The proportion of solo mothers in New Zealand has almost tripled in the past 25 years, the Public Health Association heard yesterday.
Otago University associate professor Charlotte Paul said lone-parent families - mainly solo mothers - made up 27 per cent of all families with dependent children.
This compared with about 10
per cent 25 years ago, she told 300 people at the association's national conference in Dunedin.
"We saw a major change in the 1970s leading to an increase in out-of-wedlock child-bearing.
"In the United States, this change has been shown to be due, not simply to more sex, but mainly to a decline in shotgun marriages."
Before the sexual revolution, there had been a premarital sex bargain: if the girl got pregnant, the boy married her. The pill and abortion had changed that, Dr Paul said.
'The fact that the birth of the child is the physical choice of the mother [means] marriage and support of the child become the social choice of the father.
"At the least it becomes easier for the man to rationalise not being involved. This in turn has led to increased poverty for a growing group of lone mothers and their children."
Dr Paul said sexual freedoms had resulted in youth becoming sexually active earlier and engaging in sexual activity with more partners.
A Dunedin study had found a major shift, especially for women, in the proportion having sex by age 18.
In 1970, 23 per cent of female first-year university students had had sex, compared with 69 per cent of similarly educated 18-year-olds in 1990.
For men the corresponding proportions were 27 per cent and 59 per cent.
Last year's figures showed 69 per cent of women had had sex by 18, and 74 per cent of men.
"A consequence of this reduced age at first sexual intercourse has been an increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases relating to a longer time in unstable sexual relationships," Dr Paul said.
She said the technologies that allow increased sexual freedom had advantaged many, but many others had been disadvantaged.
- NZPA
