(Press-News.org) Waiting until marriage to have babies is now "unusual" among less-educated adults close to 30 years old, Johns Hopkins University researchers found.
"Clearly the role of marriage in fertility and family formation is now modest in early adulthood and the lofty place that marriage once held among the markers of adulthood is in serious question," sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin said. "It is now unusual for non-college graduates who have children in their teens and 20s to have all of them within marriage."
Among parents aged 26 to 31 who didn't graduate from college, 74 percent of the mothers and 70 percent of the fathers had at least one child outside of marriage, Cherlin found. And, 81 percent of births reported by women and 87 percent of births reported by men had occurred to non-college graduates.
"If marriage retains its place anywhere," Cherlin said, "it would be among the college graduates, because most of them do not begin to have children until after they are married. The difference between them and the non-college-educated with regard to the percentage of births within marriage is so striking as to suggest a very different experience of early adulthood."
The study is detailed in "Changing Fertility Regimes and the Transition to Adulthood: Evidence from a Recent Cohort," a paper by Cherlin, Elizabeth Talbert and Suzumi Yasutake that was presented recently to the Population Association of America.
The researchers mined data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, focusing on a sample of 9,000 "early adults" who reached ages 26 to 31 in 2011. They are the oldest members of the generation commonly known as millennials.
By that age, 53 percent of the women had given birth to at least one child and 64 percent of the mothers had at least one baby when they weren't married. (Forty-seven percent of the mothers had all of their babies out of wedlock.) The percentage of unwed pregnancies goes up as the mothers' education level declines. The numbers are roughly the same for men.
Of mothers with four or more years of college, 32 percent had at least one baby while unmarried.
Of mothers with only one to three years of college, 67 percent had at least one baby while unmarried.
Of mothers with only a high school diploma, 71 percent had at least one baby while unmarried.
Lastly, among mothers with no high school diploma, 87 percent had at least one baby while unmarried.
Only 36 percent of the mothers had all of their babies while married — that's 46 percent of whites, 10 percent of blacks and 28 percent of Hispanics. Those numbers are roughly the same for men.
"The literature on early adulthood often suggests that this period can be a valuable time of self-exploration free of adult responsibilities," said Cherlin, the Benjamin H. Griswold Professor of Public Policy at Johns Hopkins. "But this characterization would seem to better apply to well-educated middle-class early adults with their typically long period of college attendance, perhaps followed by graduate school, and their postponement of childbearing until after marriage."
INFORMATION:
Johns Hopkins University news releases are available online, as is information for reporters. Find more Johns Hopkins stories on the Hub.
Paper available at http://krieger.jhu.edu/sociology/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2012/02/Read-Online.pdf
Most millennial moms who skip college also skip marriage
2014-06-16
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Regenerating our kidneys
2014-06-16
Doctors and scientists have for years been astonished to observe patients with kidney disease experiencing renal regeneration. The kidney, unlike its neighbor the liver, was universally understood to be a static organ once it had fully developed.
Now a new study conducted by researchers at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv University and Stanford University turns that theory on its head by pinpointing the precise cellular signalling responsible for renal regeneration and exposing the multi-layered nature of kidney growth. The research, in Cell Reports, was conducted by principal ...
WSU researchers develop fuel cells for increased airplane efficiency
2014-06-16
PULLMAN, Wash.–Washington State University researchers have developed the first fuel cell that can directly convert fuels, such as jet fuel or gasoline, to electricity, providing a dramatically more energy-efficient way to create electric power for planes or cars.
Led by Professors Su Ha and M. Grant Norton in the Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture, the researchers have published the results of their work in the May edition of Energy Technology. A second paper on using their fuel cell with gasoline has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Power ...
Sleep quality and duration improve cognition in aging populations
2014-06-16
EUGENE, Ore. -- (June 16, 2014) -- Maybe turning to sleep gadgets -- wristbands, sound therapy and sleep-monitoring smartphone apps -- is a good idea. A new University of Oregon-led study of middle-aged or older people who get six to nine hours of sleep a night think better than those sleeping fewer or more hours.
The study, published in the June issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, reaffirms numerous small-scale studies in the United States, Western Europe and Japan, but it does so using data compiled across six middle-income nations and involving more than ...
Tugging on the 'malignant' switch
2014-06-16
Cambridge, Mass. – June 16, 2014 – A team of researchers led by David J. Mooney, Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, have identified a possible mechanism by which normal cells turn malignant in mammary epithelial tissues, the tissues frequently involved in breast cancer.
Dense mammary tissue has long been recognized as a strong indicator of risk for breast cancer. This is why regular breast examinations are considered essential to early detection. Until now, however, the significance of that tissue ...
Sensor in eye could track pressure changes, monitor for glaucoma
2014-06-16
Your eye could someday house its own high-tech information center, tracking important changes and letting you know when it's time to see an eye doctor.
University of Washington engineers have designed a low-power sensor that could be placed permanently in a person's eye to track hard-to-measure changes in eye pressure. The sensor would be embedded with an artificial lens during cataract surgery and would detect pressure changes instantaneously, then transmit the data wirelessly using radio frequency waves.
The researchers recently published their results in the Journal ...
LLNL researchers develop high-quality 3-D metal parts using additive manufacturing
2014-06-16
LIVERMORE, Calif. – Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have developed a new and more efficient approach to a challenging problem in additive manufacturing -- using selective laser melting, namely, the selection of appropriate process parameters that result in parts with desired properties.
Selective laser melting (SLM) is a powder-based, additive manufacturing process where a 3D part is produced, layer by layer, using a high-energy laser beam to fuse the metal powder particles. Some SLM applications require parts that are very dense, with less than ...
Embryonic stem cells offer new treatment for multiple sclerosis
2014-06-16
Scientists in the University of Connecticut's Technology Incubation Program have identified a novel approach to treating multiple sclerosis (MS) using human embryonic stem cells, offering a promising new therapy for more than 2.3 million people suffering from the debilitating disease.
The researchers demonstrated that the embryonic stem cell therapy significantly reduced MS disease severity in animal models and offered better treatment results than stem cells derived from human adult bone marrow.
The study was led by ImStem Biotechnology Inc. of Farmington, Conn., ...
Antarctic species dwindle as icebergs batter shores year-round
2014-06-16
The Antarctic shore is a place of huge contrasts, as quiet, dark, and frozen winters give way to bright, clear waters, thick with algae and peppered with drifting icebergs in summer. But as the planet has warmed in the last two decades, massive losses of sea ice in winter have left icebergs free to roam for most of the year. As a result, say researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on June 16, boulders on the shallow seabed—once encrusted with a rich assemblage of species in intense competition for limited space—now mostly support a single species. ...
First Canadian Bell palsy guideline
2014-06-16
The first Canadian guideline for Bell palsy, facial weakness or paralysis caused by facial nerve damage, is aimed at helping physicians manage and treat patients during the acute phase as well as recovery. The guideline, published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal), is based on the growing body of recent evidence on the condition.
Bell palsy is damage to the facial nerve that results in sudden weakness or paralysis of one side of the face. It can come on suddenly with symptoms such as drooping of the face and eyelids, twitching, and others that may include ...
A faster path to optical circuits
2014-06-16
Just as electronic circuits work with electrical charges, optical circuits process pulses of light, which gives them a distinct advantage in terms of speed. Optical technologies are therefore the object of intense research, aiming to develop novel optical devices that can control the flow of light at the nanometer scale. EPFL scientists have developed a new method that can optimally design a widely-used class of optical devices with unprecedented effectiveness. Their designs have been fabricated in the US, at the University of Rochester, and successfully tested in Italy, ...