There are a multitude of reasons why women without a college education choose to have children outside of marriage, which Olga Khazan summed up wonderfully at the Atlantic. Whereas marriage used to be the first step of adulthood, many millennials see it as one of the last, a milestone you reach after financial stability.
And while low-income men don’t necessarily make attractive or reliable mates (mass incarceration doesn’t help on this front), poorer women do often see raising a child as something meaningful to which they can devote themselves, especially if they don’t have great career prospects. Those social forces won’t disappear anytime soon, even amid the wrenchingly high rates of poverty that many single mothers face.
Read More at slate.com