{"id":15615,"date":"2013-08-16T00:01:39","date_gmt":"2013-08-16T05:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/more-of-todays-single-mothers-have-never-been-married\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:30:26","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:30:26","slug":"more-of-todays-single-mothers-have-never-been-married","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2013\/08\/16\/more-of-todays-single-mothers-have-never-been-married\/","title":{"rendered":"More of today\u2019s single mothers have never been married"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2013\/05\/SDT-2013-05-breadwinner-moms-4-2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"409\" height=\"333\"><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today\u2019s single mothers are <a href=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/social-trends\/2013\/05\/29\/breadwinner-moms\/4\/#chapter-4-single-mothers\">much more likely to have never been married<\/a> than were their counterparts in the past.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 1960, of all single mothers, more than eight-in-ten (82%) were divorced, separated or widowed. An additional 14% were married, but their spouses were not living in the household. Only 4% of all single mothers had never been married.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By 2011, the share of single mothers who had never been married had reached 44%, while half of all single mothers were divorced, separated or widowed, and 6% had an absent spouse.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These patterns are tied to broader long-term trends in non-marital births and divorce. According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/data\/nvsr\/nvsr61\/nvsr61_01.pdf\">data from the National Center for Health Statistics<\/a> (pdf), the share of births to unmarried women rose to 41% in 2010 from 5% in 1960. And a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.census.gov\/prod\/2013pubs\/acs-21.pdf\">recent Census Bureau report<\/a>\u00a0(pdf) shows that in 2011, 36% of mothers who gave birth in the preceding year were unmarried; a majority of these women (87%) had never been married.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The share of mothers who are divorced, separated or widowed increased in the 1960s and 1970s and has remained relatively stable since 1980, hovering around 12% to 13% in the past three decades.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the past five decades, the share of never married mothers among all families with children has increased from less than 1% to 11%.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than four-in-ten single mothers have never been married, up from just 4% in 1960.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","sub_headline":"","sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0,"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"bylines":[{"key":"999081d7-35b2-4ed4-b516-16d8cc57827f","termId":932}],"acknowledgements":[],"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"bylines":[932],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[519],"class_list":["post-15615","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","bylines-andrea-caumont","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states","research-teams-social-trends"],"label":"Short 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