Family Times (Citizen)
March 2000
Understanding the National Campaign Against Teen Marriage
by Maggie Gallagher, Institute for American Values
What is the cause of today’s teen pregnancy crisis? In absolute terms, the number of teen women having their first child is no larger now than in the early Seventies; the big change is not in teen’s fertility behavior but their marital behavior: Today, a single pregnant teen is three times more likely to pick unwed motherhood over marriage as she was in the early Seventies. White teen mothers are only about one-sixth as likely to choose adoption today as they were a generation ago.
Scholars and policy makers have torn their hair out trying to explain these errant young women’s inexplicable desire to mother. Are they deformed by a culture of poverty? Are they seduced by a culture of welfare? Are they a product of a nation defining deviancy downward?
To all these explanations I would add, after an intensive study of early, unwed childbearing “The Age of Unwed Mothers” (available from
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) a new, overlooked possibility: in preferring unwed motherhood over early marriage, today’s young women are not so much rebelling against social norms as obediently conforming to adult advice. Why so many unwed teen mothers? One answer is simply: the national campaign against teen marriage has been more powerful than the national campaign against teen pregnancy.
And campaign is not too strong a word to describe experts’ hostility towards early marriage for pregnant women, despite an extremely limited amount of research on the question. Even today health textbooks in high schools issue dire warning that teen marriage “can be disastrous” as a 1996 text put it, transforming teens into “social outcasts.”
Not a single current health textbook I reviewed treated marriage as favorably as unwed childbearing (for pregnant teens); no textbook suggested that young pregnant couples who married could use luck, commitment and social support (as unwed mothers were urged) to overcome the inherent difficulties of young marriage.
Is marriage really a fate worse than unwed motherhood? Probably not. For example, contrary to popular lore, a baby is not such a bad reason for marriage; marriages taken to legitimate a pregnancy are no less stable on average than other marriages. Teen marriages are more likely to fail but about half of marriages among older teens survive (compared to about 70 percent of marriages in which the bride is at least 23 years old).
Moreover, when young mothers fail to marry the father of their child, they may never marry at all. In one large, national study, unwed mothers were just as likely to want marriage but only half as likely to succeed in getting married as childless young women. These researchers conclude, “it seems women generally are not having children non-maritally as a response to poor marriage prospect. Rather, having a child outside of marriage appears to derail young women’s existing plans.”
Marriage is not a good bet for every pregnant young woman. But by bringing a marriage focus back to teen pregnancy programs we make it more likely that the next generation of single women will do a variety of useful things: to abstain from sex, to contracept faithfully, to avoid men who aren’t good marriage material, and in cases when marriage isn’t advisable, to consider giving a baby a married home through adoption.
The reason why today’s young women do less of all these things is intimately related to what adults are saying (and not saying) about teen pregnancy. Why wait to have a baby? Until another birthday rolls around? Will it really make that big a difference whether you become a single mother at 19 or 20?
To be really effective, a new national campaign will have to abandon the misconception our problem is primarily “children having children” and work to pass on to the next generation this key idea: marriage -- the gift of a loving partner and committed father -- is the thing worth waiting for.
Understanding the National Campaign Against Teen Marriage
