The following editorial appeared in the San Jose Mercury News on Friday, Feb. 24:

If motherhood before marriage is the new norm for U.S. women under age 30, it's urgent to find out why.

Politicians railing against the decline of family values won't be much help. Evidence suggests that money rather than morality underlies this troubling trend. We need to find out the root causes to decide how to deal with it.

More than half of babies born to U.S. women younger than 30 occur outside marriage, according to a New York Times report. But the trend is dramatically different based on education levels: 92 percent of women with college degrees are married when they have a baby, compared to 43 percent of those with a high school diploma or less. The fastest growth was among young white women.

Babies born to single mothers are more likely to grow up in poverty, founder in school and have emotional or behavioral problems. If we don't catch these problems before they start, society will pay a much higher economic and social cost down the road.

Most young women say they'd like to marry - if they could find the right man. About eight in 10 unmarried new mothers say they hope to marry their children's father some day, but fewer than one in seven has done so by the time their kids turn 3, according to sociologists Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas, authors of the book "Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage."

So what gets in the way?

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