A question about Pinays and their culture

[Veracity]

Guys,
I understand that there is no divorce in the PI. If able, people get annulments.
However, are there seem to be quite a lot of unwed mothers in the PI. Has it always been this way? Is there any stigma associated with single motherhood?
My opinions are based only on my searches on various PI dating sights.

[Woody]

There are quite a few unwed mothers and there IS a stigma. The root of the problem is a lack of sexual education and the Catholic church trying its damnedest to keep birth control away from kids.

[Ray]

 
Yes, there have always been unwed mothers in any society.
　
The fact that there is virtually no legal divorce in the Philippines also helps to explain the large number of unwed mothers. A lot of Filipinos don’t want to commit to marriage because they can never divorce. So, they shack up so they can walk away from their responsibilities at any time with little or no legal consequences. I call it "Filipino Divorce".
　
The fact that many guys have two or more "families", with multiple partners and children, and with no legal marriage contract, seems to be accepted as a way of life in the Philippines. I personally know some Filipinos who know that their parents were never married and dad also has another "family" on the side. They mostly just shrug it off as not such a big deal.
　
The female partners will often accept this arrangement because it is extremely difficult for a single mother o support herself and her child/children. Many times a female will lose her job simply because she marries or she reaches a certain age, say 25 for example.
　
The stigma of having a child out of wedlock is real, especially in the rural province areas, but less so in the large cities.
　
Also, beware of single mothers listed on the dating sites. Some of those women are legally married and you may be deeply involved before you find out the truth about their situation.
　
Blaming all of this stuff on the Catholic Church seems to be popular with uninformed folks who have some kind of axe to grind.
　
 
Ray
　
 
 

[Ray]

 
Some more points to consider...
 
Many Filipinos used to marry very young. Up until around 25 years ago, girls could marry at 14 and boys at 16. Now, the minimum age for both is 18, so a lot of those very young unwed mothers might very well have married the guy who knocked them up if the legal age wasn't 18.
 
In addition to the minimum age of 18, anyone under the age of 21 must have written parental consent to marry. If the guy who got their daughter pregnant was a dumb jerk, the parents may very well deny consent to marry.
 
Also, most of those Filipino teenagers probably grew up with very tight parental supervision. When they leave home to attend college in another city at the young age of 16, many of them have a tendency to go crazy when suddenly left without constant parental supervision. Another term I've heard Filipinos use for the phenomenon of pregnacies in teenage college students is "diploma". 
 
 
Ray
 
 

[Jhengsman]

From what I have seen and read as a women gets around 30 years old it is better socially to be a single mother rather then an old maid who could not attract a man, married to someone else or not. With a 38% single mother rate a stigma attached to you doesn't mean much


In their more serious movies you can always see the term "legal spouse" as the culture has accepted the separated will move in with the "real family" leaving the "legal family" behind. From my own experience around Manila the single parenthood rate and broken family rate is little different from that in America. There are just no "ex's" just "legals"