Among unwed parents, identifying fathers is the indispensible first step.
In addition to growing up with the stigma of being a child of unwed parents, Ellington also was afflicted with asthma and dyslexia.
Advantages for Both Parents Counselors who work with young unwed parents stress other reasons for cooperating, too.
The problem is acute for the children of unwed parents who are themselves teen-agers.
They talk of forcing unwed parents to live with relatives.
It would allow states to strip benefits from unwed teen-age parents and legal immigrants.
Although in many places a child born to unwed parents would still face scorn, in many places he would not.
In that post, he was concerned largely with the problems of adolescent boys and girls who had become unwed parents.
In Norway, for instance, 49 percent of all the births in 1999 were to unwed parents.
In deeply religious countries like Italy, few children are born to unwed parents - just 9 percent in 1998.