Question: Whose Your Daddy?

Answer: when dealing with out of wedlock births, it's usually the government, because the high rate of poverty among single mothers and their offsprings fosters dependency on a wide range of government subsidies (food, housing, medicine, daycare). So, while we can debate the moral aspects of single-motherhood, those who are intellectually honest cannot debate the troubling economic ramifications that this growing phenomena holds.

Another aspect of this article that's worth noting is the 51% illegitimacy rate among Hispanic women. First, this indicates that a group that was once considered the bastion of religion and traditional family is acculturating not towards dominant American norms, but towards the pathological family structures that characterize a large segment of African-Americans. Secondly, unless we witness a change in birth patterns, the rapid growth in the Hispanic population will only exacerbate this pressing social and economic crisis. The great economist Jorge Borges would clearly state that this is not so much a reflection of the ethnic origin of immigrants, as the lower level of education that predominates in our current wave of immigration.

More than half of La. births are out of wedlock

By Mike Stobbe

March 19, 2009 at 11:30 a.m.

ATLANTA - Remember the baby boom? No, not the one after World War II. More babies were born in the United States in 2007 than any other year in the nation's history - and a wedding band made increasingly little difference in the matter.

The 4.3 million births, reported by federal researchers Wednesday, topped a record first set in 1957 at the height of the baby boom.

Behind the number is both good and bad news. While it shows the U.S. population is more than replacing itself, a healthy trend, the teen birth rate was up for a second year in a row.
The birth rate rose slightly for women of all ages, and births to unwed mothers reached an all-time high of about 40 percent, continuing a trend that started years ago. More than three-quarters of these women were 20 or older.

In Louisiana, 50.9 percent of all births were to unmarried women in 2007, up from 49.8 percent a year earlier. Among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, only D.C., Mississippi and New Mexico posted higher percentages of out-of-wedlock births, the report says.

Nearly 72 percent of the births to black women were out of wedlock. Mothers were unmarried in about 51 percent of Hispanic births and 28 percent of non-Hispanic white births.

For a variety of reasons, it's become more acceptable for women to have babies without a husband, said Duke University's S. Philip Morgan, a leading fertility researcher.

Even happy couples may be living together without getting married, experts say. And more women - especially those in their 30s and 40s - are choosing to have children despite their single status.

The new numbers suggest the second year of a baby boomlet, with U.S. fertility rates higher in every racial group, the highest among Hispanic women. On average, a U.S. woman has 2.1 babies in her lifetime. That's the "magic number" required for a population to replace itself.

Countries with much lower rates - such as Japan and Italy - face future labor shortages and eroding tax bases as they fail to reproduce enough to take care of their aging elders.

While the number of births in the U.S. reached nearly 4.3 million in 2006, mainly due to a larger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics, it's not clear the boomlet will last. Some experts think birth rates are already declining because of the economic recession that began in late 2007.

"I expect they'll go back down. The lowest birth rates recorded in the United States occurred during the Great Depression - and that was before modern contraception," said Dr. Carol Hogue, an Emory University professor of maternal and child health.

CDC officials noted that despite the record number of births, this is nothing like what occurred in the 1950s, when a much smaller population of women were having nearly four children each, on average. That baby boom quickly transformed society, affecting everything from school construction to consumer culture.

Today, U.S. women are averaging 2.1 children each. That's the highest level it's been since the early 1970s, but is a relatively small increase from the rate it had hovered at for more than 10 years and is hardly transforming.

Teen women tend to follow what their older sisters do, so perhaps it's not surprising that teen births are going up just like births to older women, said Sarah Brown, the chief executive for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

It's harder to understand why teen births had been declining for about 15 years before the recent uptick, she said. It may have been due to a concentrated effort to reduce teen births in the 1990s that has waned in recent years.

The statistics are based on a review of most 2007 birth certificates by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The numbers also show:

Cesarean-section deliveries continue to rise, now accounting for almost a third of all births nationwide. Health officials say that rate is much higher than is medically necessary. About 34 percent of births to black women were by C-section, more than any other racial group. Louisiana's rate, 35.9 percent, was exceeded by only two states: New Jersey, at 38 percent, and Mississippi, at 36.2 percent.

The pre-term birth rate, for infants delivered at less than 37 weeks of pregnancy, is at 12.7 percent nationwide. Louisiana's rate, 16.5 percent, was exceeded only by Mississippi, at 18.3 percent, and Alabama, at 16.6 percent.

Among the states, Utah continued to have the highest birth rate at 21 births per 1,000 women. Vermont the lowest - 10 births per 1,000 women. Louisiana's rate, 15.4, was exceeded by 11 states.