It occurs to me that it would help if we had better stats. I'm not a stat guy but it's clear that the 70 percent figure for black out of wedlock births is dubious in that it reflects a possible rise in out of wedlock births, as well as a possible decline in "in wedlock" births. We should avoid confusing a rise in the relative number of black kids born out of wedlock with their percentage of black births overall. What we need to know is the number of black women who are having children of out marriage versus their numbers in the population. That seems to me much fairer. I've seen the "out of wedlock births per thousand" bandied about for instance. I'm currently fiddling with the National Center for Health Statistics website to get a fix on that number, and also to get some historical and demographic comparions.
Here is what we know: Despite grave reports about the demise of the black family in the post-Civil Rights era, in fact, the number of black women having children out of wedlock in 1996 was at its lowest point in 40 years. Maddeningly, the Times article I linked to provides no stats for 1956, it simply states it as fact, and for now I'm accepting it, given that i comes from a reputable source. If we have any stat guys looking at this or anyone who wants to join me in trying to navigate the NCHS site, please feel free to help. I should add that in the Times article Stephen Thernstrom says we should be more concerned about the 70 percent figure--but if we're going to do that we need to start critiquing black married couples who only zero, one, two kids as hard as we critique black unmarried couples. Fair is fair, no?
UPDATE: Big, big props to commenter Akali for fishing these two reports which look at the rate of childbearing among unmarried women. The basic conclusion is that the birth rate for unmarried black women is--and has been--declining. In 1970 the birth rate for unmarried black women was 96 per 1,000. In 1980, it was 87.9. In 2005 it was 60.6. There is a huge spike in the late 1980s, but the overal trend is clear--the birth rate for unmarried black women has been declining for almost 40 years.
Something else that should add some context to that 70 percent figure which we all love. The birth rate for married black women has declined way more for married black women than it has for married white women. Also, the birth rate for unmarried women overall is on the increase, but that seems to be being driven by an increase among white and Hispanic women. It's also worth noting that the rate for unmarried black women is still waaayyyy higher than the rate for white women, while lower than the rate for Hispanic women.
I was not a statistics major in college. If anyone wants to debunk these or add context, I'm totally open.
UPDATE 2: I also agree that "born in wedlock" seems to be a very crude stat for measuring the quality of life for a child in the home. I'm esepcially suspicious--as Kathy notes in comments below--of this idea of causality, instead of correality.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
A table on page 59 of this PDF has births-per-thousand data going back to 1980: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_06.pdf
A table on page 26 of this PDF has some further births-per-thousand data going back to 1969:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr48/nvs48_16.pdf
Is there any way to find numbers about the number of children born out of wedlock but raised in wedlock? It seems like a lot fewer couples are rushing to get married before a baby is born these days and instead opting to get married afterwards (at least among the white people that I know). If you combine that with a trend towards only one or two children per family, you can see how that 70% number could get fairly misleading.
Here's a Brookings paper from 1996 that has data on black and white out-of-wedlock births rates from 1965-1985. Black rates down 9.3%, white rates up 6.2% to 1985. Brookings blames reductions in shotgun weddings.
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/1996/08childrenfamilies_akerlof.aspx
My guess is rates are linked to the marriageability of poor fathers. If people feel like they can't afford to get married, they don't, although they remain sexually active. And simultaneously, the kinds of habits that make people more prosperous make childbirth less likely. Birth rates go down when prosperity increases all over the world.
Saw that Brookings piece. But we according to the CDC data, the actual birth rates for unmarried black women has actually declined. I'd love to hear a take on why that would be...
It seems like the missing piece of data here is the trend in the rates of marriage, in the black community & outside it. How does the percentage of black women (to keep it simple) who are married today compare with 20 years ago, or 50?
T-N.C.: "I'd love to hear a take on why that would be..."
My guess:
1) Relatively good economic times means better job prospects, which discourages having children
2) Social norms evolving under pressure of self-interest, which is a longwinded way of saying that young people see what the previous generation did, and on that basis modify their behavior to avoid doing things that they suspect will make them unhappy
I've gotta get to work, but I'll drop two anecdotal stories on you:
1. My cousin's 28-year-old daughter is pregnant and unmarried. But she and the baby's father are MBA grads, in a committed relationship, raising his son from a previous marriage, and planning to tie the knot when she can once again fit in a small, cute dress (only half joking about the dress).
2. Another cousin and her family (joined by their church and me) for years have been helping a single mother of SIX out-of-wedlock children, several of whom she can't even identify the father. We haven't had the guts to come out and ask how on earth she could get pregnant over and over again, by one no-count man after another (believe me, the ones we can identify as fathers are indeed no-count), and give birth to children she has no means of raising properly.
It is only by the grace of God that my cousin found this family -- otherwise those kids might be just more statistics: dropouts, aimless, in trouble, begatting more out-of-wedlock children. Now, one lives with my cousin's family, and attends the same private school (on scholarship) that her son attends. The rest come over on weekends, and get a glimpse of life they would have seen only on The Cosby Show: middle-class black family with all the requisite details that "middle class" implies: loving, married husband and wife; two respectful, smart, goal-oriented children; church on Sunday; athletic events that Mom and Dad attend/coach; doting grandparents. Thanks to my cousin, her policeman husband, and the rest of our family, these wonderful kids are going to summer camps, to outings around town, and talking about staying in school so they "can live like Aunt Debbie and Uncle Daryle." I call my cousin St Debbie.
But I digress. All this to say that, yes, the statistics can be misleading (witness Cousin #1). But there is still far too much truth in the numbers -- and the devastation behind those numbers.