The EU recently released fertility statistics for the EU-25, and the new numbers point to an increasing number of Europeans choosing to have children out of wedlock (32.2%) vs. inside marriage (67.8%). The leaders of this trend, as the map from EUROSTAT at right shows, are the Scandinavian countries. In Denmark, for example, 60% of firstborns have unmarried parents. That figure hits 80% in certain districts of Norway.

While the United States still has more children being born out of wedlock (37%) than Europe as a whole, the profile of unmarried couples differs sharply. In the U.S., births out of wedlock are still associated with teenage pregnancies and poverty. In European countries like France, they have no such stigma. Ségolène Royal, who just won the Socialist Party nomination for France's presidential election next year, has been living with Francois Hollande, the party's leader, for 25 years. They have four children and remain unmarried. And they're hardly the only prominent French couple to prefer l'amour without marriage.

A closer look at the map reveals another interesting correlation. The countries in which birth rates are increasing are the same countries that have a larger percentage of children out of wedlock. It looks as though the current generation of childbearers is thoroughly rewriting their parents' family model.