Research Paper on:
Children Born Out Of Wedlock

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
1930s; by the 1990s, that figure almost tripled to 53 percent (National Center for Policy Analysis, 1999). More than half of all infants born to unwed mothers are born out  of wedlock (Halpern, 1999). Research has found that certain and specific family conditions are predictors of a child being referred for special education (Blair and Scott, 2002). These factors  include born out of wedlock, poor or no prenatal care during the first trimester of pregnancy, low birthrate, and maternal education less than twelve years (Blair and Scott, 2002). Any  of these factors acts as a predictor of learning disabilities, in fact, the child is 1.2 to 3.4 times more likely to have a learning disability (Blair and Scott, 2002).  It is also well known that unwed mothers are more likely to be poor. Besharov reported that about half of female-headed families who have minor children have incomes below the  poverty line (1995). There are any number of publicized detrimental effects to the child of an unwed mother, including ongoing poverty, illness, behavioral problems, lower academic performance, potential of child  committing crimes, and perpetuation of the tendency to have children outside of marriage. Despite the vast multimedia coverage of these negative effects, women continue to give birth to children outside  of marriage. There seems to be a general public perception that the overwhelming majority of children born out of wedlock are born to very young mothers who have little  or no education, and who live in poverty themselves prior to having the child. This premise is based on the massive amount of common media coverage of teenage mothers. The  purpose of this study is to determine if first, the perception regarding the demographics of the mother are valid, and second, to determine if the negative effects that are publicized