First Comes Junior In a Baby Carriage (4 in 10 Births by Single Moms)

MSNBC Newsweak ^ | 6 Dece,ber 2--6 | Debra Rosenberg and Pat Wingert

[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

[luckystarmom]

If you still decide that you want a child and you are single, I have one suggestion: adopt. Instead of bringing a baby into a 1 parent household, you would be providing a parent to a child who doesn't have one. It's a win-win situation.

[Kaylee Frye]

Wow, what a sad statement... Here I am, a female college-educated programmer and all I can think about constantly is staying home and having children. But I guess I'm just submissive and uneducated....

[luckystarmom]

I cooked pot roast last week. It's really easy, and you can do most of the work beforehand. I also cooked pot roasts when I was a single working woman. I actually cooked more when I was a single working woman. I don't have as much time now that I have 3 kids.

[Campion]

That ideal is something that I do despise as it significantly limits women's intellectual self-worth. The idea that men would demand that women actually stay in the kitchen and that this idea was accepted by society as okay is abhorrent to me.

Did I forget to mention your obvious, in-your-face anger?

[JenB]

Hi fellow female college educated programmer. Isn't it sad to be such a repressed and brainwashed little feminist robot that we think there's something better than the rat race waiting for us?

[Jotmo]

Hi fellow female college educated programmer. Isn't it sad to be such a repressed and brainwashed little feminist robot that we think there's something better than the rat race waiting for us?

Indeed. You need to attend some NOW meetings to get your head straight.

If I'm reading this thread correctly, you're being oppressed by patriarchal societal norms, but you're to stupid to know it.

I could be wrong though. I have no MBA, and I'm just a stupid engineer.

[Dianna]

I said, "Gee, when I forget to defrost something, I tell my husband, 'Honey, I forgot to defrost something for dinner', and within twenty minutes or so I'm sitting in a restaurant."

Is it pitiful if I admit that your experience right here is about 50% of the reason why I went back to work? LOL!

We've spent so long looking at the cost of everything, and debating which one of the parents were going to go to the movies, or the circus because it just costs so doggone much. I want my whole paycheck (minus a reasonable savings) to pay for fun!

I want for all of us to go to the movies together more than once per year. I want to go to a nice restaurant for no more reason than I feel like it! I want vacations.

We're getting there!

[linda_22003]

Especially since the "demand" didn't work all that well then, and certainly doesn't work now.

[linda_22003]

Suze Orman says, "Money is coined liberty".

[Campion]

If it weren't for my cooking, my wife would survive on (canned) soup and (cold) sandwiches. :-)

I can say this because I know she'll never see it. [ducks]

[linda_22003]

See? Wanting someone else to cook doesn't always mean it will happen. ;)

[Campion]

Well, it worked for my wife! ;-)

[Kaylee Frye]

Hi again. :) You and I seem to show up in a lot of the same places. ;) :D

Yes, I find it very sad that many women feel they must constantly obsess over their careers and never consider staying at home being simply a wife and mother. But, you know, if it makes them happy, that's wonderful.

I just wish people wouldn't paint with a broad brush to stereotype all SAHMs at uneducated yes-women. But, truly, do we care what other people think of us? The opinions that matter most to me are mine and my husband's opinions.

[JenB]

Oh, I just wander everywhere but homeschooling and social threads like this tend to catch my attention.

I started a new job today and I didn't thaw anything for dinner so my hubby and I will be eating tv dinners after karate. I don't mind too much though, I'll make something really good tomorrow to make up. This job is going to be somewhat fun and pay well and look great on a resume but fulfill me? You've got to be joking.

I'm intelligent and my husband respects that - he's not going to start thinking of me as a doormat as soon as I have kids. That would be stupid. What sort of man would want his kids raised by an idiot, anyway? Well, I guess if your choices are angry feminist career woman or ditzy housewife you might have to settle but there are plenty of us level-headed women who see the world in more than black and white.

[Accygirl]

It's a metaphor for a society as a whole that was very repressive toward women (i.e. the steretypical T.V. housewife in heels cooking her husband dinner). The only thing that a middle-class women during the 1950s could do was cook and clean for her husband and children. If she even received a college degree (very unlikely as the percentage of women who went to college remained flat while the percentage of men attending it spiked during the 50s), she couldn't get a job outside the house. There were also no laws protecting women from workplace harassment and employment discrimination, so it was legal to hire a man over an equally qualified woman just because he was a man.

[skepsel]

The Marxist term was "false consciousness" and the NOW types liked to engage in "consciousness raising" to overcome it.
One wonders why the 60s feminists felt compelled to use Marxist terminology.
Could be most of the leaders were closet Marxists seeing themselves as the revolutionary vanguard possessing what Thomas Sowell termed the Vision of the Annointed.

[Night Hides Not]

Frankly, I think that many of those kids do the activities for their parents, not because the kids want to. Kids would be more happy if they were able to play a pick-up game of basketball or dance around their rooms rather than having to go to an organized activity. Organized activities are important in high school as college want to admit students passionate about something, but not before then.

You may be correct, but let me clue you in to the real world, at least as I know it.

I have a niece in first grade taking two dance lessons a week, because she wants to follow in my daughter's footsteps, and be a "Coppell Lariette". The drill team competes in national competitions every year, and the competition to make the team is fierce! 75% of the young ladies on the team have been in dance lessons since they were in pre-kinder.

When it comes to sports, ANY sport, the kids who make the team normally have been playing in organized leagues from age 7 or 8. For baseball and hockey, the choices are more pronounced: elite players sometimes have to choose between their HS team, or their (elite) traveling league.

During my son's HS career, he's played trumpet in the band. Their travels have included trips to Dublin, Ireland, London, San Antonio (several times), Corpus Christi, and they'll perform in Washington, DC in April.

Frankly, I think that many of those kids do the activities for their parents, not because the kids want to.

Accygirl, I strongly recommend that you make a trip to Texas during football season. The pomp and pageantry on Friday nights might dispel you of that notion: the football teams, the bands, the color guards, the drill teams, the cheerleaders.

Add to that the parents who cheer their sons and daughters on, and the younger kids who aspire to be part of the fun on Friday nights. It's a positive kind of peer pressure that propels these young men and women, instead of merely doing it to please Mom & Dad.

[Accygirl]

I don't want someone who chooses as their job to be a burger flipper for the rest of their lives nor do I want my child to grow up thinking that that sort of career path is okay. Men like that aren't good role models for children. I do believe that a person's motivation and desire to do something with their lives should be the top thing that one looks for in a marriage. For many women, especially career women, it is the top criteria. However, too many guys still seem fixated on a trophy wife or 1950s sitcom wife...

Moreover, what the hell would I have in common with a guy who flips burgers for a living... Exactly nothing. I enjoy going to museums and concerts and other intellectual pursuits. I don't think that someone who flips burgers for a living would enjoy these things.

[marajade]

There are other components in relation to the security besides money. Get a clue.

[Accygirl]

"When it comes to sports, ANY sport, the kids who make the team normally have been playing in organized leagues from age 7 or 8. For baseball and hockey, the choices are more pronounced: elite players sometimes have to choose between their HS team, or their (elite) traveling league. "

Very few kids have this sort of talent; however, parents still tend to over-schedule them. Many of my peers had notebooks full of the gazillion lessons that they took. It was mainly for the parents' benefits not theirs. Kids didn't like going to any of the activities but did so to please their moms.

I was only involved in perhaps one activity when I was growing up (girl scouts when I was younger and band when I was in junior high) and perhaps a few lessons during the summer. I wasn't really good in dance, sports, or band, so I didn't keep any of these up for more than a few years.

"Add to that the parents who cheer their sons and daughters on, and the younger kids who aspire to be part of the fun on Friday nights. It's a positive kind of peer pressure that propels these young men and women, instead of merely doing it to please Mom & Dad."

I read "Friday Night Lights" which dispels the notion that high school football in Texas is just a "fun Friday night activity." http://www.amazon.com/Friday-Night-Lights-Town-Dream/dp/0306809907/sr=8-2/qid=1164670345/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-8411897-4737423?ie=UTF8&s=books