WE’RE A NATION OF BASTARDS

40% of newborns

Four out of every 10 US babies are now born to unmarried parents, a trend that has risen steadily over the past five decades, according to a new UN report.

In 1970, only about 10 percent of US births were outside marriage, according to the report by the UN Population Fund.

But by and large, these aren’t single-parent families.

“Most births outside marriage are to unmarried couples living together rather than to single mothers,” the report notes.

The trend toward out-of-wedlock babies is higher in Europe.

France has the largest percentage of out-of-wedlock births in the European Union, with 60 percent of babies being born to unmarried parents.

The report also shows that in the United States, where women, on average, have one or two kids, couples are waiting longer before having their f irst child.

In the US, the average age of a woman having her first child is now 27; in 1970, it was 22.

Women in the Czech Republic, Canada, Japan, Spain and Korea all have even higher average ages for a f irst birth, with Korean women topping the chart by putting off having their f irst child until an average age of 31.

Women are also having fewer babies worldwide, a decline that began in the 1970s.

In Asia and Latin America, the decline has been dramatic, with average birth rates of four, five, even six babies per family plummeting to two and three kids.

The report attributes the lower global fertility rates to a combination of factors.

These include improvements in education and the availability of birth control in developing countries, and the difficulty in balancing career and child rearing in developed countries.

Women around the world are still tasked with much of the work of raising children and doing housework, the report notes.

“Even as women have gained equality in access to education and work, their family and employment decisions continue to be constrained by their ‘second shift’ in taking care of children and managing households,” the report says.

Exempted from the world’s lower fertility trend is much of sub-Saharan Africa, along with a half-dozen countries where war and other crises have resulted in fertility rates of more than four births, on average, per woman.