The number of unmarried mothers has reached an all-time high in Franklin County and the state, with four in 10 babies born to single women last year.
Despite decadeslong trends and what conventional wisdom says, teenagers aren’t responsible for the upsurge.
The birthrate among girls 10 to 17 years old throughout Ohio and the country dropped in 2006 to the lowest levels ever, according to health department records.
Instead, women in their late 20s who have put off marriage or are living with significant others led the swell.
College-educated, career-driven women in their 30s and 40s closely followed.
Though there has been little research on why so many single women are changing diapers before saying "I do," lots of theories abound.
"It’s still not standard in the public sector for women to have babies while climbing the corporate ladder," said Dr. Grant Schmidt, an infertility specialist at Ohio Reproductive Medicine on the Northwest Side.
"If you look at men and women as purely biological creatures, they’re most physically adept to be reproductive in their teens and 20s," he said.
Everything in society points to that ticking clock, added Karen Days, executive director of the Columbus Coalition Against Family Violence.
"After you turn 35 years old, you begin hearing the risk of having a child with Down syndrome is this much and the risk of having diabetes is that," Days said. "It’s enough to scare a woman into pregnancy."
More lesbian couples also are having children, challenging traditional values of what makes a family, Schmidt said.
Other women, especially poor minorities living in the inner city, have few choices.
"Appropriate partners may not be available due to death or incarceration," said Pat Lyons, executive director of Prevent Child Abuse Ohio at Columbus Children’s Hospital.
Even if partners are available, they might not be good marriage prospects if they can barely support themselves.
"Couples today want to be financially stable before they get married," said Liana Sayer, an assistant sociology professor at Ohio State University.
"For many, marriage has become a capstone to announce you’ve successfully made it as an adult."
An unfortunate result is that nearly 50 percent of the single woman-headed households with children under age 5 live in poverty, said Roberta Garber, executive director of Community Research Partners, a nonprofit research center based in Columbus.
And many people no longer dream of a lifestyle where the mother stays home with the children while the father works. That leaves more Generation Xers and younger people arguing that it’s OK for couples to forgo marriage, have children and go on to new relationships.
"We’ve become such a permissive society, the motto ought to be ‘Just do it; live for the day,’ " said Yvette McGee Brown, president of the Center for Child and Family Advocacy at Children’s Hospital.
"If I could tell young women anything, it’s that you have to spend more time than drinking a beer thinking about who you want to have a baby with."
Luckily, many single moms have the support of their parents, siblings and close friends.
"It’s harder, but unmarried mothers can do just as well for their children," said Elaine Vogel, a medical social-work specialist at Riverside Methodist Hospital who meets with new mothers.
They’re the wonder women of the 21 st century, said Sally Yurchuck, director of Start Smart, a county and United Way of Central Ohio initiative to help understaffed childcare centers improve services.
"But research shows it’s still better when you have more than one parent," she said.
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