The current social revolution in the United States may be related in a more significant sense than is generally recognized to demographic trends and characteristics of black Americans. These trends and characteristics-which include population growth, mobility and geographic distribution, and other social or economic characteristicshave important implications for the educational, economic and political development of the Negro population. An attempt will be made in this paper to sketch the highlights of these trends and characteristics, paying special attention to those not covered by other presentations at this conference.

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines illegitimate as “la. not recognized by law as lawful offspring: bastard; usually bom of parents not married to each other, b. conceived in fornication or adultery.” (A story, probably apocryphal, quotes a young woman on the difference between fornication and adultery: “I’ve tried them both and there is no difference.” ) One could define illegitimacy as a state referring to the birth of a child, which is not sanctioned or approved by society, with said child and his natural parents being denied many of the rights and privileges usually inherent in their roles of parent and child. Another, and possibly less precise but more meaningful definition is that illegitimacy is what society says it is, with different societies giving different definitions. For example, in some states in the United States, a birth is defined as illegitimate if the mother in­ dicates she is not married at the time; but in other states the mother is asked only if she has ever been married, and if so, the child is assumed to be legitimate. An awareness of the range of usage should be kept in mind when statistics on illegitimacy are presented because the adequacy of and comparability among states of the definition and derivation of illegitimacy are relevant to the long and intensive debate on whether illegitimacy ratios are less important than illegitimacy rates. The present paper will present clarifying material on this point, so suffice it to say for the present that although ratios and rates each have certain weaknesses, both are useful and relevant to the analysis of illegitimacy trends.

1010 women aged 18-44 and living in Chicago census tracts in which the median family income was below $5500 per year in 1960 were interviewed in 1967-1968 to determine attitudes toward family planning. Absolutely no evidence was found of a fertility culture. Fertility aspirations were substantially lower than the 1959 ideals of both white and black Chicagoans. More than 1/2 regarded age 23 or older as the ideal age to get married. About 60% suggested an interval of 2 or more years as the ideal interval between marriage and the first birth. 80.5% approved moderately or strongly of family planning while 8.9% were neutral. All but a small fraction knew at least one reliable contraceptive method and knew of its reliability. A tendency existed however to underestimate the most reliable methods and overestimate the least reliable methods. Pregnancy histories reveal a high prevalence of teenage pregnancy resulting from uncontracepted premarital sex relations. Planning of the first child not the last should become a major goal among family planners. Several researchers discuss Bogues paper in a concluding section. Non-compatible ideals in individuals and/or lack of purposive rational planning may dictate a lack of contraception.

An objective appraisal of the current marital status distribution of Negroes is attempted in this paper. The appraisal is based on comparative data for blacks and whites for the generation since 1940, emphasis on developments during the 1960's. The accompanying tables are designed to throw light on whether the proportion of mature adult years lived in the state has been increasing for black people and whether the gap between them and white people in this regard has narrowed or widened in recent years.' In this perspective, changes that reflect declines in bachelorhood and spinsterhood among persons of mature adulthood are accepted, along declines in separation, divorce and widowhood, as indicators of increasing marriage and marital stability. Actually, persons are classified in this study according to their marital status when they were enumerated. Thus, being or divorced is regarded as indicative of marital instability. At the same time, living in an intact marriage (married but not separated) is regarded as indicative of at least current marital stability, even though the person may have previously been widowed or divorced. Inasmuch as the category separated was not used in censuses of the United States until 1950, comparisons of marriage data for 1940 and more recent years are made in terms of married persons rather than persons with marriage intact. Black and Negro are treated here as synonyms. Some of the information is for the nonwhite population of the United States, over ninetenths of which is Negro.