The Nation - News from June 22, 1989

Two of every five American women giving birth to their first children were not married when they became pregnant, a rise over the last two decades, the Census Bureau said. The bureau also found a jump in the birth rate among women in their 30s, noted that a majority of the women having a baby in the year ending in June, 1988, were in the work force, and said minorities tend to have higher birth rates. In all, the bureau said the national fertility rate was 69.7 births per 1,000 women aged 18 to 44 in that year. For women aged 15 to 29, 40% of their first-born children from 1985 to 1988 were conceived out of marriage, up from just over 30% when the measure was first taken from 1970 to 1974.