Fatherless Costa Rica : child acknowledgment and support among lone mothers

Abstract

Costa Rica has a long history, shared with other Latin American countries, of high proportions of unmarried mothers, and children who are not acknowledged by their fathers (Perez Brignoli 1981). The proportion of out-of-wedlock births in the country went from 38% in 1985 to 49% in 1998, and the proportion of births registered as from an unknown father went from 20% to 28% in the same period (source: Programa Centroamericano de Poblacion, http://populi.eest.ucr.ac.cr). A further preoccupying recent demographic change is the increase in the number of teenage pregnancies after 1990 and most dramatically among girls younger than 15 years old (MIDEPLAN 1998a: 168), despite the fact that in a second wave of decline, fertility is quickly approaching the replacement level (http://populi.eest.ucr.ac.cr). The divorce rate has increased continuously (from 9.9 divorces per 100 inscribed marriages in 1980 to 21.2 in 1996, (MIDEPLAN 1998a: 167,168 ). However, these figures do not capture all trends. Conjugal instability is expressed in cycles of unions and ruptures not registered in national statistics and common among the population in poverty (Faune 1995:83). Indeed, the number of consensual unions is increasing (Gomez and Ramirez 1994). Often associated with these demographic changes is the increase in the proportion of women-headed households rising from 18% in 1986 (Marenco M., et al. 1998:4) to 22% in 1998. Chant states, that lone mothers “seem to be by far the biggest group of female heads (of households—mb/lr) at a world scale” (Chant 1997a). Lone mothers are women who bring up children on their own. They have similar needs, regardless of the reasons why they are not living with the child’s father. Their practical situation will be more or less similar dependent on their children’s age and their socio-economic situation. A lone mother need not be head of household nor the main economic contributor, i.e. she need not have the key economic or status position within the household'. Lone mothers are not defined by their civil status, rather by their living situation and having young children in the household. Lone mothers may be living alone with their children or, more commonly, live with their parents or relatives (“concealed woman-headed households” (Varley 1996)2.