You probably know that young people are putting off marriage. And that more women than ever are giving birth out of wedlock. (In the United States, 40 percent of children are born to unmarried mothers.)
In light of these realities, there’s one marital tradition that would seem anachronistic: the “shotgun marriage,” a crude term for mid-pregnancy marriage, meaning couples who marry after conceiving a child and before the child is born. But a study recently found that, proportionally and within certain demographic groups, these unions are actually on the rise.