Of all the options facing teenagers grappling with an unplanned pregnancy, marriage is rarely a choice, say adolescent health experts.

"In my 16 years, I can't recall it coming up even once," said Julie Tye, president of the Cradle, an Evanston, Ill.-based adoption agency that has helped hundreds of young women in the same situation as 17-year-old Bristol Palin.

It wasn't long ago, however, that shotgun marriages were considered the norm, a way for a boy to make an "honest woman" out of a girl who got caught having premarital sex. In the first half of the 1960s, almost 70 percent of white pregnant teens, ages 15-19 tied the knot - compared to 19 percent by the early 1990s. For black teens, the rate fell from 36 percent to less than 7 percent, according to the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington, D.C.

But a confluence of trends, including contraception and increased career opportunities, has turned forced matrimony into a relic of another era, like typewriter mechanics - and certainly not the route to domestic bliss.

The combination of unplanned pregnancy and youth raises the risk for divorce, said Stephanie Coontz, a historian at Evergreen State University.

Yet Kay Chase, who works with teen mothers at the DeKalb, Ill., County Health Department, said that even without a walk down the aisle, they long for stable lives with the fathers of their children. But it usually turns into an empty dream.

"They think the guy will stick by them, they'll get an apartment and live happily ever after," she said. "What usually happens is the guy takes off shortly after finding out she's pregnant."

Becky Beilfuss of Teen Parent Connection, a service program based in the Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn, Ill., for young mothers and fathers, said that perhaps only 1 percent of its clients end up getting married. The organization's goal is simply to build a healthy relationship between parents that can last even when their romance fizzles, Beilfuss said.

"When that goes, and statistically it's more than likely, (the young men) will come back to the fathers' groups," she said. "We want to support his relationship with that child."

Beilfuss knows what it's like to be a teen wife and mother in the suburbs. She grew up in Glen Ellyn, and in 1978, when she was 16, she married her baby's father to spare both families the embarrassment of having an out-of-wedlock child. They stuck it out for 11 years, despite frequent difficulties.

"We lived that stress as a couple day to day, and it increased the pressure on us as parents," she said. "I don't think we were as good of parents as we could have been."

Still, the Rev. Greg Sakowicz of St. Mary of the Woods on Chicago's Northwest Side finds some instructive life lessons in the Palin dilemma, currently unfolding on the national stage.

"Yes, they're incredibly young ... But I do like that the parents are being incredibly supportive under very difficult circumstances. I've seen situations where the family disowns them," said Sakowicz, who has been a priest for 29 years.

But not everyone will get the same benefit of the doubt, said Pat Pelozzi, president of the Healthy Teen Network, a national nonprofit group.

"As forgiving as all the supporters are now, it's not the way the world works. This is still a vilified population," Paluzzi said.

She cited the harsh criticism that enveloped Jamie Lynn Spears's announcement - including that she be fired from the Nickelodeon cable channel - as the more typical of the "you-made-your-bed-now-lie-in-it" response to teen pregnancy.

"Are we seeing more empathy because (Bristol Palin) is white? Middle class? Getting married? It would be great if we could show this same level of compassion all the time."