More than half of all children born in Scotland are now born to unmarried parents

[expatinscotland]

here

And among mothers under the age of 30, that figure rises to 2/3.

Wow!

Had no idea it was so high.

But come to think of it, everytime I was in hospital having a baby, I was the only married woman in a room of 4 mothers.

And the eldest (was 32 when DD1 born, 34 with DD2 and 37 with DS).

Makes me wonder about the future for my children.

I'd always hoped they would marry, for some reason, before having kids.

Maybe it's because my parents are married, too, as are DH's.

DS is 'wee man' .

I would have ended up being charged with manslaughter if I would have had to marry the tosser! It's better this way

But isn't is the case that children of unmarried parents have a higher likelihood of being on the wrong end of various statistics of deprivation, as well as of having parents who do not stay together? I recall reading about research (which I presume to be independently produced and without bias, tho have not checked this just atm) which indicated this.

I've never taken it to mean that it is not possible to have a stable and committed relationship without getting married or that marriage is a guarantee of that, just that couples who are truly committed to one another and who can succeed at providing a stable home for their children are more likely to choose to get married.

scottishmummy it was banded at me a lot by my very old fashioned parents when I told them I was pg with DD1

aye,worked with folk who had wee men,wee fella.LOL never did find out the name though

the wee fella wis at the fitba
oot wi the wee fella and his da

I would have thought it would be higher. Wasn't there some stat. that said that in 1900 95% of children in scotland where born out of 'wedlock'.

The Church of Scotland worked very hard to stamp out the practice of 'irregular marriage' as they called it.

It used to be absolutely standard (my dad found out when doing the family tree thing) to get pregnant before getting married - just to make sure the woman wasn't "barren"

And also used to be standard to get married at night, especially in the Highlands, and then have a big ceilidh afterwards.

The Church of Scotland didn't like this, because it led to drunken debauchery, and so pushed through laws that if you weren't married by 6PM the marriage wasn't legal.

They also pushed through the laws about where you could be legally married. No more handfasting under the largest tree in the village green.

MsHighwater the reason the children of parents who don't stay together come out badly in statistics, is because of poverty. Being the child of a lone parent is one of the single biggest indicators of poverty in the UK.

If you take poverty out of the equation, the figures then equal out. So it's not the having separated parents per se that is the problem, it's the income implications that may go with that.

OK, HBLB but what is the correlation between parents who separate and parents who were not married in the first place? What proportion of unmarried parents split compared to those who are married?

I'm not pretending to have studied this, btw. It seems obvious to me that unmarried parents are more likely to split than married ones. I'm not daft enough, though, that I don't know that what seems obvious to me isn't necessarily what happens, though.

(delete extraneous "though"!)

When I did history in the 1980s the lecturer pointed out to us one day that the percentage of single mothers was actually higher in the 1880s in this area than in the 1980s.

I think the real question, as far as public policy goes, is how far can you persuade people to marry (with financial inducements/tax breaks etc)? Would the extra couples who marry stay together?

Or would it just increase the divorce rate as couples who would have split anyway make their partnership formal and then end up with a legal break up?

Would you only, or even mainly, get the couples who don't marry now and stay together marrying? I don't think this would necessarily be the case.

You could always bring back the ol' hammers of onerous divorce law and public shame. Doubt that would increase children's happiness and security though.

Will probably get higher and higher. Couples thankfully know they don't have to get married,women are more independent so don't actually want to or feel they need to,less people go to church and people know it's perfectly possible to have a long happy relationship out of marriage.

Why anybody thinks this is newsworthy is beyond me. Some people want to get married great,many of us don't so. It's horses for courses.

It seems to be only on Mumsnet that couples who choose not to get married and horror of horrors have children out of wedlock get challenged. Most people in RL thankfully just don't care. Why would they-other peoples choice to marry or not just doesn't affect them.

scottish marriages sound very romantic, in watford cheap marriages ain't so glamorous

Mmm, not really Mila. The Tory party for one are getting quite exercised about it and are talking about "rewards" for married couples (read sticks for unmarried mothers)

It was just a statistic rolled out on the BBC, Mila. No 'judgement' intended .

Just found it an interesting statistic, especially in light of Scotland's history of irregular marriage.

Does that mean that the majority of scots are bastards?

The Tory party is not really the majority of people in RL though is it. I'm sure even they have many members who have children out of wedlock and they probably have many supporters who do too.

well as they say takes one to know one QC

'The Tory party is not really the majority of people in RL though is it.'

It doesn't matter what the majority of people in RL are like though when the majority of voters put a certain party in office and they make the rules.

Just the fact it's commented on makes it judgemental.

There have been a few 'lets extol the virtues of marriage to unwed Mumsnetters recently'.

It's odd I've yet to have a similar conversation in RL.

Errr they're not actually in yet though are they.

'Just the fact it's commented on makes it judgemental.'

No more commenting on any article or anything published in the news!

Let's just get rid of the whole topic!

Someone might feel judged.