Posted on 08/20/2008 8:35:12 PM PDT by Bushwacker777
"WASHINGTON - More women in their early 40s are childless, and those who are having children are having fewer than ever before, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In the last 30 years, the number of women age 40 to 44 with no children has doubled, from 10 percent to 20 percent. And those who are mothers have an average of 1.9 children each, more than one child fewer than women of the same age in 1976.""
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Encourage those of means to have children. Discourage (via social welfare policy) the poor from having children.
Well, I know Christian homeschoolers are having lots of kids. Religion tends to view children as blessings, so people of faith are the ones reproducing.
So when you read articles about how we will be mostly nonwhite in 40 or so years, remember the white ones left may be statistically more conservative. It’s interesting to think about.
The 50 million dead from abortion on demand since 1973, qualifies as a holocaust.
Seattle is supposedly becoming some childless city, but the past year, so many young married and a few single women at my company were pregnant, it was just amazing. Baby boom was going on bigtime.
Part of the problem is its hard to find decent family-minded guys.
A baby-boom is just beginning.
Polygamy the solution to our extinction?
It’s a concern, but you can’t just “make” people have kids either. It’s not easily solved.
Maybe if we weren’t taxed to death we could afford to have kids before our ovaries rotted out.
LQ
pssh I would rather we go extinct hehe.
I think part of the delaying children till you are 60 thing is material abundance. If you have all this cool stuff to buy people will tend to want to put off having kids as it might interfere with the cool stuff buying.
My son is a hardworking, totally decent, conservative family guy. He wants lots of kids, and to homeschool them. But he’s been having trouble finding someone because, frankly, in today’s atmosphere he’s distrustful of women.
So many have kids, then want a divorce because they “changed their mind”. Even Christians. Then men are stuck with their hearts and pocketbooks torn apart raising their own children from afar. The problem is, so many people nowadays don’t understand the commitment that marriage is.
They think it’s hearts and flowers. But its more commitment to the relationship than anything else. He won’t jump in lightly.
Well plenty of men run off too. The laws protect mothers and kids though which I think is fair.
That is pretty awful she ran off with a lesbian sheesh. People are nuts. Sometimes I am not sure if I could ever trust anyone 100 percent.
You hit the nail on the head and it's not rocket science.
I ended up not having kids (educated middle class white) as it was just too expensive...while at the same time watched a government at the local and federal level encourage the bottom feeders on welfare to have more and more kids. When you see that 16 year old Hispanic girl pushing a baby stroller with two other young ones walking along side who do you think is paying for the pre-natal...natal and health care? Certainly not her 17 year old boyfriend....
Why would any sane family minded male of good income destroy himself financially by marrying and having children, when his wife could on a whim, run off with a lesbian, get half the assets and alimony, after 25 years of marriage and two children with him? (that’s a true story about what happened to my best friends father)
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Um, because he’s family minded?
Because if you don’t take a chance on that, what is worth taking a chance on?
Birth rates are dropping esp in the developed world as incomes and wealth increases because the opportunity costs of having children increases. Not only the direct financial costs but what you give up having children. When you have young kids you can forget about travel, spontaneous nights on the town, cultural events, etc. There are women and couples who do not want to give up that lifestyle for children.
You are absolutely correct. A decent family minded guy can marry and come home from bringing in the bacon...find his wife in his bed with the pool boy Hot Balls Gonzales...then she can divorce him ..take the kids...and half of everything he has worked for....and he ends up paying HER child support and alimony. And women or society wonder why men don't want to get married and have a family.
Signed: Never marry again in So Cal
Raising kids is hard work and makes demands on your time and energy like almost nothing else. People today are way more self-involved and narcissistic than in the past, and they simply don't want to commit to that hard work and lost time.
When you have young kids you can forget about travel, spontaneous nights on the town, cultural events, etc. There are women and couples who do not want to give up that lifestyle for children.
True. A big question would be as to why people don’t view children as a blessing, and why nights out on the town are more important to them than having children. Probably it comes back to values, what people value as the important things in life.
If a society has critical masses of people who do not want children, then that society will change. Some of those who are best able and have the most to contribute to society, and the most to contribute to their children’s upbringing, are the ones who choose not to have children.
I'd rather take a chance on a good mutual plan...or well-thought-out investments....
That's is exactly what is happening....
YEah that is what I think. People say ‘its too expensive’ but alot of things people buy and don’t really need are expensive.
I would rather have a flesh and blood family than a plasma screen tv and a brand new hummer. :)
Part of this phenomenon is economics, but frankly, I think a large part is narcissism.
Raising kids is hard work and makes demands on your time and energy like almost nothing else. People today are way more self-involved and narcissistic than in the past, and they simply don’t want to commit to that hard work and lost time.
I THINK YOU HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD HERE.
People don’t want to be tied down to raising the children. They value things other than settled family life with kids. The time and energy required by children is large, let’s be honest about that. But giving that care and love and attention to your children is what parenthood has always been like. Our parents did that for all of us.
There are many reasons we could all cite that contribute. Part of it is the narcissism. Part of it is the whole women’s movement, in which today’s brightest college educated young women don’t think about having children or family as an important priority.
This is a tremendous social change that has taken place. The collective individual choices that people have made in this area have gotten us to where we are today. We can all decide if this is a good change or a bad change, or if it is of no consequence to society as a whole.
That’s great if your wife doesn’t run off with your best friend and take the kids ..most of your paycheck...and Hummer with her...;o)
There’s something unsaid in the MSNBC article (it _may_ be in the raw data, but I didn’t click through to the census bureau report to check).
That is, the race and ethnicity of those women choosing NOT to have children. By and large, it is women of Euro-ancestry who are abandoning motherhood. There is no shortage of pregnant Hispanic women, or pregnant Islamic women.
Someone posted that excessive taxation might be a cause of the birth dearth. I don’t really think that taxes, per se, have much to do with it at all. I wouldn’t be surprised that as we work our way up the income/education ladder, we’d discover that those Euro-heritage-women at the highest income and educational levels are having the least number of children. Nevertheless, they can well-afford the “cost of children” with their incomes, even when taxation is considered. It’s _something else_ that is preventing them from “choosing children”.
My explanation, probably oversimplified: they don’t want to be bothered. For today’s working women who consider themselves to be “the equals of men”, children are more trouble than they’re worth. With contraception more reliable today than ever, coupled with easy termination of unwanted pregnancies, these women are practicing what they preach.
I don’t see any reversal to this trend among the Euro-Americans. It’s almost like they are consigning themselves to cultural/racial extinction.
Actually, there _is_ one way it _might_ be reversed: that is, to outlaw both birth control and abortion, and by so doing, take away a woman’s _choice_ in her natural role of reproduction and nuture. But that ain’t gonna happen.
Of course, the trend in Europe for Caucasian/Christian women is even worse than in the United States.
Might what happened to the passenger pigeons and buffalo, happen to US?
- John
I’d rather take a chance on a good mutual plan...or well-thought-out investments....
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He who dies with the most toys - or $ - still dies...
You are still a father.
There are women who would not run off with anyone named ‘hot balls gonzales’ lol. Me for instance.
The trouble is finding people with matching characters in this jungle.
I think its good to retain a suspicious nature.
I don't blame anyone - who wants to get married and then cleaned out.
Muslims on the other hand don't have "no fault divorce"
Bide your time.
LOL! You make two good points. I was in a humorous way pointing to the problem with no-fault divorce. You have a contract that is legal in every way except responsibility. You can violate the contract and still get your share of the spoils (and more if you are female) if the union fails. A side bar is a society that still regards men as predators and women as victims....in spite of talk of equality.
Pool boy Hot Balls Gonzales........thanks for my first belly laugh of the day.
He who pops out kids...still dies.
The definition of narcissisism is the driving need to manufacture little versions of oneself...;o)
Yep, the anecdotal evidence is that there are lots of minority baby mamas out there.
Isn't the pool boy always named Hot Balls Gonzalez???..LOL!
But pool boy Hot Balls Gonzales.....that's funny, I don't care who you are!
If you visit the waiting room in any clinic in So Cal (the ones that didn't go bankrupt)...guess who you see in the greatest numbers with little ones needing care? And guess who's paying for that?
Off the top of my head I would peg men as more likely to cheat within marriage.
I don’t know how correct that assumption is though.
I also assume the divorce laws were intended to prevent a man from having a bunch of kids and then ditching the family financially for ‘greener pastures’.
It probably is harder for women than men..even today. I don’t think the footing will ever truly be equal.
Some women just don’t meet the right man until it’s too late. My brother and my sister-in-law met when she was 42 and got married about a year and a half later. They are extremely happy, BTW—she is an angel and they adore each other. But by that time it turned out she was getting too old and could not have children. She didn’t drag her feet on finding a guy; she’d had previous dating relationships but the guys didn’t happen to fall in love with her. You can make people fall in love with you. I’m just glad for my brother’s sake that he found her, but the sad fact is that now he’s not going to have children and contribute to the gene pool.
45 million US babies murdered since 1973 Roe v. Wade.
No wonder liberals demand illegal aliens to be their slaves, in order to replenish a generation of assassinated Americans.
Statistics are showing it is more equal.
Of the divorces I know of close to me...in 3 out of four it was the woman who cheated...(including my own). The problem is (the predator thing again) when I started dating again and told women I met what happened, the common response was : "well what did you do to her?"
As a confirmed bachelor friend says: "It's always the man's fault"....
Can't argue with that....
When women stopped waiting for marriage to engage in sex, they gave away their power.
Hmm. I think if it is obvious to you that the person you are dating is not in love with you you should just move on and not waste your time (unless you arent seriously into the marriage baby idea and don’t mind just doing whatever lol)
I am pretty seriously gung-ho on the marriage n babies idea hehe. I don’t really try and hide it either ^_^
Muslims on the other hand don’t have “no fault divorce”
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Sure they do. “I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you.”
For the men.
That happens too. Pretty much my story too. Always wanted kids but made the poor choice to marry a woman who couldn't keep her panties up when I wasn't around. I'm 57 now and at some point just quit considering it. And it sure wasn't because of lack of possibilities! Nice girls but no keepers.
How about the need to continue your family, your culture, your faith?
And yes, your genes. That’s not narcissism, that’s just the genes talking.
My brother and his wife are trying to adopt. They are unable to have children of their own.
You could say that...but women became more like men in more ways than that...
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