| CHILE’S KIDS BORN MOSTLY OUT OF WEDLOCK |
| Thursday, 24 January 2008 | |
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Sixty-two percent of the children born in Chile are born “out of wedlock,” according to Civil Registry figures announced late last week. The number is up by 30 percent since 1990 and is part of a sustained trend existing for at least the past 18 years. Of the 231,182 children inscribed in the Civil Registry the first 11 months of 2007, only 86,767 came from a married couple. The remaining 144,415 babies came from unmarried couples, single parents, or were registered by a third party. It is also likely that even more children were born, but remained unregistered.“Out of wedlock births” first outnumbered married births in Chile in 2001. Still, Catholic University studies suggest that most parents (whether married or not) continue to acknowledge their “out of wedlock” children as though they were married, and that the number of children acknowledged by only one parent has remained stable About 70 percent of all Chileans identify themselves as members of the Catholic Church. Civil Registry director Guillermo Arenas said the increase in “illegitimate” births might be attributable to the conservative nature of Chilean society. “If a society is more conservative and repressive, then there will always be more transgressions. There are fewer transgressions when a society is more liberal,” he said. Claudia Dideos, director of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso), believes that marriage law reforms also help explain the increased incidence of “illegal” births. “Since there are now laws that protect children (who are born out of wedlock), it has been easier for woman to bear children without fear of abandonment from the government or fear of social discrimination.” In Europe, the percentage of “out of wedlock” births is greater than 50 percent in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, and Bulgaria, according to Eurostat figures. SOURCE: LA TERCERA and WWW.PLANNEDPARENTHOOD.ORG By Julia Thompson (editorATsantiagotimes.cl) |
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