teenage births goes back solid to 1950. All data goes back solid to 1960. The beginning year of the chart is 2000.

Laura writes:

These are stunning comparisons. You write, “So teenagers in 1960 beat out women in every age group, no matter how old, today in terms of commitment and ability to actually get married before they have children.”

The modern woman is becoming more child-like by the year.

Jesse replies:

I’d like to add that the 14.8 percent ratio for unmarried teenage births in 1960 is for all teenagers, all races included. If you just look at white teenagers the level of competent family formation among the teenage set is even more amazing. Only 7.2 percent of births to white teenagers were out-of-wedlock in 1960. It wasn’t until 1968 that that ratio reached 15 percent. It wasn’t until 1976 that that ratio reached 25 percent. The most recent data, for 2006, has this ratio at 79.8 percent. If we assume the rate of out-of-wedlock births among white teenagers is growing at 7.8 percent a year which has been the norm among all teenagers then right now for the year 2010 it can be estimated that the current out-of-wedlock birth ratio among white teenagers is 84.2 percent. 

So, in a mere 50 years time, in the space of two generations, the white out-of-wedlock birth ratio for teenagers has gone from a definite 7.2 percent in 1960 to a likely estimated 84.2 percent in 2010. Don’t let anyone tell you it is “natural” for a teenage girl to be unmarried when she gives birth, don’t let anyone tell you it is a simple matter of her immaturity level, that she is not old enough to be married yet. The reason why teenagers give birth while being unmarried today the great majority of the time is a simple matter of the destruction of the family brought on by the feminist revolution, nothing more. [emphasis added]

                                           — Comments —

Brittany writes:

I am surprised that the unmarried rate was that low because I thought many girls went to maternity homes and gave the children up for adoption. About a hundred years ago a 16 year old was expected to handle adult responsibilities. Fifty years later the concept of a teenager was introduced but they were still expected to do more than today’s teenagers. My point is that most teens back then were probably mature enough to get married but most teens today would be divorced in a few months.

Laura writes:

Our government schools prepare neither men or women for real life, but they can’t and they never will. They are in the business of stunting natural development. They are a failed enterprise and the raising of children must be returned to families and communities.

MJ writes:

I was a teenager in the late 50’s in a predominately rural-small town area where teen pregnacies in 17 yr-olds and younger were extremely rare and 18-19 yr olds got married after high school. Pregnant teens usually “left to go help a sick aunt” in a town with homes for unwed mothers. Babies were given up for adoption. Abortion was unheard of and also illegal. Usually the teen returned home for the next school year. Also the total population was 99% white and Christian in the midwest. 

In the mid to late 60’s I was a registered nurse in a town of 100,000. Abortions were still illegal and we admitted many women who had bad complications from botched abortions. After Roe vs Wade, we saw no more of these catastrophic mishaps. At the same time, unwed teen pregnancies started becoming more numerous, and much less stigmatized, primarily in minority communities. Also, in 1964 President Johnson signed the ‘Great Society’ national welfare into law.

 Now I live in a 85 percent Hispanic area that has a large, fatherless number of mother-headed households with multiple children from multiple fathers. Most of these children are given the father’s last name and the father is present at the baptism in a local Catholic church–which drives my Catholic friends nuts! Eighty percent of my county’s population is on Medicaid/Food Stamps. My city in Texas has more students in the schools from the city and the extraterritorial area than the city’s entire population (150,000), including 6,000 students from Mexico. 

We are doomed!

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