Did You Know?

• Unmarried mothers who place their children for adoption generally obtain a higher education, better employment and are less likely to repeat or abort another out-of-wedlock pregnancy. ¹
• Twenty-two percent of children in single-parent families live in poverty, compared to two percent of children in two-parent families, including two percent of children in adoptive families. ⁸
• When compared with the general population, children placed with adoptive couples are better off economically and have parents who are better educated and who are older than the parents of other children. ⁵
• Adoptive parents are less likely to divorce. ⁸
• Adoption brings entitlement to be a parent and with it lifelong commitment. Therefore, children who are adopted have the same security as children raised by both of their biological parents. There is no ambivalence in the parent-child relationship as there often is in the non-adoptive stepparent-child relationship. ⁹
• Over 70 percent of juveniles in state reform institutions are from fatherless homes. The lack of a father is more important than any other factor, including income, for predicting criminal behavior. ⁹
• Teenage marriages are three times more likely to result in separation or divorce than non-teen marriages. ³
• Unmarried mothers who keep their children are more likely to have serious employment and financial problems. ⁴
• Unmarried mothers who keep their children are more likely to repeat an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, are more likely to remain unmarried, and are more likely to have children who experience out-of-wedlock pregnancy. ¹
• Seventy percent of all teen marriages end in divorce. When couples get married because of pregnancy, the failure rate increases to 90 percent within the first six years. ²
• Children reared by unmarried mothers are more often abused. ⁷
• Children reared by unmarried mothers have serious behavior problems. ⁶

Sources

1. Battelle Human Research Center Study, Unmarried Parents Today, NCFA, March 1988.
2. Bethany Christian Services, A Case For Adoption, 1985, pp. 12-13.
3. Children's Defense Fund, "Preventing Children Having Children," 1986.
4. Children's Defense Fund, "Child Support in Teen Parents," Adolescent and Pregnancy Prevention Clearinghouse, 1987.
5. Journal of Marriage and the Family, "Characteristics of Biological, Step, and Adopted Children", 1965.
6. Newsweek, "Kids Who Bounce Back." September 12, 1988, p. 87.
7. TIME Magazine, "Children Having Children", December 9, 1985.
8. U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, (NCHS), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1988.
9. Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe, "Dan Quayle Was Right," The Atlantic Monthly, April 1993

* Consider the Possibilities Handbook, National Council for Adoption, 2002