Soviets Report ‘Huge’ Problem of Illegitimacy
The Soviet Union, in the first official disclosure of data on illegitimate births, has reported that more than 500,000 children are born to single mothers each year in the country despite high abortion rates.
“It’s a huge social problem,” said the weekly Semya (Family) which published the data, released by the State Statistics Committee as part of an increasingly open attitude to adverse official statistics, many of them long suppressed.
Semya said 9.8% of Soviet babies--or more than half a million--were born to single mothers in 1987, up from 8.8% in 1980. It said the proportion was much higher in Estonia and other western parts of the country.
The problem is even more serious with first pregnancies. For every 1,000 first pregnancies, it said, 411 babies are born out of wedlock or in the first few months of marriage, while there are 272 abortions.
Semya attributed the rise to “the liberalization of sexual morals and extremely bad supply of contraceptives” and urged authorities to improve availability of birth control methods.
The high incidence of single mothers is despite an abortion rate that the weekly Ogonyok said this month is easily the highest in the world.
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