Born out of Wedlock?

Now I was going over a few stats about Iceland and it struck me that what I see as normal and grew up with as completely ok might not be so for others. The cultures between countries can be quite different even when it's two first world western countries.

The stats I was going over and looking through were about births. Basically in Iceland 65% of all children born since year 2000 were born outside marriages, the stat is slightly lower if you go further back but still above 60%.

At the same time children born to mothers 17 years or younger had an incidence of just under 9 per 1000 children born. I.e teenage pregnancies are very rare.

This all fits in with my experience and I was actually surprised that 35% of children are born within marriages since pretty much every single person I know was born of unmarried parents. Then I realised that those numbers list all children born and often second or third children are born after people get married.

How things go usually back home is that people get together, move in eventually, might buy a flat or a house and then when their first child is around 3 years old they'll probably get married. Most of the weddings I've been to had the child of the happy couple as the ring bearer to carry the rings up the aisle. I find that completely normal.

So much so that I went to a Scottish wedding and the couple didn't have any children so they 'borrowed' an adorable girl the bride to be used to babysit to carry the rings and I felt deep down that that was wrong. It should be their child or no child. I.e only the core family should be up at the altar, heh..

Part of all this is probably caused by the fact that Iceland still go by a patronymic naming system so the names of anyone in a family will be the same no matter if the parents are married or not. In short though there is absolutely no stigma whatsoever against sex before marriage.

There's also no social stigma against single mothers although it's seen as a duty of her family to help out then as much as they can. It takes a village and all that

One side effect of this is that I find engagements baffling. Since for most people I know the period leading up to the marriage involved them living together, buying a house and having children and that showed their intent to stay together a lot more than an engagement announcement.

So.. do you find this weird? completely normal or horrifying? I'm rather curious.

I think that's probably more likely to happen when there's a taboo on being a single mother. I.e then it's more likely that the child of a single mother will be unplanned and unwanted and in most stats I've seen unwanted children have the odds against them statistically.

Anyway the 65% born to unmarried mothers doesn't mean they're all single mothers. Some more stats concerning marriage in Iceland! (yeah I had way too much fun polling the database I found).

Most children in Iceland these days are born to people who are in a stable long term relationship but aren't married yet.

57% of people who get married in Iceland have been in a 'consensual union' for 2-10 years. Even 3% have been together for 20 years before getting married.

When it comes to children I think it's more important that the parents are in a stable long term relationship than it is that the parents are married. In a lot of countries these things go together but they don't have to.

I also don't mean that people shouldn't get married or that it's not ok to think people should be married before they have children. Far from it. I won't agree with that point of view personally but it doesn't bother me when other people have that point of view. What would bother me if it were legally enforced but that's not going to happen

Yep and it's really REALLY hard being a single parent without adequete support. The best support for a mother would of course be another human being 100% involved in raising the child with her, like the father of the child or another person also commited to raising the child as their own.

When that's not possible having good support from an extended family and help from the government makes a huge difference. It's still tough of course but it's possible and not being seen in any way as a 'bad' person for raising a child alone helps too.

Married couples or 'longterm stable relationship but not married' also use the resources including cheap subsidised daycare available and around 90% of women work outside the home. It's more unusual back home to be a stay at home mom/dad than it is to be a single mom/dad (NB: unusual is not the same as bad, I'm not saying there shouldn't be stay at home parents).

Anyway I find it really interesting that the things you take for granted are very often not taken for granted somewhere else and might even be the complete opposite.

I think the teen mothers stats are that low simply because of effective sex education and easy access to birth control even for teenagers. The age of consent is technically 18 but 14 year olds can have sex as long as the partner has not reached 24 so it's not that the teens aren't having sex. The average age of virginity loss is 15.7

The pregnancy rates go up as well if you include 18 and 19 year olds. I stopped at the official age of consent when I counted things up.

I don't know what it's like now but I had the first sex ed classes at 11 as a part of the school curriculum that was just the basic, girls will get periods, you'll all start growing hair in your armpit and this is how babies happen talk.

At 14 we got the actual sex ed with explanations of how condoms work and where to get them, have to study about all the birth control methods available (there was an exam) and we were even made to watch a cartoon that explained masturbation and then sex etiquette (for women and men!) graphically just in case we didn't know where our bits were.

No no that was pretty much what I ment although of course not quite as formally as 'good manners'. I was more thinking 'good sex manners' as in make sure everything is consensual and that everyone knows and is comfortable with what might happen and really "Please May I" and "Thank you, that was very nice" or "No, I'd rather you didn't" isn't that far off

You're right though in that etiquette brings up sort of prim and formal connotations and that wasn't what I ment.


Then from lookingglass
It depends, 50% split custody is getting more and more common and children can have two legal homes and then the government helps out both parents seperately (although not at double the expense I think usually). For example if it's a disabled child the split parents will both get government help to get equipment or change their house around to better suit the child.

Still I think it's also easier for a woman to get primary care status in Iceland than a man. Like I said though the 50% split custody is more and more common and one friend of mine (he's male) is sharing an 'oops' child like that with the mother.

As for how child support works, the government can pay that to the parent with the child and then goes and collects the money from the other parent so for example a mother doesn't ever have to deal with a no good dad that doesn't pay child support. The state will then always pay her and then harass him to pay the state back. That only works for the minimum legal child support. If the parents have agreed on more than that per month they have to arrange the amount over the legal minimum themselves.

I have a really interesting article about the history of marriage and its status today bookmarked on another computer. I'll link it here when I can get to it. The gist was basically that in modern times now, marriage can be better than ever before since it can be a true partnership, however that it wasn't necessary either and definately not mandatory and also probably harder to get right than in the past when it was mostly an economic thing or a political alliance and love didn't really get to enter into it at all.

What prompted me to start this thread in the first place was wondering about the different cultural perceptions of long term unmarried relationships vs. married ones and then also single parents a bit too. Also wanting to point out how different the attitude and values can be in nations that are industrial western nations. I mean that's just a tiny culture clash really compared to what you get if you go further away but it's still significant.

Oh and here's the article I mentioned earlier:
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/01/...re-of-marriage