Report: More 20-Somethings Having Children Outside Wedlock

More women in their 20s are having children outside of wedlock as teen pregnancy rates have dropped.

Teen pregnancy rates have been declining for two decades now, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. But today’s typical unmarried mother is a high-school graduate in her early 20s who could be living with her child's father.

Forty-one percent of all nonmarital births are to mothers in the 20s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Journal reports. Sixty percent of those nonmarital births are to women in their 20s, while teens account for only a fifth of nonmarital births.

Between 1990 and 2008, the teen pregnancy rate has dropped by 42 percent, while the rate of nonmarital childbearing among 20-something women has risen by 27 percent, The Journal reports.

Still, this new group of unmarried mothers faces the same issues long associated with teen mothers, including placing children at a huge disadvantage on several fronts — educationally and economically, among them — at the start of their lives, The Journal reports.