The Family: Woman's World

More and more U.S. women are getting married these days. There are fewer spinsters, more working wives and more babies (legitimate and illegitimate). So concluded the Population Reference Bureau, Inc., last week in a report on "Marriage and the American Woman."

Items:

> Spinsterhood is declining. In 1940, 15% of women in their early 30s had never been married; in 1960, only 7%. > Nearly two out of three U.S. women are married by age 21. One out of every eight girls in college is married. >Wives now in their early 30s are expected to have an average 3.4 children. > The illegitimacy rate has tripled in the past 25 years. One out of every 20 babies born today is illegitimate. There were 89,000 children born out of wedlock in 1940, 141,000 in 1950, and 224,000 in 1960. Of the 1960 figure, 82,200 were born to white mothers, 141,800 to nonwhite. About nine of every 1,000 married women (or close to 400,000) will be divorced this year. There are today almost 2,000,000 divorced (and not remarried) women in the U.S., and more than 3,000,000 children whose parents are either divorced or separated. The U.S. divorce rate, though now only half that of the postwar peak, remains one of the three highest in the world. (Chief rivals: Hungary and Rumania.)