The photographs hanging in Krystan Bell’s living room display a montage of family memories. The images show Bell’s smiling son, Quinton Willis, with his father and half-siblings and as a toddler, wrapped in Bell’s arms.

Yet in the five years since Quinton was born, the overall family picture has changed. Bell and Quinton’s father, who were dating when he was born, broke up, and Bell now lives alone with her son near Bayfield. She has a new boyfriend, and the two plan to move in together soon.

“Everyone has the dream where they are married first, then have a family and have a house. I didn’t get that,” Bell said.

But if she felt resentment or regret, her voice didn’t betray it. Before she got pregnant she had plans to become a cosmetologist and move to a big city. She still has that dream, she said, but “it just had to wait.”

In recent years, fewer and fewer American women actually follow the typical path into adulthood that Bell described. One indicator is the rise in the number of women having children outside or before marriage, a trend that is rearranging the long-held American narrative that marriage always comes before the baby and the baby carriage.

The number of births to unmarried women has been increasing steadily through the decades, and it has accelerated even more in recent years. Now, 36 percent of all births in the United States occur outside marriage, an increase of 28 percent over the proportion of unmarried births in 2006 and double the 18.4 percent of nonmarital births recorded in 1980, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

In Colorado, 29 percent of all births were to mothers who were not married at the time, according to 2011 Census Bureau statistics.

The trend has roots in a variety of factors, including changing ideas about marriage and cohabitation, decreases in gender inequality and new economic dynamics. It also has implications for families’ financial situations, childhood development and various types of support networks parents depend on.

Changing times

Part of the increase in births to single mothers can be tied to the steady rise in the age that couples are getting married. The median age of marriage for women is 27, a year older than the median age at first birth.

Attitudes about marriage also are changing as young people increasingly see tying the knot as a capstone in their relationship rather than a starting point.

“Women of all social classes see marriage as something they aspire to and something that should be undertaken once you have secure finances and a secure relationship,” Stefanie Mollborn, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado, wrote in an email.

And marriage no longer is the only option after dating. Cohabitation, when couples live together before or instead of marrying, is becoming more common. More than half – almost 60 percent – of all nonmarital births occur to parents who are living together.

Rises in women’s participation in the labor force and decreases in gender inequality also have empowered women to leave bad relationships or choose not to marry and have made them better able to afford single parenthood as an option, Mollborn said.

Though such ideas about marriage span class divides, the trend of having children without or before tying the knot continues to have a distinct socioeconomic bent, with studies showing it is more common among women who are younger, have less education and have lower income levels.

Part of the reason is women with less education still tend to have children earlier than those who have more education, even as they increasingly are abandoning the assumption that marriage is a necessary precursor to having children, Mollborn said. They want to achieve stability financially and relationship-wise before walking down the aisle, even if they are in a relationship and even if they already have a child, said Keri Brandt, a sociology professor at Fort Lewis College.

That was Jessica Jameson’s thinking when she and her boyfriend started talking about having a baby together. Jameson didn’t have a college degree and was working in an insurance office at the time. The couple briefly talked about marriage, but always as something they would do after she had her daughter, Rylie. The process of having a baby together would prove the couple was ready for marriage, said Jameson, who is 26.

When Rylie’s father rejected the idea of marriage, Jameson said she didn’t push it because she didn’t want it to be a forced affair. Through the months she was pregnant, the relationship deteriorated, and she left her boyfriend soon after Rylie was born in July 2011, moving back into her parents’ Durango home.

“It’s for the better he isn’t in the picture,” she said.

Now, she is on her way to an associate’s degree in nursing – a career she hopes will allow her to support her and her daughter without other assistance.

Financial effects

Drawing connections, causations and correlations between births outside of marriage and childhood development and family financial outcomes is a tricky task.

Research generally shows children of single mothers are more likely to experience childhood poverty, family instability and cognitive and behavioral problems, according to Child Trends, a nonpartisan research group.

And while single parenthood isn’t considered by many social scientists to be a major cause of poverty, Mollborn said, data from a range of research groups show the increase in single parenthood plays a major role in the growing inequality across the nation. Researchers from the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute have studied the issue and found the rise in single parenthood in recent decades has accounted for 21 percent to 40 percent of the growth in inequality between various income groups.

It makes sense that raising children with help from two paychecks is easier than one. And single mothers already tend to earn less than they need to live here. The median wage for single mothers supporting children 18 years and younger is $29,293, just 56 percent of the $52,084 that is the livable wage for a single parent with one child in Durango.

Part of the reason is single mothers are more likely to take part-time jobs to work around child care needs, and they are more often pigeonholed into hourly wage jobs, said Louise Atkinson, president and CEO of the Women’s Foundation of Colorado. Some are even hesitant to take a pay raise because it would mean losing benefits such as government-supported child care assistance.

Income shortfalls are the single biggest challenge faced by single women who visit the Women’s Resource Center, said Deborah Uroda, the center’s marketing and fund development director.

Bell said finances are constantly at the top of her mind.

“It’s the whole money problem, that’s my biggest challenge,” she said.

She has worked various retail jobs since she had Quinton. She is unemployed and lives on about $500 per month from unemployment checks and child support.

Redefining family

In many instances though, a father’s absence doesn’t mean a woman is left alone to raise her children. Many unmarried mothers have a partner who is or acts as a parental figure. One 2008 report estimates that two-fifths of all children in the United States will live in a cohabiting household by the age of 12.

Other unmarried mothers have sought out strong support networks of family and friends.

“What is positive (about the increase in births to unmarried mothers) is people are being more creative in imagining how they can create a family,” Brandt said.

Bell’s boyfriend and her parents, who live just down the road, all help her take care of her son. Jameson lives with her parents and they help baby-sit when needed.

Women who have those strong support systems tend to be better able get the resources and help they need, said Lezlie Mayer, director of La Plata County’s human services department.

Rachel Cameron, program director at the La Plata Family Centers Coalition, said she sees the same trend.

For families in all situations, “the support system is most important,” she said.

ecowan@durangoherald.com