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of a legal marriage. A child born of
such a marriage is often given sim–
ilar status as one born of a legal
marriage. But in other areas such a
child is not. Urchins, the young
children thrown out by parents to
live by their wits in the streets, are
often the fruit of illegitimacy. One
Latín writer estimated that these
homeless street children will soon
represent nearly 5 percent of one
country's population.
Luis Felipe Lira, a Chilean soci–
ologist , says though common-law
marriages are widely accepted tbey
are frequently brief. "This contrib–
utes to the weakening of the family
when the father is not present in
the home and does not carry out bis
duties and responsibilities."
In sorne nations, the problem of
high rates of out-of-wedlock births
has long been endemic. But not in
all nations. Tllegitimacy rates in
Asían and Arabic nations tend to
be among the lowest. By contrast ,
in recent decades the social disease
of illegitimacy has started to over–
whelm many Western developed
nations.
In Britain, in 1983, almost one in
six babies was born to an unmar–
ried mother, according to the
Office of Population, Censuses and
Surveys. That's
five times
as com–
mon as it was at tbe beginning of
the century when there was no
birth control pill and no legalized
abortion.
The British government agency
projects that one third of Britain's
babies will be born outside the
bonds of marriage by the turn of
the century. That means greatly
increased burdeos and strains on
already beleaguered social welfare
12
Millions of teenage
mothers face the difficult
dual task of completing
basic education and
rearing their children.
agencies and a much heavier tax
load on Bri tish citizens.
lf
this trend of illegitimacy con–
tinues, the projection is that babies
born in wedlock in Britain will be a
minority
less than a generation
after the next century begins.
Most European nations are expe–
riencing out-of-wedlock births as a
New Futures school for
unwed teenage mothers in
Albuquerque, N.M. The
reality for many, however,
is social dependence and
poverty.
rapidly rising portion of live births.
According to Eurostat, the Euro–
pean Community's Luxembourg–
based statistical office, divorce rates
in the Community nations have
increased threefold over the past two
decades, and illegitimate birthrates
have doubled (rising from 45 out–
of-wedlock births per 1,000 births to
92 per 1,000 in 1981).
Europe also is in the throes of
the growing social tendency, espe–
cially in urban areas, for more and
more couples to live together with–
ou t marriage. In the city of
Amsterdam, for instance, the per–
centage of children born out of
wedlock increased from 5.6 percent
of births in 1965 to 22.4 percent in
1982.
According to Soviet statistics,
high rates of abort ion on one hand,
and rapidly increasing out-of-wed–
lock births on the other, are push–
ing the Soviet Union into an acute
demographic, social and health
proble~.
Illegitimate births now
account for at least 20 percent of
all Soviet births. Such births have
doubled in less than 10 years in
sorne urban cities. Jn sorne Siberian
rural areas, 25 percent of all births
are out of wedlock.
Staggering U.S. Rate
In the United States, out-of-wed–
lock births have reached avalanche
proportions. Nationally, the illegiti–
macy ·rate tripled between 1960
and 1982 to 20 percent of births.
That 's one out of five. Yet this fig–
ure is modest compared to illegiti–
macy rates in many U.S. urban
areas.
Twenty years ago, 11 percent of
New York City's births were to