When I am in some towns - where the young people are mostly Hispanic now, and the white poeple are older with families grown and gone - I see many pregnant young women, bellies displayed in tight T-shirts, pushing a stroller and a child or two holding on to that.
Another town, with a large ultra-orthodox Jewish population - mothers stand at one corner with a flock of little girls, waiting for the school bus, the fathers on the other corner with the boys. The pregnant bellies are concealed more modestly, but the women have a child every year or two, starting before they are twenty years old.
I live in a town where East Indians and Chinese have two children apiece, and white families of Christian origin can have as many as four without raising eyebrows, but this is a place where upper middle-class people come to have children. There are so many people who wouldn’t be caught dead out here in the ‘burbs - the city has so much to offer, except making it easy to raise children.
When I went to my twentieth high school reunion, about a third of the women had not had a child. Some have since had a late baby, but not many.
The future belongs to those who show up - I tried, but I fear my children will find themselves out-numbered.
Really, that is sad to say 20.
I was married a little after 10 to my wife, but then again, my parents were the kind that wanted me to get independent and live out on my own, so looking back, that was a good thing.
In the Christian culture where my children and their friends were raised all are pregnant with the oldest girl having seven children and most working on their second, most looking at 4 to 6 kids. So they are pumping it out as a result of the young adults groups at the churches.