Posted on 11/26/2006 5:02:22 AM PST by shrinkermd
....More American women than ever are putting motherhood before matrimony. New data released by the Centers for Disease Control show that nearly four in 10 U.S. babies were born outside of marriage in 2005—a new high. These unwed moms aren't all teens—last year teen pregnancies fell to their lowest levels in 65 years. Some—like 44-year-old Mary Lee MacKichan, who used a gay friend as a sperm donor—are professional, older women who want to have babies before their biological clocks run out, but most are low-income twentysomethings. (Unwed births among 30- to 44-year-olds are up 17 percent since 1991; among those 25 to 29, they're up 30 percent.) And some 40 percent of those moms aren't going it alone—they're cohabiting, at least for a while. That's creating a major shift in what a generation of children are coming to call a family. "Marriage is still alive and well, but it has a lot of competition," says Wellesley College sociologist Rosanna Hertz, author of "Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice."
Ironically, sociologists say, marriage may be on the decline precisely because it has become so idealized. People expect more from marriage than they did a century ago, when it was mainly a practical arrangement to provide financial stability for women and a place to raise children. "Now it's not only love and romance but also self-fulfillment and personal growth," says Pamela Smock, professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. Since there's no longer much of a stigma attached to getting pregnant outside of marriage, many couples have replaced "shotgun weddings" with "shotgun cohabitations
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Perhaps because that was Accygirl's point?? It was HER, not I, that introduced the money issue. And it was YOU, not I, that brought up "security." Split hairs all you want, the two are inter-related.
No one's attempting to force you to go out with some E-1. Rest easy.
- shrugs shoulders -
If you want to persist in your silly fantasy that all the enlisted men in our military are dumb brutes thus placing themselves beneath you, by all means continue to do so. All I attempted to do in responding to your posts was point out the shallowness and falsity of your accusation that because a guy doesn't make 6 figures or has an MBA he's "low class." Perconcieved notions, such as yours, are however.
They maybe interrelated but not all encompassing.
When my husband and I were young and foolish, and before we got married, we lived together.
His parents had gotten divorced, and he never wanted to go through that. He thought living together first would help us decide if we should get married. I went along with him.
Thank God, we both wisened up and got married. We both wanted kids and we both wanted our kids to have married parents. I think my husband and I both think we were lucky to even stay together. (We've been married over 15 years.)
I think before we got married, neither of us were strong enough in our faith or had as much faith in the institution of marriage. I think our parents generation did not instill the importance of marriage on their kids.
I know my husband and I talk about how bad divorce is to our kids. We also talk about how important being married is.
I really hope our kids have a higher value of marriage when they are young adults than my husband and I did.
When I was a young working, single woman I had plenty of single women friends that wouldn't have anything to do with several of my male friends because these male friends didn't dance or didn't dress right. My male friends had great jobs as engineers, but they were a little nerdy.
Thank God, some women finally figured out these guys were gems and married a few of them, and they have made great husbands and dads.
However, several of them have stayed single. They have great jobs, own their homes, and made lots of money on stock. One of them loves the outdoors and is very adventurous (has even skydived). He still can't get dates.
I think there are lots of career women who are too picky and looking at superficial things in a man to date.
As we were raising our two children (themselves now in grad school,) we often had their friends over for dinner. They frequently said that our dinner conversations were very different from their homes. These young people were quite accommodating of our nerdiness because of our hospitality. They also knew where to come when they needed homework help they couldn't get at home... And come they did.
The more mature one gets, the the more one understands that geeks/nerds make valuable friends. We also make committed mates. We're "low maintenance" - especially if you indulge our love of gadgets once in a while....
It's about timing. You can't have children when you are older. I highly recommend having children before 30 because the chances of having miscarriages or fertility problems increases. (I had 3 micarriages before I had my first child at 31.)
If you decide to have children then do it in your late 20s early 30s and stay home with them when they are young. When they go to school, there is plenty of time to work and do your own thing.
Once you decide to have children, then you have to put their needs basically above your own (in most cases).
If you can't do this, then don't have children. Women should be respected if they chose not to have children. I think Condi Rice is a great example of this.
I think my greatest accomplishment is my 3 children. Two of them are gifted and one is special needs. It certainly is not boring. It's much more interesting than when I volunteered to teach in an inner city school, or when I worked writing software for a defense company (really boring).
I'm in my mid-40s now, and I can think about the next phase of my life. My kids don't need me when they are at school. I'm not going back to writing software, but I don't know what to get into. Plus, I have to be home by 3pm so that I can be home when my kids are home.
...And whom do YOU call when you have a computer problem?????
They are related. Look up some of the FReeper lore and read about "the rules" for Maureen Dowd threads.
I'm sure that there's Peace Corp volunteers, nurses, teachers, and police officers who are happy with their lives because they chose their profession and are highly trained in it.
There are also people who got sick of the rat race to the top and downshifted from the hot career track but still stayed within their original field.
However, I'm also sure that there's many factory workers, burger flippers, and Walmart cashiers who wish that they went to college...
Yes, and there are burned out MD's and lawyers wishing they'd had time to get to know their kids, or wondering why their wife had an affair.
What I do find unsexy is someonme willing to spend their lives in a dead end, minimum wage or near minimum wage job. It seems like unfortunately many of the single men out there are just such types of people...
The key question to my mind is if they *started out* that way, or gave up over other things; and for that matter, if they had the wherewithall to aspire to much more than that.
Tell you what, I'll trade you on that one; if you agree to hold it against trophy wives who trade on nothing more than good looks (lots of those in Scottsdale) when they could have barely made it to assistant fry chef if not for trading sex for a man's money.
I do agree with you that people shouldn't be "cogs" in the corporate machine though. It's very important that people switch jobs (and perhaps companies) at least every three years, which is why I'm applying to grad. school right now. It takes about a year to learn a job and a year to make your mark on it... So by the second year one should be looking for more opportunities... This makes you in charge of your career, not the corporation.
This is very much a function of *which* field you are in, which field is "hot" at the moment, and the general economy. Many of the electrical engineers who were hot stuff in the 80's are over the hill now, since they solved the basic problems business needed. Similarly, there is currently a great shortage of pharmacists, after an entire generation of female pharmacists dropped out of the field to do the mommy thing.
These things come and go in waves--even MBAs (middle managers) were dismissed in droves in the 1980's.
And I remember a time in which those who jumped jobs every year were viewed as "unstable" and passed over for plum assignments. Not the case now, but again, some things go in and out of fashion.
I think that unfortunately many posters on this board see women as no more than baby making machines... I find it horrible in this day and age that men in the U.S. would be that offended by the fact that women have a career.
Did you notice some of your fiercest detractors were women?
The problem is not that you choose a career; it is that you appear to be so cavalierly dismissing so many other things out of hand in order to chase that career; without even stopping to consider the *possibility* that you may be costing yourself other opportunities (possibly irrevocably) in the meantime.
...oh, and as for Fahrenheit 451. The reason I referred to it was not for the sake of marriage, but the incessant drumbeat of furious activity allowing no time for actual personality or reflection. Business can get like that too...
Cheers!
That's a good point; but it's a loaded question by zeroing in on eligible men. The men who did want a wife got snapped up. OK, some of them get chewed up and/or spit out later, but you are acting like the ones who are single are the only men in existence. :-)
Most of them want a wife, if they want to marry at all, who'll raise their mutual standard of living. And a lot of men want a DINK arrangement.
I mentioned this already in an earlier post...young couples have to compete against managerial / MBA dinks, people living beyond their means on credit, inflated housing prices, and high taxes.
This is not the "family friendly" economic situation which was around 50 or 60 year ago.
But on the other hand, the change from back then is a *societal* change; so perhaps society ought to steer back towards that direction for awhile.
Cheers!
...young couples have to compete against managerial / MBA dinks, people living beyond their means on credit, inflated housing prices, and high taxes.This is not the "family friendly" economic situation which was around 50 or 60 year ago.
You raise valid points. Every young couple needs to agree on a definition of "success." I think an very affluent lifestyle may come at a cost they may they later regret paying. Why not settle for a smaller home and more time with family? Do we really need everything Madison Avenue tells us we need? Do we really need it now?
I see too many young couples overextending themselves with debt and having to make choices they would rather not. Yet they seem to expect to have when newly married what it required their parents a lifetyme of work and prudent spending to accumulate.
That said, I think the proliferation of government spending has placed a tax burden on the family that is not good.
The whiskers family is not all the way there, but we are working on it.
Full Disclosure: Andrew "Don't forget it's still cheaper to have pasta and Pepsi at home" Tobias is pretty good too.
Cheers!
From the description, it sounds like both our families have been following many of their suggestions. There is always room for improvement...
Well don't leave us hangin'
What happened to the overly picky single women?
That's why they should be penalized in the marriage 'game':
They obviously don't want a man, they want a turkey-baster and a daycare provider for the spawn of the turkey-baster.
They're poisonous: after forsaking love, let their career and money comfort and love them...
Wow, I don't know what is more obnoxious, implying that eveything not top tier is Devry, or speaking of yourself in the third person. Either way, you're a piece of work.
It beats hardass executives who are never at home, never cook for their bastard husbands and put their work ahead of their kids.
Oh, your poor future husband....
But then, amidst all the liberated and modern young girl huff comes this: Because as a matter of evolution, girls don't want guys who make significantly less than them...
And with that (improper grammar and all), you join the ranks of the rest of us mortal women! LOL. There's hope for you, yet.
So what's the price of tea in China? Money provides "security" and if you don't got it, you're no good. Right Material Girl?
btw, looks like you and Rangel have something in common:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1744338/posts
But once you get that college degree and great job your kid is going to be raised by a nanny who didn't go to school and doesn't even speak english!
WAHAHAHAHA!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.