Louisiana's out-of-wedlock birth rate is the highest in the nation--54.7 percent according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So what's the cause? Experts says: individuality.
"I think a lot of that has to do with self-empowerment," New Orleans clinical therapist Tamika Davis said. "There are many that are just marrying later in life."
Davis says younger couples she sees want to have children, but she adds that those mothers and fathers don't necessarily give up their own identities by tying the knot.
"That doesn't mean eliminating the possibility, the option, of having a family as well and everything coming full circle," Davis said. "The two things can exist at one time."
Davis says ultimately, individual couples need to use their own morals to guide how they live their lives, including when to get married and when to have children. According to Davis, children born out of wedlock can thrive just as well as children born to married parents as long as a healthy environment exists for those couples and their children.
"That is the ultimate optimal outcome: just to have a healthy environment for all parties involved, children and parents alike.
The Louisiana Family Forum argues that the traditional family with married parents is vital to the upbringing of a child. Louisiana Family Forum president Gene Mills says the government can provide incentives to make sure anyone interested in having children gets married before having kids.
"In Japan, they started a child tax credit that allows couples to be encouraged to have children (and) to be benefited. Instead of a marriage penalty, there were marriage benefits in public policy. I think that warrants consideration," Mills said. "I think you could do that with the tax structure in terms of the longevity of a marriage and the stability it brings to the culture."
Mills points to economic factors surrounding expensive weddings and what a wedding is expected to be as possible reasons why younger couples are putting off weddings. However, he points to Louisiana's longest married couple as a reason why marriage can work.
"I think this is solvable," Mills said. "It comes down to: ideas have consequences. That's one of the reasons why on February 14, we recognized Ira and Margery Milan for the longest-known married couple in the state of Louisiana. We're willing to communicate to this generation that marriage can not only last, but it can be thriving, and it can be beneficial to everybody involved. They've been married for 83 years and going."
