Single Mother Pregnancy Preference to Marriage Brings More Single Moms by Choice

Pregnancy Conceived as More Important than Men and Marriage by Single Mothers

Single mother pregnancy is a joy and a temporary displeasure.  Single mother pregnancies are no longer hidden in the homes of far away relatives.  Single women have proved they can make it alone, and single mothers no longer fear being pregnant and single – they seek it.

Single mother pregnancy is a pregnancy by choice.  Being a single mother by choice is a decision reached often after a pregnancy is discovered, as in the case of a teen contemplating the disadvantages of being a single teen mother.  But the decision to go through with single mother pregnancy is also reached prior to pregnancy, by many women who give forethought to being a single mother by choice, and children and divorce.  With or without forethought, 37 million women decide to have a single mother pregnancy by choice.

Single Mother Pregnancy No Longer Means Marriage

Single mother artificial insemination is no longer a novelty, it’s a trend.  High schools have single teen moms sitting in class and escaping to the bathroom for their bout of morning sickness.  Older women whose biological clocks are ticking decide there’s no reason to wait.  Single mother adoptions have increased.  Single moms are everywhere. .

The Census report Trends in Premarital Childbearing state that six out of ten first births are to women under 24, and a similar proportion of births to this age group are out of wedlock.  From 1930 to 1990, single mother pregnancy for first births rose from 8% to 41%.  In the 1930s it was not unusual to conceive a child before marriage, in fact one in six births in the 1930s were either born or conceived before marriage.  However the majority of conceptions resulted in marriage.  Up until the 1950s, half the pregnancies conceived before marriage, resulted in marriage before the child was born.  Interestingly, as abortion laws relaxed, birth control became available, and women became more educated, single mother pregnancy and births outside of marriage grew.  39% of the women with their first single mother pregnancy in the 1980s hadn’t married five years after.

For teenagers between 15 and 19, single pregnancy rarely means marriage.  In the 1930s the number of single mother pregnancy first births and conceptions were 28%, and in the 1990s it skyrocketed to 89%.  Having a preconceived baby during marriage was at its peak in the early 1960s at 59%, but by the 1990s, only 16% of preconceived births produced life within a teen marriage.  Today, teens are having fewer babies, not more.

Marriage and the definition of a traditional family have taken a back seat, not children.  In 1999, a University of Chicago study reported that only a quarter of households were traditional – a married mom and dad and a couple kids.  Many women have a single mother pregnancy and birth while cohabitating with their partner, and single mother statistics on pregnancy include cohabitating single mothers in their definition of single mothers.

Single Mother Pregnancy and Older Women Making the Choice to Choose Children over Marriage

Since the 1980s more women over 40 have been giving birth.  In 2005, 1/4th of all births were to women between 30 and 54.  Advanced educational and career opportunities have contributed to women postponing marriage and pregnancy.  If the biological clock ticks before marriage, an older woman is likely to consider being a single mother by choice, and possibly use assisted reproductive therapy or artificial insemination help make single mother pregnancy possible.  

Single mother pregnancies are indicative of a growing love for children and a lower reliance on marriage.  Although sex outside of marriage was hardly uncommon decades ago, children and marriage were a union.  Women have since defined marriage and parenthood separately - and have found life can happen, with or without marriage.  A single mother pregnancy demonstrates how.