Stampa estera - quotidiani da USA e GB

18 febbraio 2012 - sabato  -  18th Saturday                visioni post  -  16  

     visualizzazioni   7.734 

For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage

LORAIN, Ohio — It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.

Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data. Among mothers of all ages, a majority — 59 percent in 2009 — are married when they have children. But the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.

One group still largely resists the trend: college graduates, who overwhelmingly marry before having children. That is turning family structure into a new class divide, with the economic and social rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education.

s.“Marriage has become a luxury good,” said Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania.The shift is affecting children’s lives. Researchers have consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problem

The forces rearranging the family are as diverse as globalization and the pill. Liberal analysts argue that shrinking paychecks have thinned the ranks of marriageable men, while conservatives often say that the sexual revolution reduced the incentive to wed and that safety net programs discourage marriage.

Here in Lorain, a blue-collar town west of Cleveland where the decline of the married two-parent family has been especially steep, dozens of interviews with young parents suggest that both sides have a point.

Over the past generation, Lorain lost most of two steel mills, a shipyard and a Ford factory, diminishing the supply of jobs that let blue-collar workers raise middle-class families. More women went to work, making marriage less of a financial necessity for them. Living together became routine, and single motherhood lost the stigma that once sent couples rushing to the altar. Women here often describe marriage as a sign of having arrived rather than a way to get there.

Meanwhile, children happen.

Amber Strader, 27, was in an on-and-off relationship with a clerk at Sears a few years ago when she found herself pregnant. A former nursing student who now tends bar, Ms. Strader said her boyfriend was so dependent that she had to buy his cigarettes. Marrying him never entered her mind. “It was like living with another kid,” she said. When a second child, with a new boyfriend, followed three years later — her birth control failed, she said — her boyfriend, a part-time house painter, was reluctant to wed. Ms. Strader likes the idea of marriage; she keeps her parents’ wedding photo on her kitchen wall and says her boyfriend is a good father. But for now marriage is beyond her reach. “I’d like to do it, but I just don’t see it happening right now,” she said. “Most of my friends say it’s just a piece of paper, and it doesn’t work out anyway.

” The recent rise in single motherhood has set off few alarms, unlike in past eras. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a top Labor Department official and later a United States senator from New York, reported in 1965 that a quarter of black children were born outside marriage — and warned of a “tangle of pathology” — he set off a bitter debate.   
By the mid-1990s, such figures looked quaint: a third of Americans were born outside marriage. Congress, largely blaming welfare, imposed tough restrictions. Now the figure is 41 percent — and 53 percent for children born to women under 30, according to Child Trends, which analyzed 2009 data from the National Center for Health Statistics.    Still, the issue received little attention until the publication last month of “Coming Apart,” a book by Charles Murray, a longtime critic of non-marital births.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"THE  GUARDIAN"       (London newspaper)

Foreign secretary said the world would face most serious round of nuclear proliferation since invention of atomic bomb The Middle East could be the battleground for a new cold war, if Iransucceeds in acquiring nuclear weapons, Britain's foreign secretary has warned.

William Hague said the world would face the most serious round of nuclear proliferation since the invention of the atomic bomb, which would be a "disaster in world affairs".

Hague's comments come as officials in Washington expressed fears that Iran is ignoring economic sanctions, increasing the likelihood of Israel and or the US attacking the Islamic Republic this year.

Hague insisted that the UK did not currently support military action against Iran but added "all options must remain on the table".

"[The Iranians] are clearly continuing their nuclear weapons programme," Hague told the Daily Telegraph. "If they obtain nuclear weapons capability, then I think other nations across the Middle East will want to develop nuclear weapons.

"And so, the most serious round of nuclear proliferation since nuclear weapons were invented would have begun with all the destabilising effects in the Middle East. And the threat of a new cold war in the Middle East without necessarily all the safety mechanisms. That would be a disaster in world affairs."

.Hague's desire to give economic sanctions time to work is reflected in Washington. However, officials in key parts of the Obama administration are increasingly convinced that sanctions will not deter Tehran from pursuing its nuclear programme. They believe the US will be left with no option but to launch an attack on Iran or watch Israel do so.

The president has made clear in public, and in private to Israel, that he is determined to give sufficient time for recent measures to bite deeper into Iran's already battered economy before retreating from its principal strategy to pressure Tehran. These measures include the financial blockade and the looming European oil embargo.

Vocabulary     (to understand better / per capire meglio)

'The New York Times'

steadily rising - in forte crescita

the share of children - la parte di bambini

born to unmarried women - nati a donne non sposate

has crossed a threshold - è andata oltre la soglia//il limite
more than half of births - più della metà delle nascite
occur outside marriage - capitano fuori dal matrimonio

once - un tempo     motherhood - maternità    without - senza
has settled deeply - si è radicato profondamente
the surge of births - l'impennata delle nascite 
among white women - tra le donne bianche
fourth-year degree - il diploma del quarto anno

Lucianone