Threatening someone with a shotgun for matrimonial purposes — whether or not carnal relations placed someone in a family way — is a crime. Still, the term lives on in the world of academia. Specifically, Duke University.
“In the 1930s, half of all unmarried pregnant women in the United States married before giving birth, according to U.S. Census data. As premarital sex and out-of-wedlock childbearing became more common, rates of shotgun marriage dropped sharply,” Duke University researchers report [via phys.org]. “By the second half of the 2000s, only 6 percent of unmarried pregnant woman married before giving birth, according to government figures.” That said . . .
Against the backdrop of an overall decline, shotgun marriages have actually risen among certain groups of women, including young mothers and those with less education, according to the new research published online Nov. 1 in Demography . . .
Not many people have a shotgun marriage, but it’s more common among groups who otherwise have low marriage rates—African-Americans, those with less education and those under 25,” said Gibson-Davis, a faculty fellow of the Duke Center for Child and Family Policy and an associate professor of public policy, sociology and psychology and neuroscience at Duke. “This matters because having married parents may be good for the children involved.”
May be? Absent domestic violence and child abuse, as a single father, I reckon most children benefit from a two-parent family. And yes, simple semantics qualify this post for this website. And this is the 19:00 CMT Not Quite So Serious post. Tough room!