According to a recent study from America, it is now becoming “unusual” for couples without a college education to wait until they are married to have children.
The study, by researchers at John Hopkins University, looked at parents between the ages of 26 and 31 who didn’t graduate from college, and found that 74% of mothers and 70% of fathers had at least one child without being married.
"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," said sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin. "It is now unusual for non-college graduates who have children in their teens and 20s to have all of them within marriage."
"If marriage retains its place anywhere it would be among the college graduates, because most of them do not begin to have children until after they are married,” he added. “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."
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