A February 2012 article in The New York Times analyzed the rising number of births outside of marriage. The article stated:

It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage. Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America.

The article noted the following statistics about this trend:

• Among mothers of all ages, 59 percent are married when they have children.
• But in the "women under thirty" category, for the first time a majority of women (53 percent) are unmarried when they give birth.
• The rise in these births to unmarried women comes largely from couples who are living together. Unfortunately, this usually doesn't provide the stable homes that most children need. Nearly two-thirds of these cohabitating couples split up by the time their child reaches 10.

Joseph Knippenberg with the Center for Policy Studies commented on this rise of births to cohabitating couples: "People are reluctant to marry, we're told, because they don't trust the institution. But the arrangements they make for themselves don't exactly improve upon it."