Single Parents by Choice or by Default? An Analysis of the Attitudes and Prospects of Unmarried, College-Educated Mothers

Margaret Usdansky, Princeton University

Dan Quayle's 1992 attack on TV's Murphy Brown inspired an unresolved debate about the wisdom of single motherhood among well-educated women. Until recently, data about this small but significant group of unmarried mothers have been scarce. Using the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study, a nationally representative sample of urban, unmarried mothers, this paper examines the attitudes among college-educated, single mothers as well as their partners' social and human capital to test two hypotheses. First, whether, as Quayle suggested, these mothers choose single parenthood because they want children, but not marriage. Second, consideration is given to whether unmarried, college-educated mothers remain single because they have less success in finding 'quality' men. Although most unmarried mothers do not complete college, understanding more about those who do may indicate whether single parenthood will become as widespread in the U.S. as in Europe, or whether it will remain a largely lower-class phenomenon.