In Connecticut, where the cost of living is high, single mother-headed households are about seventeen times more likely than two-parent households to live in poverty, and more than half of the state’s singleparent families do, according to the state Department of Social Services...

The proportion of single mother households, which vastly outnumber those headed by single fathers, to married couple households has significantly increased over the past 25 years nationwide.

Sociologists say the rise in unmarried parenthood is due in part to increasing views among young people that parenthood and marriage are separate undertakings, and that a child can be a path to self-actualization and purpose...

[Teenage pregnancy rates have declined, but] age may not have the impact on unmarried pregnancies that [many assume], according to Kelleen Kaye, a family structure analyst and policy expert who is researching behaviors and attitudes toward parenthood for the New America Foundation.

It is encouraging that a nationwide push to decrease teenage pregnancy has worked, but the unmarried women who are increasingly waiting until their early twenties to have babies are as ill-equipped for motherhood as teenagers and have less public policy support, Kaye said.

More than half of the women in their early twenties who gave birth in 2004 were unmarried.

“A lot of this problem has just been pushed back to a slightly older age group,” Kaye said. “They just kind of fall off society’s radar screen but they’re still just as lost.”

Single parenthood is especially prevalent in low-income neighborhoods and is racially-correlated, as well. Nearly 70 percent of births to black women are outside of marriage.

But some middle- to upper income mothers have chosen single parenthood and argue that they are perfectly capable of raising children without men.

Even so, society should discourage the unmarried parent trend, Kaye said.

“Even in those (higher income) families, the children are suffering some consequences,” she said. “Of course we should never be vilifying single moms ... but that doesn’t necessarily mean we want to promote all pathways into parenthood. There are just intrinsic aspects of having two parents that helps kids thrive. If you have a child who was born into a married parent family, on average, there tends to be more significant parent involvement.”

Nationally, children of single mothers are five times more likely to live in poverty than their peers who have two parents. And the risks of single parenthood stretch far beyond economics. Single-parent households are among the main factors schools and leaders use to define which kids are “at-risk” for undesirable outcomes...

Single parenthood is a vicious cycle that partially stems from “generational unraveling” that gives youths no role models for couple parenting and leaves them to fall back on unrealistic expectations, Kaye said.

“You can start to think about entire communities being transformed with ... marriage virtually disappearing as an institution,” she said...

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