How to Use unwed in a Sentence

unwed

adjective
  • The boy who was sold was born to an unwed teenage girl, Mandal said.
    Vidhi Doshi, Washington Post, 6 July 2018
  • Sure, the unwed pregnant teen of the lyrics was keeping her baby, but gasp, the shame of it all.
    Melissa Ruggieri, USA TODAY, 17 Aug. 2023
  • The previous year, the court sanctioned birth control for the unwed.
    Erin Jensen, USA TODAY, 8 June 2022
  • Both of them shared a mother who gave her daughter up for adoption as an unwed mother in the 1930s.
    Talis Shelbourne, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 7 Sep. 2019
  • So does that mean ‘unwed parents’ cannot enroll their kids?
    NBC News, 22 July 2019
  • The poverty rate for kids who are born to unwed teenage mothers who don’t finish high school is 78 percent.
    Jennifer Wright, Harper's BAZAAR, 22 May 2018
  • Roman was born in 1942 in a home for unwed mothers and was dropped off at a Dallas orphanage as a child.
    Angel Saunders, People.com, 25 Apr. 2025
  • As a result, couples are spending an increasing amount of their lives in the same home, but unwed.
    Dan Kopf, Quartzy, 12 July 2019
  • She was born in a Texas home for unwed mothers and was stonewalled in every attempt to learn the identity of her mother.
    Sam Whiting, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 Nov. 2022
  • The report proved all too prophetic, as the proportion of black children born to unwed mothers has soared to 80 percent in the decades since.
    Mario Loyola, National Review, 20 Aug. 2020
  • During World War II, the father of an unwed mother marries her off to a farmer who will raise her baby as his own.
    Los Angeles Times, 26 Mar. 2021
  • Geraldine was an unwed teenager when Nakesha was born in 1970.
    Benjamin Weiser, New York Times, 3 Mar. 2018
  • In her work with the unwed mothers of Morocco, Ms. Ech-Channa served a group that was similarly scorned and cast aside.
    Emily Langer, BostonGlobe.com, 28 Sep. 2022
  • Someone on the Ridge is murdering young unwed pregnant girls.
    Lincee Ray, EW.com, 25 Apr. 2022
  • She was born on Valentine’s in 1963, to an unwed co-ed at Texas Christian University.
    Robert T. Garrett, Dallas News, 4 Sep. 2023
  • Her family sent her to a home for unwed mothers (there were some 200 nationwide).
    CBS News, 21 Mar. 2021
  • Unlike Leckie, Duncan was, by the age of sixteen, an unwed mother.
    Rivka Galchen, The New Yorker, 15 Jan. 2024
  • Many were unwed mothers whose babies were taken from them and given up for adoption.
    David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 15 Feb. 2024
  • Her suitor’s Civil War death forces an unwed mother to let her married cousin raise her daughter.
    Ed Stockly, Los Angeles Times, 12 Mar. 2021
  • Does the production clearly skewer the patriarchy that sells off unwed daughters for a dowry?
    San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 June 2022
  • Both sets of parents were supportive and arranged for my girlfriend to enroll in what was at that time referred to as an unwed-mother’s home.
    Amy Dickinson, Detroit Free Press, 2 Jan. 2018
  • The trend is more pronounced among African Americans, 46% of whom reach 40 without marrying, and those with who do not have a degree, a third of whom remain unwed by that age.
    Time, 29 June 2023
  • There is no sense from any of the involved parties that Montessori can go on working either as a married woman or as an unwed mother.
    Rivka Galchen, Harper’s Magazine , 18 Jan. 2022
  • Like many babies born to unwed Irish mothers like Lorna, she was sold into adoption against her mother’s will.
    Chris Vognar, New York Times, 18 Jan. 2024
  • His unwed mother-to-be, Catherine Goggin, has left her small Irish town for Dublin, having been written off by family and parish.
    Manuel Betancourt, Longreads, 29 Mar. 2018
  • Anand Kaper was born in Bombay in October 1976, to an unwed mother in a small private hospital.
    Bhavya Dore, Quartz, 20 Oct. 2020
  • A half-century ago, unwed fathers had even fewer rights.
    Eli Hager, New York Times, 25 Sep. 2019
  • Many cultures around the world frown on the unwed, and as a result, people often find themselves in marriages out of a sense of duty and commitment rather than long-lasting love.
    Mark Travers, Forbes, 12 Mar. 2025
  • This prairie witch’s origin story is rooted in the loss of her only son and escape from the abusive home for unwed mothers where she was forced to wait out her pregnancy and give birth.
    Lauren Leblanc, Los Angeles Times, 5 Mar. 2025
  • Ciminierti was a single unwed mother in the 1930s and her baby was taken away from her without her knowing.
    Natalie Dreier, ajc, 4 July 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'unwed.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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