"Teenage girls in the U.S. are less likely to become pregnant than at any time since at least 1976, when national data first became available. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control finds that the teen pregnancy rate has fallen nearly 20% from its all-time high in 1991, to 94.3 pregnancies per 1,000 girls, ages 15 to 19."

(Source: David Bjerklie, "In Brief: Teen Sense," Time, vol. 157, no. 25: June 25, 2001.)

"WHY DO TEENS THINK TEEN PREGNANCIES HAVE DROPPED?
• Fear of AIDS/STDs 37.9%
• More birth control available 24.2%
• More attention to the issue 14.9%
• More parental involvement 8.9%
• Changing morals and values 5.2%
• Fewer teens having sex 3.7%
• Improved economy 1.9%
• Welfare reform 1.0%"

(Source: "Youth Culture Update: Snapstats," Youth Specialties, www.youthspecialties.com; from Youth Today, vol. 10, no.6, June 2001, www.youthtoday.org/youthtoday.)

Once a scandal, nonmarital cohabitation-"shacking up," in the vernacular-has grown remarkably common in modern America.   By 1995 nearly half (47%) of American women between the ages of 25 and 29 had ever lived in nonmarital cohabitation.  In contrast, less that one in ten (7%) of women born 20 years earlier had cohabited by the age of 25. But does the growing prevalence of the practice mean that it is now an acceptable alternative to marriage, as now appears to be the case in some Western European countries?  To answer this question, demographer R. Kelly Raley recently looked at national survey data, trying to determine the social meaning of pregnancy of cohabitational unions. 

Raley considered three possibilities.  First, if Americans now view cohabitation as an alternative form of marriage, then cohabiters would not be likely to marry in response to a pregnancy, but some single women might form a cohabitational union upon discovering that they are pregnant.   Second, if Americans view being in a cohabitational union as fundamentally the same as being single, then pregnant cohabiters' marriage rates should be about the same as those for pregnant non-cohabiting singles.  And third, if Americans view cohabitation as a "trial marriage," a testing period prior to the real thing, then marriage rates among pregnant cohabiters should run distinctively higher than among pregnant non-cohabiting singles, who should be relatively disinclined to form cohabiting unions. 

Raley's analysis suggests that "the American family is not (yet) following the path established in some European countries," with the latest evidence indicating that "cohabitation is not becoming an alternative to marriage" in the United States. True, singles are now "increasingly cohabiting in response to a pregnancy," and indeed are now "as likely to cohabit as to marry."  But this is "the only indication that cohabitation is becoming an alternative to marriage."  Other statistical trends tell a different story.  For instance, "remaining single is still the most common response" to pregnancy for non-cohabiting singles, with "the large majority of single pregnant women form[ing] no union [marital or cohabitational] before the birth of their child."

While "a decreasing proportion of pregnant cohabiters marry before the birth of their child," Raley doubts that this trend should be interpreted as an indication of cohabitation's growing acceptability as an alternative to wedlock.  For "cohabiting unions are becoming increasingly unstable" and "fertility among singles is growing faster than among cohabiting couples," two developments that would not be expected if cohabitation had acquired a marriage-like social status.  The declining marriage rates among pregnant cohabiters do, however, clearly undercut the view of cohabitation as a form of "trial marriage."  With cohabitation becoming "less and less a prelude to marriage"--and indeed less and less a prelude to anything stable-the verdict is clearly in.

(Source: R. Kelly Raley, "Increasing Fertility in Cohabiting Unions: Evidence for the Second Demographic Transition in the United States?" Demography 38[2001]: 59-66.)