One third of all U.S. births are to unmarried parents. More and more people are choosing to have a baby first, before they are married.

Number of Unmarried Parents on the Rise

One third of all U.S. births are to unmarried parents. More and more people are choosing to have a baby first, before they are married. In a society that expects parents to be married (particularly those who live together), it can be confusing and difficult to navigate the legal system, schools, medical care, and more. Learn how to manage these issues and plan for your unmarried family.

(PRWEB) July 17, 2008 -- 1.25 million babies (one third of all births) are born each year in the U.S. to unmarried parents. Many people just assume these babies are born to single moms, when in fact 41% of these births are to unmarried cohabitating couples. People no longer get married then have the baby. A significant portion of couples never marry, or marry years after becoming parents.

Hollywood has set the example in this instance. Couples such as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, Madonna and her bodyguard (the father of her first child), Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard, and Farah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal share or have shared children in a partnership outside marriage. Many other famous couples become parents first and later choose to marry, such as Annette Bening and Warren Beatty, Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, and Madonna and Guy Ritchie (the father of her second child).

Unmarried couples face huge challenges in our marriage-centric society. Married couples are automatically legal parents together, while an unmarried father must go through a legal procedure to become the "real" father. Unmarried couples face other challenges, such discrimination in adoption or fertility treatments, unfair income tax treatment, as well as a general lack of understanding by doctors, teachers, and neighbors. Society and the legal system are not set up to recognize and support unmarried parents, and so many find themselves feeling ignored or misunderstood.

Unmarried with Children: The Complete Guide for Unmarried Families (Adams Media, August 2008, ISBN: 978-1-59869-587-8) is a guide to the confusing landscape unmarried families must face. Written by Brette Sember, a former attorney and expert in the area of non-traditional families, with a technical mental health review by Philip Hall, Ph.D., this complete guide offers all the information unmarried families need, such as information about:

Adoption and Infertility Treatments for Unmarried Couples

Rights of Unmarried Parents (Raising Children Together or Apart)

Choosing a Last Name for Your Child

Creating Legal Authority for an Unmarried Partner-Parent

Unmarried Step-Parenting

Children's Rights in Unmarried Families

Financial Organization for Unmarried Families

Paternity

Arranging Court-Ordered or Independent Child Support

Explaining Your Situation to Other People

Wills, Inheritances, Guardians, Benefits and More

How to Successfully Parent in Your Situation

How to Deal with a Break Up

Common Law Marriages and Domestic Partnerships

Unmarried with Children also addresses the concerns of other unmarried parents, such as gay couples, single mothers, and parents who are no longer a couple, but are co-parenting to raise their child. Births to single women over age 35 recently doubled and rates of non-marital births among single white mothers rose 92%. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, 9 million children have at least one gay parent and the American Bar Association states that there were 5.5 million unmarried partner households (which include both gay and unmarried heterosexual couples) in the U.S. in 2000.

Comments

[workupafuss]

Now isn't it stupid how the world has flipped over? Imagine, a boy and a girl were trained from long ago and still up to today that having sex out of marriage is not permitted. Education was necessary to to be able to put yourself and loving wife in a house and rare as many children as one wishes, all under the legal boundaries of marriage. Now we send our children to school to be educated to become expert thinkers getting intelligent and forging a great future for family and country. What we have creeping into our society today is a backward trend, and it is really reeking havoc. Now the great thinkers and intelligent persons are required to understand stupidity. Imagine studying all those years in college working your way to perfection only to have to back track and pull some other person's weight. I know that it may be difficult for some but to say that it is a new trend and accept it is to really pave a dismal future for mankind. Now if I apply the Ten Commandments here, of course most will be at my throat, but who cares. If we were to follow the rules in the first place we would not be in the mess we are now. Stiffer penalties should be applied. Re-schooling of the offenders can be one of the ways to correct the scourge. It is still not too late hope is just a "NO" away to having children without the fathers, or having sex outside of marriage. Remember it takes a village to raise a child; mother, father, grans, uncles, aunts, neighbors and most of all God. If we were all to chip in we would save most children from going astray. Look at the story above and see all the trouble caused, the amount of associations formed, monies spent, time dedicated all because imagine just one law was breached. God knows why He made those rules. Parents instill them. Villages abide by them. Intelligent? I beg to differ.

[workupafuss]

Now isn't it stupid how the world has flipped over? Imagine, a boy and a girl were trained from long ago and still up to today that having sex out of marriage is not permitted. Education was necessary to to be able to put yourself and loving wife in a house and rare as many children as one wishes, all under the legal boundaries of marriage. Now we send our children to school to be educated to become expert thinkers getting intelligent and forging a great future for family and country. What we have creeping into our society today is a backward trend, and it is really reeking havoc. Now the great thinkers and intelligent persons are required to understand stupidity. Imagine studying all those years in college working your way to perfection only to have to back track and pull some other person's weight. I know that it may be difficult for some but to say that it is a new trend and accept it is to really pave a dismal future for mankind. Now if I apply the Ten Commandments here, of course most will be at my throat, but who cares. If we were to follow the rules in the first place we would not be in the mess we are now. Stiffer penalties should be applied. Re-schooling of the offenders can be one of the ways to correct the scourge. It is still not too late hope is just a "NO" away to having children without the fathers, or having sex outside of marriage. Remember it takes a village to raise a child; mother, father, grans, uncles, aunts, neighbors and most of all God. If we were all to chip in we would save most children from going astray. Look at the story above and see all the trouble caused, the amount of associations formed, monies spent, time dedicated all because imagine just one law was breached. God knows why He made those rules. Parents instill them. Villages abide by them. Intelligent? I beg to differ.

[Amarita Hawk]

Well people it is called evolution! Isn't it funny how people still keep being backwards and applying their own personal beliefs to others thinking their Religion is the only one. Funny to me. I bet that I could find your many faults that are totally backwards to your ow religion. I suppose it will take some people longer to get to the part of the bible where it talks about throwing stones or judging others or even the part about being self righteous. Humm! Sounds like someone might need more of an education. Especially the part about understanding the definitions of words. And the part about learning that Christianity is the one that put these social ties on people. If the person is educated enough to have gone to college, then they should know history and the history of the religion that they hold on so tightly to. How someone decided to make a religion 400 years after someone died. Then write a book on it with others help. Then begin to tell people that they are living wrongly and started using fear ,the 10 commandments that were passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth; (well b/c the tablet got broken) so they are going by memory, and then tell everyone that they need to straighten up and live according to this book that they just created or else live in eternal hell after they die.. You don't live in hell after you die your dead! Wow sounds like educated people to me. Actually it is people trying to use fear to control others. Now that people are more educated then they understand that. Some of us just need to hold on to an old old story and the fear of hell to just make life worth living. I've been through hell here on earth and religion was why. Just let people live their life the way they want to and worry about your own life! Stop throwing your uneducated fear on to others.

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