From Kay Hymowitz, W. Bradford Wilcox, and Kelleen Kaye:
Between 1990 and 2008, the teen pregnancy rate has dropped by 42%, while the rate of nonmarital childbearing among 20-something women has risen by 27%.
Mostly bad news, actually. Read the whole thing.
Dr. Kling,
Having read the “whole thing”, I wonder if it would be fair to characterize the phenomenon described as a growth in barbarism (destroyed family structures) largely coincident with – and somewhat caused by – a growth in liberty, namely the sexual revolution.
To be charitable to aficionados of the liberty-coersion axis, one could notice that the sexual revolution was mostly not an escape from state coercion, but rather from social coercion. And as I understand it, libertarians are all for social coercion, e.g. peer pressure, as the proper substitute for state coercion.
But then, why aren’t libertarians a bunch of nosy prudes – pressuring others to behave well, so as to relieve the state of that burden, and to demonstrate by example that the state can be so relieved?
Ken
Maybe because libertarians don’t view these as problems in the first place? The linked article takes it as self-evident that marriage is the best outcome. There’s a lot of talk about how that isn’t happening and twenty-something women are having kids out of wedlock, but only a single reference to the supposed consequences, the increased “likelihood that [the kids] will experience academic, social and emotional problems like poor grades, drug abuse and (perpetuating the cycle) unmarried childbearing” from the “instability” that comes with “a family maze of step parents, siblings, grandparents and homes.” Note how even there, they throw in “unmarried childbearing,” as though that’s obviously bad in itself. Also, do kids born into a marriage not go through that same maze, considering half of their parents end up getting divorced anyway?
The fundamental issue here isn’t marriage, it’s that far too many people pop out kids with little thought put into it, married or not. Societal pressure to have kids has a lot to do with this, as people who don’t do the whole “married with kids” routine are barraged with social pressure for not going down the traditional route. Perhaps this made sense centuries ago, when we all lived in small tribes and these social constructs were developed, so that our tribe wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the more reproductively fruitful tribe to the north. However, strength in numbers hasn’t been relevant in half a century, yet these old constructs still die hard.
Marriage and kids are personal choices and certainly not ones we should be pushing on people. Some will choose to have kids in their 20s while unmarried, others won’t. I see no bad news in this article.
You are correct that this is a troubling issue for libertarians. Brink Lindsey has written a lot about it. Incidentally, not all libertarians are fond of social pressure. See John Stuart Mill, for example. See my essay: http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2012/Klinggroupnorms.html