Interesting story at Slate at the strange state of US society regarding "out-of-wedlock" childbirth (and especially single motherhood.) Although the outcome is not good from a poverty/social point of view, the suggestion is that no one knows what to do about it anyway:
The conservative response to this web of issues is to say we need to encourage more marriages. But evidence suggests that single mothers who later wed usually end up divorced and worse off financially than before. And as I’ve written, even if marriage promotion is a generally worthwhile goal, the government still has no real idea how to achieve it.
So far, federally funded programs designed to encourage matrimony have delivered weak results, and even where they’ve had a positive impact, the change hasn’t been nearly enough to make a significant dent in poverty. Meanwhile, cutting back on welfare for single mothers doesn’t shrink their numbers.
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