Posted on 09/15/2005 9:28:57 AM PDT by qam1
THE Australian family is under attack: not from an evil outside force intent on destroying a wholesome way of life, but from a none-too-subtle shift in values between generations.
Whereas the boomers were great supporters of mum, dad and the kids, later generations of Xers and now Ys are clearly less enamoured with family life, at least in youth. If there is a place for the traditional nuclear family in modern Australia it has been relegated to the late 30s and early 40s wasteland.
In 1991, 41 per cent of all Australian households featured a traditional nuclear family. This proportion would have exceeded 50 per cent in the 1960s. In this early manifestation of the traditional family, "the kids" numbered four and upwards.
Not like today: families have slimmed to two kids at best; a single child is common.
There is now a whole generation of Ys, and increasingly of Zs, growing up as lone kids in suburban houses. There are no brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles or aunties. These kids are quite alone.
The role of the family changed dramatically in the 90s. By 2001 only 33 per cent of all Australian households contained a traditional-styled family. In one devastating decade the family yielded 8 percentage points of market share to other, flashier, trendier, sexier households such as singles and couples.
Gen Xers didn't want to be stuck with a permanent partner and kids. They wanted to flit from relationship to relationship, job to job, home to apartment and then back to home, or from Australia to London and back.
Xers wanted to "discover themselves"; doing the daggy family thing just didn't sit well with Xer's plans for their 20s. Xers are incredulous at the suggestion they should pair up, bunker down and reproduce by 25.
"This is a no-brainer, right? The choice is either the pursuit of a cosmopolitan and funky 20- something lifestyle or spending this time cleaning up after a two-year-old? And the upside of the second choice is what exactly?"
Well, my dear little Xers, the upside of having kids in your 20s is that you grow as a person; you discover a wonderful sense of fulfilment in caring for and raising a well adjusted child who depends on you for everything.
"Bernard, please stop it. I can't take it any more. My sides are hurting. Tell me the real reason why we should forgo earning an income and having a good time in our 20s to have children.
"You mean that's it? That was for real? Look, if previous generations were dumb enough to waste their youth doing the kid thing, so be it. But don't lay any guilt trip on us just because we are exercising options that others were too stupid to grasp. And if I wanted a wonderful sense of fulfilment, then I'd go shopping."
And so the family shrivels.
By 2011 the traditional nuclear family will make up barely 28 per cent of all Australian households.
Singles and couples will account for 28 per cent of households. By the end of this decade the traditional nuclear family will no longer be the dominant social arrangement within Australia.
This is a very different world to the childhood of boomers 40 years earlier. In that world the family ruled. The family was reflected positively on television rather than in dysfunctional parody.
A suburban three-bedroom lair was designed specifically for families. No-one questioned the logic or the sanctity of the 1960s family.
The family is projected to continue on its current downward trajectory to make up just 24 per cent of all households by 2031. Single person households at this time are expected to make up 31 per cent of households.
What will Australia look like in 2031 when almost one in three households contains a single person? And this is not the young, sexy 20-something single that blossomed in the 1990s. No, the burgeoning market for singles during the 2020s will comprise sad old lonely baby boomers whose partner has died.
If we accept that there was a cultural impact from the baby boom in the 1950s that shaped consumer demand for 50 years, then we must also accept the confronting fact that there will be a "baby bust" 70 years later in the 2020s. The former delivered and deified the family; the latter will deliver a fatal blow to a social institution wounded by the shifting values of Xers and Ys 30 years earlier.
No need for sporting fields in Australian suburbia in the 2020s, but there will be a need for social and religious clubs to stem isolation within the burbs. It is an odd fact that as Australians get older and closer to death they also get closer to God. The 2020s will see a rise in religious fervour.
The bottom line is that the family is in transition, downwards. It is little wonder that political institutions are rallying behind its demise. The stark and brutal assessment is that within half a century we will have shifted from a situation where traditional families accounted for one in two households to one in four.
There will never be another decade like the 1990s when families conceded 8 percentage points in market share. After all, if we did this in the 2020s, then by the end of that decade traditional families would make up barely 17 per cent of all households. And at that level, you would have to question the basis upon which we as a nation bring up our kids. I don't think the Australian nation would ever be happy to have the majority of our children brought up in a social institution that does not contain a mother and a father living in cohabitation.
If these are our values, then the attack on the family that started in earnest in the 1990s must slow down and grind to a halt in the 2020s. Such a shift will slow down the rate of household formation and, combined with the dying off of the baby boomers in this decade, will lead to a severe slowdown in the demand for residential property in the 2020s.
As a consequence, I reckon the property industry has one, perhaps two, boom periods to run before it hits the wall at some stage during the 2020s.
Bernard Salt is a partner with KPMG
bsalt@kpmg.com.au
Uh OH - I had a similar response - it was not met very graciously.
Moral Absolutes Ping.
Get rid of the family and get rid of human civilization. Or that which makes it human and civilized.* It's that simple.
Freepmail me if you want on/off this pinglist.
*Disagree? Take a look at what happened in NO after the 'cane. Note that among black people in the US, approximately 80 (yes, eighty percent) of babies are born to mothers and fathers who are NOT married (to each other). Illegitimate. Destruction of families causes destroyed individuals.
Absurd. Immigrant families are the largest growing segment of housing buyers. And they are having tons of babies while white GenX'ers are having abortions. Those GenX'ers will spend their lonely, divorced retirements childless and alone, full of regrets, while they also lose political and economic influence to the immigrant groups that replace them. Demographics is power. The idiots quoted in this article will simply disappear. They are not part of the future.
I was just shy of 38 and my husband was 43 when our daughter was born...........
Thank you ladies.
You are 2 FReepers that I have always adored. :-D
Likewise, my FRiend.
Until the immigrant groups adapt the same childbearing patterns of the natives. That's true for second generation immigrants in the US.
Ruthy meet Gabz. Gabz meet Ruthy.
Homeschooling is not for everyone. And for many public schools are a necessity. I'm fortunate enough that I live in a county with an outstanding public school system.
You do what's the best for your family. Homeschooling works for some. Not for others.
It's just that simple. And anyone who doesn't see that should have to stick their nose in a circle on the chalkboard.
"the boomers were great supporters of mum, dad and the kids"
Boy, Australia must be VASTLY different from USuns!
I don't think my comment to you was any more condescending than your comment to AdamSelene235 was. People with six figure incomes and no children pay a boatload in taxes, a good chunk of which goes to public schools for other people's children. Your comment to him that "You must have a lot of expenses" followed by boasting about all you do on less than $40,000 a year, sounded pretty snide, considering that he IS paying a good chunk of change to subsidize your public-schooled child. I commend you for not clawing even more out of taxpayer funds, but it's intellectually dishonest to claim to be self-supporting when you are availing yourself of more taxpayer-funded services than you pay for.
There are lots of arrangements that work. Grandparents living with and helping raise their unmarried adult children's children is one. I know of a a pair of identical twin women, both physicians, who have adopted two little girls, and have a nice stable financially self-supporting family, so sibling-based families can obviously work. And single parents who achieve real financial security before having children, can do fine too, either living on their own, or sharing housing and childcare with one or more other single parents (or single non-parents). Frankly, I think that relationships that are NOT based on romantic love are inherently more stable than those which are.
My father was quite alright, and there is nothing about his work that caused any dysfunction -- in my estimation he did a pretty good job actually. If there was a division of loyalty, he managed it pretty well such that it was kept below the noise floor from my perspective. Your presumption is incorrect.
This would probably be true if one has lived alone most of their life, but there is an increasingly large segment of the population under 40 that has lived with non-relative roommates a significant portion of their lives (myself included). In some parts of the country, this is almost normal. Originally driven by economic realities, it has flourished because it creates a de facto family for people who either do not live close to their biological families or aren't psychologically/emotionally close to their biological families.
"Those GenX'ers will spend their lonely, divorced retirements childless and alone, full of regrets, while they also lose political and economic influence to the immigrant groups that replace them. Demographics is power. The idiots quoted in this article will simply disappear. They are not part of the future."
Hear, hear. And that goes too, sadly, for many of the posters on this thread. Too many libertarians on FR these days!
Ah, so now "alternative" relationships are even preferable to traditional ones. Gotcha. That's all I needed to know right there.
Unfortunately, it is unambiguously almost the worst time by most other important metrics. Our environment is evolving faster than our biology.
You probably didn't even figure the problem of parents on taxpayer-funded welfare into your neat little equation.
Lots. Back of the envelope, about 80% of the atheists I know (and being where I am, I know many) are married. However, less than half of those have children, though a few of those have several children.
As a general observation, their marriages seem to do pretty well actually, though most took at least a few years before getting married in the first place.
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