---
title: "Never Married Parents Say OK to Have Kids Outside Marriage"
description: "That's the number of unwed parents who say that having children outside marriage is not at all wrong or only wrong sometimes. "
date: "2007-10-03"
authors:
  - name: "Russell Heimlich"
    job_title: "Former web developer"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/russell-heimlich/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2007/10/03/never-married-parents-say-ok-to-have-kids-outside-marriage/"
---

# Never Married Parents Say OK to Have Kids Outside Marriage

People who are themselves never-married parents (about 8% of all parents) are less inclined than ever-married parents to see unmarried childbearing as bad for society or morally wrong; more than six in ten (61%) in a new Pew survey said that having a child outside marriage is not at all wrong or only wrong sometimes compared with 46% of ever-married parents. Never-married parents are also less inclined to say a child needs both a mother and father to grow up happily. Demographically, this group is more likely than ever-married parents to be young, black or Hispanic, less educated, and to have been raised by an unwed parent themselves. [Read More](https://www.pewresearch.org/assets/social/pdf/Marriage.pdf)