Births outside marriage have risen steadily since the mid-1960s. While just under 10% of all live births were to unmarried women in 1964, nearly a quarter of all births were in 1984 and peaking at nearly 49% of all live births in 2010 before dropping to 46.9% in 2017. However, sole parent families were still a small minority of all households with dependent children in the early 21st century. Many unmarried mothers were raising their children with long-term partners. Sometimes they chose to marry after the birth of their first or subsequent children.