Educated Women More Likely To Have First Baby Before Marriage
A new study is showing that educated women are more likely to have their first baby before marriage. While there are no rules to marriage, or anything that relates to a personal family choice, a lot of the “old school” thinking still applies to women and their choice on , or whether they will have kids at all. It has always been thought to be “right,” that a woman would finish school, get a career, marry someone they love and then start a family. This has always been portrayed as the way things are supposed to happen, but everyone’s life and and not everyone thinks this way as we see traditional values change over time.
According to , a new study is showing that educated women are more likely to have their first baby before marriage. This study was done by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and it can be read in full.
The study found that women who had a college education are rapidly becoming the largest group to have a baby before they are married. However, this just applies to their first baby. They are also more likely to have their second child after they are married.
Researchers noted that this is a “historic shift” that is happening when it comes to family planning. Andrew Cherlin was the lead author of the study and he stated that he believes that 18% to 27% of college-educated women will have their first baby before they are married. This tells him that marriage is not as “sacred” as it was once thought to be. That this trend has more to do with views on marriage rather than views on when to have a baby. That women (and couples) may be seeing marriage as non-essential for family planning.
They also noted that the increase of before marriage has risen across all women, but the highest jump was seen in women who had a college education. For some comparison, in 1996, only 4% of college-educated women had their first baby before they were married. If we jump to now, that percentage changes to 24.5%, a massive leap. When it comes to other birthing trends, the study also found that college-educated women were more likely to have multiple children with the same romantic partner than other women. Time is definitely changing, and all we can do is wait and see how much more it will change.
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