Fewer Young Men Fathering Children Outside of Marriage: CDC

Link here. Excerpt:

'Fewer unmarried American men are becoming first-time fathers, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.

Thirty-six percent of first-time fathers younger than 44 had a child out of wedlock during the first decade of the 2000s, officials said.

"This represents a decline from the previous two decades," said report author Gladys Martinez, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.

In the 1980s, she said, 42 percent of first-time fathers were unmarried, as were 40 percent in the 1990s.

The national survey also found a larger proportion of unmarried first-time fathers living with the mother and child than in the past.

The report is good news, given prior research indicating that "having a father involved positively with his child benefits the child and the family on a number of outcomes," said Dr. Craig Garfield, an associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.'