Are single mothers going up? Are they making reckless decisions to raise children without the help of a supportive partners? Are millennials in particular really into being single mothers?

No.

Fact #1: Single mother lead homes are on the decline.

Let’s start with US census data - In 1960 only 8% of children lived in single-mother headed houses. That figure doubled by 1976 and continued to rise steadily (although not quite as rapidly) through the 1980s and 1990s, reaching an apex of 24% in 2012. However since then that figure has gradually decreased and is now at 21% in 2020 - the lowest percentage since 1986. The fertility rate of unmarried women is also down - from 48 per 1000 in 2010 to 40 per 1000 women in 2020. The US still has, compared to the rest of the world, a whole heck of a lot of children living in single mother (and increasingly also single father) headed households. But it’s not increasing, at least not anymore.

Fact #2: Unmarried, cohabiting mothers are on the up

The profile of the typical unmarried parent has changed quite a bit. In 1997, 68% of all unmarried parents were single mothers - 20 years later this figure has dropped to 53%. This is largely due to the rise in cohabitation, which now represents 35% of all non-married parents. 58% of unmarried women who have a baby live with the child’s father. Is the rise of cohabitating, non-married parents a problem? To many on PPD who are against marriage one would assume that this signifies a positive change. Is it a problem for children? Maybe. Research shows that, compared to married parents, cohabitating parents are more likely to split up, more likely to have unplanned children and more likely to experience a host of other social and financial difficulties. But a) correlation not causation and b) it’s hard to imagine that research can really keep up with rapidly changing social values. A cohabitating, non-married couple with children simply looks different - and is much more normal, in 2020 compared to even 2000, so a lot of the data on outcomes of children of cohabitating couples isn’t necessarily applicable today.

Fact #3: Millennial mothers are waiting longer to have children, especially if they are college educated

There’s a factoid floating around PPD that the majority of births to millennial mothers are to single mothers. Yes, apparently just like avocado toast, millennial women love having babies on their own. But this is, of course, misleading. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth followed a cohort of young people from 1997. By 2011, 57% of the births that occurred within this cohort were outside of marriage. Even discounting the idea these individuals are more likely to be in a non-married cohabitating union, let’s not lose sight of the fact that this cohort was aged 26-31 at the time of publication*.* So yeah, no shit you have a higher prevalence of single mother births when you are dealing with younger parents. For the women in the cohort who had given birth, 81% of them were non-college graduates, and of those who were college educated, 71% were married. In 2016, the average maternal age of a college educated woman was 30.3 at first birth. In 2017, Women in their 30s had a higher birth rate than women in their 20s. So if we were looking at a cohort that is 36-41, I would imagine we would see a very different percentage of single mothers vs married mothers compared to a cohort that is 26-31, especially among women who are college educated.

So cheer up everyone - solo moms are on the decline, cohabitating couples are on the rise, and millennial women with college degrees are having babies in wedlock, in their 30s.