Nonmarital Childbearing: Divergent Legal and Social Concerns

Abstract

American social scientists, policymakers, moral leaders, and members of the legal profession. Recent changes in both marriage and childbearing behavior have brought about an increase in the proportion of children born to mothers not married at the time of the birth. This trend in nonmarital fertility has been accompanied by an increase in the propensity of unwed mothers to keep and raise their infants rather than place them in adoptive or foster homes. Both trends have been subject to increased attention in the popular press and social scientific literature alike. This concern, however, has been accompanied by little discussion of either the conceptualization or operational definition of nonmarital fertility (see Davis, 1939, for an important but distant exception). In the absence of such discussion, nonmarital childbearing has been treated as virtually synonymous with illegitimate fertility as defined by the national vital registration system. I This paper presents the argument for a reconceptualization of nonmarital fertility and its measurement that is more consistent with the broad spectrum of concerns surrounding this mode of childbearing. We begin with a discussion of the current definition of illegitimacy in the United States and its historical foundation in a legalistic perspective. We show that a wide range of social, moral, medical, and policy considerations would imply a more encompassing definition of nonmarital childbearing. Informed by these considerations, we offer a more socially grounded conceptualization that we term out-of-wedlock childbearing. Then using data from the June 1980 Current Population Survey (CPS),2 we demonstrate the significant substantive differences that arise between the broader social measure and the traditional legal one. These differences are especially pronounced with respect to the numbers of nonmarital births involved. They also serve to weaken