Do high illegitimacy rates bode well for Europe.

Apparently, the rate of births to unmarried women is increasing in western Europe.

See:

Is that something that should be concerning?

I also found this:


Personally I don't think it's a problem by itself. But I don't understand it either.

the question is, will and can these unmarried mothers take the full responsability for the ecucation of their children ?
or do they expect society to take responsability ?

Well, it does concern me if the women having these children are not in a long term committed relationship, at least from what I'm seeing here in the U.S.

There's the economic implications, as Bicicleur has pointed out. The poorest people in our society are single mothers and their children. Even if they're not on welfare, a lot of them have to get food stamps, housing help, medicaid etc.

Then, with only one parent to help with child care, and the mother working the children don't get the supervision they need or the help with discipline.

Maybe I'm really old fashioned, but I think children need two parents. I don't see anything good happening as a result of this. I'm glad to see that Italy has relatively low rates for this.

well
who can mess with a modern European woman,
and how many men are men today?

some things becomes fashion, or are forced by our modern way of life?
also liberty of sex, accidently can bring a baby, and the responsible father could not wanted, but he wanted sex
many of these mothers are victims, of rape, of sex 'curiosity' or fun, of many other things,
and one well known reason is sex bussiness,

Angela said:

Well, it does concern me if the women having these children are not in a long term committed relationship, at least from what I'm seeing here in the U.S.

There's the economic implications, as Bicicleur has pointed out. The poorest people in our society are single mothers and their children. Even if they're not on welfare, a lot of them have to get food stamps, housing help, medicaid etc.

Then, with only one parent to help with child care, and the mother working the children don't get the supervision they need or the help with discipline.

Maybe I'm really old fashioned, but I think children need two parents. I don't see anything good happening as a result of this. I'm glad to see that Italy has relatively low rates for this.

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Maybe in some countries there are couples in long term relationships who chose not to marry? Or at least the fathers acknowledge paternity and help economically the mothers?
That's the reason I said that "by itself" is not a problem. I agree with you though.

Anyway, I knew how conservative Polish people are in this regard, but I didn't expect west Germans to be in the same department. Interesting map, Angela. Looking at East and West Germany the issue seems to be very cultural in its nature. Perhaps, fashion like.

PS. Anecdotally, I just met the most beautiful, good natured and smart baby yesterday. Child of a single woman and dad from a sperm bank. Go figure.
I'm not saying it is a best way to raise a child, but it might not be the end of the world. Perhaps, good genes will always produce good human being, regardless of one good parent or two?

the thing is that man and woman don't want to commit to each other any more
marriage for life is out of fashion
monogamie is gone
those few who can afford it have multiple sex friends
others have 'sequential monogamie', they switch partner every 10 years
others stay alone and wait and see 'what comes around'

these high-illegitimacy rates come along with low birth rates in Europe
children are a burden, they prevent the parents from moving around freely
single mothers are certainly not the solution for the low birth rates
in the old days children were looking for their parents when they were old
I suggest they stop paying money for the children to be raised, but they also stop paying pensions
stop artificial 'solidarity' paid by the taxpayer and make people rely more on their family again

Estonia stands out for single mothers and unmarried couples

A comparative analysis done by Statistics Estonia shows that only 39 percent of marriageable age Estonians are married. This is the lowest figure in the EU.

In Estonia, roughly 50 percent of couples who live together are married. In Cyprus, Greece and Malta, for instance, this figure is around 80 percent.Researchers have noted that marriage is generally more popular in the tradition-loving southern European countries, whereas northern Europe stands out as a hotbed of non-traditional cohabitation forms. The statistics also show that the popularity of marriage is directly linked to the spread of religion in a country.According to the analysis, every fourth single-family household in Estonia consists of an unmarried couple. The number of cohabiting couples is higher only in Sweden (27 percent).The need to protect the children born to such families and other family members is what led the government to pass the cohabitation bill last fall.In addition to cohabiting couples, Estonia also stands out for single parents. One in five Estonian families is made up of a single mother and her children. Only Latvia has a higher number of single mothers (28 percent).Estonia also ranks high for the number of divorcees. According to the last census, 14 percent of over-15 year-olds are divorced and have not remarried. Once again, only in Latvia is this figure even higher.Psychologist and family therapist Sirje Agan said that nowadays people value a good and happy relationship over a marriage certificate. "In the past, people lived in larger communities and the support network was not limited to one's partner. Today, the partner tends to be the primary supporter a person has. Families are small, hence, the quality of the relationship is of utmost importance. People spend more time deliberating on their life together and the state of the relationship," she said.

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That's an example of a country where there is a large number of couples that live together but not marry, as far as I understand. But also 1/5 families "are made up of a single mother and her children".

Angela said:

Apparently, the rate of births to unmarried women is increasing in western Europe.

See: View attachment 7685

Is that something that should be concerning?

Click to expand...

Angela said:

Well, it does concern me if the women having these children are not in a long term committed relationship, at least from what I'm seeing here in the U.S.

Click to expand...

In the US births out of wedlocks are often linked to single mothers. That is because the country is so religious and most couples who decide to have children and live together do get married. But in the northern half of Europe religion is irrelevant (except Poland and Ireland) and the only people who are getting married do it for legal reasons or because the woman (usually) wants to hold a wedding party. Belgium is more religious in average than France, Britain, the Netherlands or Scandinavia, but most of the weddings I have attended there had nothing to do with religion. Often people just have the wedding party without going to church at all. Even those who do decide to have a ceremony at the church may not be Christian or not believe in god. It's more tradition than anything else.

Note that the rate of births to unmarried women correlates almost perfectly with the lack of religious affiliation, the least religious countries being East Germany, the Czech Republic, France, and Nordic countries. More religious countries like Poland and Italy have virtually no marriage out of wedlock. Even poorer Bulgaria is far less religious than neighbouring Romania, Turkey and Greece, and that also translates in lower marriage rates.

About half of the Belgian people I know who have children aren't married, but live together just as if they were. In fact I noticed that unmarried couples are less likely to separate (I won't use the term divorce as they aren't married) than married couples. Among the people I know, 80% of the parents who split up were married. I think there may be a psychological factor in play too. Couples who feel the need to get married may be the ones who feel more insecure about their relationship and feel that officially sealing their union will help keep them together. Of course that doesn't work at all.

I do not personally know any woman in Belgium who had children without being in a committed relationship with the father. There are single mothers, but all those I know divorced/separated many years after the births of their kids. Usually parents who don't get along anymore wait until their children are teenagers before divorcing/separating. I think that the situation is very different in the USA.

I want to say something about Greeks. The article I cited about Estonia is correct when it says " the popularity of marriage is directly linked to the spread of religion in a country"
But it would be wrong to assume that the Greeks marry because they are religious. Most Greeks (~75%) are "religious" twice a year, on Easter and on Christmas.

A. Papadimitriou said:

I want to say something about Greeks. The article I cited about Estonia is correct when it says " the popularity of marriage is directly linked to the spread of religion in a country"
But it would be wrong to assume that the Greeks marry because they are religious. Most Greeks (~75%) are "religious" twice a year, on Easter and on Christmas.

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Most Greeks believe in god, in heaven and in life after death. That is being religious. No need to go to church, read the bible and go on a pilgrimage to be considered religious. It's a state of mind.

LeBrok said:

PS. Anecdotally, I just met the most beautiful, good natured and smart baby yesterday. Child of a single woman and dad from a sperm bank. Go figure.
I'm not saying it is a best way to raise a child, but it might not be the end of the world. Perhaps, good genes will always produce good human being, regardless of one good parent or two?

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That's the old nature vs nurture debate. Like Matt Ridley (see The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture) I am well past this dichotomy and think that nurture is important but can only fulfil an individual's genetic potential. So in an equal society with universal free education, nature (good genes) always prime over nurture. Beauty and intelligence are highly hereditary, but so is temperament (things like natural curiosity, kindness, sociability, extraversion, neuroticism, orderliness, novelty-seeking, risk-seeking, promiscuity, etc.). Many studies have shown that ultimately the way parents educate their children has little effect on who they become as adults. Differences in education and upbringing will be most marked in childhood, but progressively decrease with age while the influence of genes increases with age.

Religions have always stressed the importance of family values and top-down education (an other word for brainwashing), but all recent studies have shown that kids learn better when they are free to satisfy their curiosity by themselves, Montessori style (or Wikipedia style).

In terms of negative effects on children and society in general I don't think it very much matters whether the couple/parents did or did not go through a formal marriage ceremony. The most important thing is whether there are at least two people sharing the financial and emotional/psychological costs and the time demands of raising children.

I don't think this is only an issue for the U.S. and other Anglo countries or we wouldn't see figures of 25% and 28% of households being composed of single mothers and children in countries like Estonia and Latvia. (Obviously, these are younger children or they wouldn't be in the single mother headed household, so this isn't a case where the parents separated after the children were grown and independent.)

There is no way that this is a good situation in my opinion. Not only experience but all the statistics are against it, showing that neurosis and virtually all forms of social pathology are higher among such children, whether the parents were initially formally married or not. Unless the relationship between the parents is really toxic, it's better for most children if the marriage or long term relationship stays intact. Nothing is 100% genetically determined. Environment acting on a given genetic profile has some part to play.

That is why, in studies conducted in multiple countries, fatherlessness correlates with social pathology " by comparing criminals of the same race, education, income, and mother's education whose primary observable difference is family structure, social scientists have come as close as they can to making the causal case with the methodological tools available."

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/ar...ween-single-parent-families-and-crime/265860/

That doesn't mean that some children won't be alright in such situations. A very dear friend of mine is a child psychologist. He's told me more than once that some children will thrive no matter the odds stacked against them. Some won't thrive no matter the care and good parenting lavished on them. For most, parenting, stressful events and peer pressure will have an impact, differing depending on the child. Everything I've read tells me he's correct.

As for the impact of religion, it's not as simple as more religious equals less single mothers. I know my own area of Italy very well. While people may say they believe in God or Christ the churches are empty and people pay absolutely no attention to Church teachings about sexuality. If you don't believe pre-marital or extra-marital sex is a sin, then it's not going to affect whether you go to heaven after death or not. That's been the case for decades, if not longer, and yet I don't see virtually any single mothers with children. (Indeed, in the 19th and early 20th century many peasant marriages were celebrated after the wife was already pregnant, and that was the case in many European countries. So long as the parents married, pre-marital sex didn't result in a huge social stigma.)

Even in the U.S. there's no perfect correlation. Black Americans are very religious and yet have extraordinarily high rates of single mother headed households. The same is true in the American south and in most rural areas where church attendance is high.

Definitely, it is very hard, if not impossible, to calculate effect of genetics or environment on human being. Complicated environments like human life always will be open to interpretation. Even statistical data is not easy to interpret in such complicated environments.

Beauty and intelligence are highly hereditary, but so is temperament (things like natural curiosity, kindness, sociability, extraversion, neuroticism, orderliness, novelty-seeking, risk-seeking, promiscuity, etc.).

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Also addictiveness, psychopathy or adrenalin high might be in this group. In this case, no matter what parents do, a child will be drawn to the "Dark Side", or "Tempted" to do menacing and antisocial acts. Breaking rules give some people feeling of excitment, a natural high.

Behavioural Geneticist Robert Plomin says 50-70% is genetic effect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0_NsS1Zdlk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfJppddMgmA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUCkylLAxK0
Interestingly, he confirms my beliefs that sociologists and parents with single child are seeing Nurture as only influence.

There is no way that this is a good situation in my opinion. All the statistics are against it, showing that neurosis and virtually all forms of social pathology are higher among such children, whether the parents were initially formally married or not. Unless the relationship between the parents is really toxic, it's better for children if the marriage or long term relationship stays intact. Nothing is 100% genetically determined. Environment, acting on a given genetic profile has some part to play.

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There might be genetic impact on some families which split leaving a single mother with a child. Unwillingness to compromise, stubbornness, emotional explosiveness, lack of self restraint, addictiveness could be overwhelmingly genetic in their nature. People with these traits are unable to hold family together. Kids inheriting these traits from parents will be problem kids in home, street and school. By measure of old school, behaviour of these kids will be blamed almost strictly on single parent environment, single mother in most cases. However, in many case it could have been all father's genetics doing. If father was the one with difficult character and if child inherited these difficult traits from him, one will destroy family union, the other will be a difficult child. No matter if a mother was the best wife and mother in the world.
I'm stressing here that no matter if parents stay together or not, the result of having difficult child might be exactly the same. It was father's bed genetics destroying family and creating bed kid. This could show in statistics of single mothers unjustifiably affecting their reputation.

A rough sort of analogy could be drawn to situations where people are exposed to traumatic occurrences, although these are clearly more extreme situations. The results will be different depending on the genetic make-up of the individual person. This happens with schizophrenia, for example. I don't think anyone denies that there is a huge genetic component to schizophrenia. However, those people in which it manifests usually have experienced what is called a "trigger event" at the particularly vulnerable age of early adolescence/young adulthood. The same thing occurs with PTSD. Exposed to the same events, some people will come down with it and some won't. Surely, we shouldn't want people to be exposed to these things just because some people will ultimately be ok.

I try to keep this in mind when I have a tendency to be rather hard on people who fall apart dealing with a lot less stress than has come my way.

As I said upthread, some children are almost invulnerable, some are highly fragile and some are in the middle.

I in no way want to throw mothers under the bus in this discussion. I know single mothers who are heroic in their devotion and are doing the best they can in difficult circumstances (as are couples who have inherently difficult children). Nor is this a situation that was unknown in prior periods. In more perilous times, many families lost a mother or a father. My point is that while this situation is sometimes unavoidable, it isn't the optimum situation for a child, and I think that in many cases it can be an irresponsible choice. I see too many parents who put their own selfish needs and desires above the needs of their children, and that's a trend that is increasing in modern society in my opinion, and results in a younger generation with far too many badly socialized children.

I also agree with Bicicleur that part of the reason lies in the fact that westernized societies financially subsidize the decision by some young women to have children sans husband or well paying job. I think that's a mistake. Obviously, a lot of young women are also raised by parents who haven't drummed into their heads that you don't have children until you can care for them properly. They're not pets. Or, the parents have let it be known that they'll shoulder or help shoulder the responsibility. Even though I obviously would if it were necessary, I didn't think it was necessary to share that information with my own children. The message to them was that if you do this, the responsibility will be yours; I've raised mine and I'm not going to raise another generation. It's time to be a grown-up. This shop is closed.

Well, anyway, I found another table in my files which relates to this topic. It provides data for single parent households by country. In this one, although Estonia still has high rates, the highest ones are in Anglo countries.

Angela said:

As for the impact of religion, it's not as simple as more religious equals less single mothers. I know my own area of Italy very well. While people may say they believe in God or Christ the churches are empty and people pay absolutely no attention to Church teachings about sexuality. If you don't believe pre-marital or extra-marital sex is a sin, then it's not going to affect whether you go to heaven after death or not. That's been the case for decades, if not longer, and yet I don't see virtually any single mothers with children. (Indeed, in the 19th and early 20th century many peasant marriages were celebrated after the wife was already pregnant, and that was the case in many European countries. So long as the parents married, pre-marital sex didn't result in a huge social stigma.)

Even in the U.S. there's no perfect correlation. Black Americans are very religious and yet have extraordinarily high rates of single mother headed households. The same is true in the American south and in most rural areas where church attendance is high.

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I suppose that you were replying to my comments. If so, that is not at all what I wanted to say. The map that you posted was about the rate of births to unmarried women. What I was trying to explain is that in northern and western Europe at least, most children born to unmarried women had two parents. It's not because parents aren't married that they don't live together in a stable, committed and loving relationship. As I explained, I don't know any single mothers in Belgium, but half of the couples (living together) who have children aren't married, because the law gives almost the same advantages to a couple who is cohabiting to to a married couple.

Being religious essentially means believing in god and seeing oneself as an adherent to one specific religion. It doesn't matter if people go to church or not. There are practising and non-participating religious people, but they are both religious. On the other side, the non-religious people are those who describe themselves as agnostics, atheists, or even 'spiritual but not religious' (which usually means pantheist or New Age).

The fact remains that over 90% of Italians consider themselves Christian and therefore would be classified as religious, even if they never go to church, don't listen to the Pope and have pre-marital sex. Italy is also one of the few countries (along with the USA) where priests have the power to legally marry people. Elsewhere in the Western world, anyone who is married only by a priest in a church is NOT legally married. Only officials in town halls have the power to marry people.

In countries like Belgium, France or Denmark, it is increasingly common to have a wedding with no church and no priest at all. When I got married, one of the conditions was that there would be no church, no priest and no religious symbol of any kind, including no ring and no veil. I know many people who only got married many years after their children were born, just to have a party, but it also had no religious significance at all. Marriage in Northwest Europe (except Ireland) has a completely different meaning than in the USA (or Italy for that matter).

I believe that you posted this topic to discuss the issue of single mothers. What I was trying to explain is that statistics about illegitimacy rates or marriage rates do not provide any insight into this in Europe because they are are completely uncorrelated with the rate of single mothers. The United States actually has the highest percentage of single mothers (25.8% according to an OECD survey in 2007) and children living with neither of their parent (3.5%), but the USA also has the highest rate of marriage (6.8 per 1,000 people) in the OECD after Turkey and Lithuania.

In contrast, most EU countries have marriage rates ranging from 3 to 4 per 1,000 people, roughly half of the USA. Exceptions are very southern or very eastern countries, including Malta, Greece, Cyprus, Lithuania and Latvia, but even among them only Lithuania is comparable to the USA with a marriage rate of 6.9 per 1,000 people. Even ultra-religious Malta is at 6.1 per 1,000 people.

In the data you posted about the distribution of children by household type, you can see that children living with cohabiting parents is rare in the USA (2.9%), but very common in France (21%) or Sweden (30%). Yet France has one of the lowest percentage of single-parent household, almost half of the USA.

So clearly it's not because people get married a lot, like in the US, that it prevents the development of single-parent households.

Ironically the EU country with the highest percentage of single mothers is Ireland, which is also one of the most religious countries and one with the a relatively high marriage rate. So I am not surprised that Black Americans also combine high religiosity and a high rate of single mothers. In fact this can be explained by the religious stigma of abortion. Unwanted or accidental pregnancies among people who are not in a committed relationship aren't terminated and therefore lead to mothers having to take care of the child on their own. Ireland and the USA are two of the most conservative countries in the Western world regarding abortion laws, and they both top the list of percentage of single-parent households. This is where you should look for the cause of single motherhoods. Anti-abortion laws are some of the worst laws any country could ever produce, especially in countries with liberated attitudes to sex. It has been proven that crime rates dropped about 15-20 years after any country legalised abortion. Unwanted pregnancies breed unhappy children in impoverished homes, which in turn lead to criminality.

You mentioned the psychological trauma of children raised by single mothers, but in my opinion the odds of that happening are much higher when it was an unwanted pregnancy, and even worse when there is no support of the mother's family and that she doesn't have a well-paid job (since money can buy child care or at least help). There are many career professional women who don't have time for relationships and intentionally decide to become single mothers. But since these are wealthy and educated mothers who truly wish to have a child, I wouldn't worry so much about the child's well-being. At least I would think that there situation is comparable to kids born in families where both parents have well-paid but very busy jobs are recruit wet nurses and nannies to take care of their children. It's not the same as being cared for full time by one's biological parents, but the kids do get the attention and care they need, and often more as the true parents tend to make up for it during their free time. What I meant by that is that socio-economic status is often more important than to know with how many parents a child lives. As to whether the parents are married or cohabiting, it is completely irrelevant to a child's well being.

Angela said:

I in no way want to throw mothers under the bus in this discussion. I know single mothers who are heroic in their devotion and are doing the best they can in difficult circumstances (as are couples who have inherently difficult children). Nor is this a situation that was unknown in prior periods. In more perilous times, many families lost a mother or a father. My point is that while this situation is sometimes unavoidable, it isn't the optimum situation for a child, and I think that in many cases it can be an irresponsible choice. I see too many parents who put their own selfish needs and desires above the needs of their children, and that's a trend that is increasing in modern society in my opinion, and results in a younger generation with far too many badly socialized children.

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Even when I stand defending single mothers I believe, like you, that mother and father are the basic family union and should raise kids together. This should give best results. By extension of this philosophy having grandparents around and extended family should be even better. We just can't calculate, how much of a "lesser" child, it will be, without all the help and attention. In my mind the difference might not be so great or visibly great. Just few statistical points here and there possibly.
If it is greater than that it could be due to fewer dollars a single mother can afford to spend to improve kid's education, nutritional health, activities, etc. To help this, and possible future trend of single mother nations, we should make all education from kindergarten to universities free, plus some activity classes.
Otherwise I'm not sure if this trend is reversible. Maybe it will stop at some level or fluctuate like a pendulum of fashion? At the end of a day, what is left to do, is to make sure single mother have all sorts of help. Sort of damage limitation on new generation.

Maciamo said:

In the US births out of wedlocks are often linked to single mothers. That is because the country is so religious and most couples who decide to have children and live together do get married. But in the northern half of Europe religion is irrelevant (except Poland and Ireland) and the only people who are getting married do it for legal reasons or because the woman (usually) wants to hold a wedding party. Belgium is more religious in average than France, Britain, the Netherlands or Scandinavia, but most of the weddings I have attended there had nothing to do with religion. Often people just have the wedding party without going to church at all. Even those who do decide to have a ceremony at the church may not be Christian or not believe in god. It's more tradition than anything else.

Note that the rate of births to unmarried women correlates almost perfectly with the lack of religious affiliation, the least religious countries being East Germany, the Czech Republic, France, and Nordic countries. More religious countries like Poland and Italy have virtually no marriage out of wedlock. Even poorer Bulgaria is far less religious than neighbouring Romania, Turkey and Greece, and that also translates in lower marriage rates.

About half of the Belgian people I know who have children aren't married, but live together just as if they were. In fact I noticed that unmarried couples are less likely to separate (I won't use the term divorce as they aren't married) than married couples. Among the people I know, 80% of the parents who split up were married. I think there may be a psychological factor in play too. Couples who feel the need to get married may be the ones who feel more insecure about their relationship and feel that officially sealing their union will help keep them together. Of course that doesn't work at all.

I do not personally know any woman in Belgium who had children without being in a committed relationship with the father. There are single mothers, but all those I know divorced/separated many years after the births of their kids. Usually parents who don't get along anymore wait until their children are teenagers before divorcing/separating. I think that the situation is very different in the USA.

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What does marriage have to do with religion? You don't have to have a ceremony in a church to get married. This makes no sense.

Fire Haired14 said:

What does marriage have to do with religion? You don't have to have a ceremony in a church to get married. This makes no sense.

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Non-religious people can choose to get marry or cohabit. That's a purely legal decision. They can choose to have a wedding party or not, in a church or completely secular. All possibilities are open. But religious people will always get married (and hold a religious ceremony) if they plan to live together and have children because that is what religion dictates in such circumstances. So for religious people marriage has everything to do with religion. Religious people do not enjoy the same freedom as non-religious people. They are bound by their religious beliefs and rules, even if they disagree with them. That's the definition of religion. You can't pick and choose what you like, otherwise you have your own beliefs and aren't considered religious anymore.

I think you did not read my post properly anyway, as I was explaining that marriage is irrelevant to the issue of single parents in Europe as many people cohabit without being married.