Family structure and
religion are factors that significantly influence whether or not a woman has 
an unwed pregnancy, according
to a new report from the Family Research Council in
the US
Drs
Patrick
Fagan and Scott Talkington of the FRC’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute
(Marri) analysed data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and
found the biggest predictor is whether is the
marital status of the woman’s mother.
One in five (19 per
cent) young women who grew up in an intact married family have had an unwed
pregnancy, and that weekly religious practice brought that figure down to 16 per
cent.
However,
the rate
rose to 26 per cent where the woman’s parents had cohabited but stayed
together, and to 54 per cent among women
whose mothers had always been single.
When family structure
and religious practice were combined, the range of unmarried pregnancy was from
18 per cent among always intact married families who worshipped weekly, to 40
per cent among all other family types who never
worshipped.
The study tallies
with earlier research. Studies based on Canadian statistics from 1995 show that
family structure affects the unwed pregnancy rate.
According to
sociologist Valerie Martin of McGill University, Montreal, adolescent and young
adult women who experienced parental divorce were significantly more likely to
give birth out of wedlock when compared with peers from intact
families.
Using this same data,
Jay Teachman of Western Washington University also found that, compared with
peers from other family structures, women who grew up in intact families were
less likely to form high-risk marriages, to cohabit before marriage, or to have
a premarital birth or conception.
A 2007 US study
demonstrated the protective nature of the family’s religion, showing that, when
compared with peers whose mothers had not attended religious services
frequently, 18-year-olds whose mothers attended religious services often were
more likely to have attitudes about premarital sex, cohabitation, abortion, and
divorce.
Meanwhile the Fragile
Families and Child Well-Being Survey, conducted in 2004 by the Princeton
University Social Indicators Survey Center, found that urban mothers who attend
church frequently are at least 70 percent more likely to be married when they
give birth or to get married within one year of a nonmarital birth than are
urban mothers who do not attend church frequently.
The 2006 Census
showed that there was 22 per cent increase in lone parent families from 2002.
There are now 189,313 single parent families in Ireland, up from 153,863 in
2002.
The figures also
showed that the number of children living in non-marital family units was 26 per
cent, up from 22 per cent in 2002. The comparable American figure is 30 per
cent.