Nearly Half Of American Children Don’t Have Married Parents. Here’s Why It Matters

Unmarried couples are having roughly 40 percent of all births in the U.S., marking a trend that may be detrimental to the upbringing of those children.

For the first time in U.S. history, out-of-wedlock births in America are largely a result of cohabitation, according to the United Nations Population Fund 2018 State of World report released Wednesday. Single mothers had nearly 90 percent of out-of-wedlock births in 1968, but that number decreased to 53 percent in 2017, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Compared to children of married parents, those with cohabiting parents are more likely to experience the breakup of their families, be exposed to ‘complex’ family forms, live in poverty, suffer abuse, and have negative psychological and educational outcomes,”according to the Institute for Family Studies (IFS).

Roughly 14 million American adults cohabited in 2007, and that number rose to 18 million in 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Half of cohabiting couples in the U.S. are younger than 35, according to Bloomberg Quint. Cohabitation has increased about 2,000 percent since 1960, according to the American Enterprise Institute.

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