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
WOW! I have never heard of a marriage destroying a life. It has been my experience that the person did not pick their life partner very well and ended up in a mess.
and some people get blindsided.
As for the s it was a typo. I have tried to improve my typing, but unfortunately, I still make typos, particularly when I use my lap top.
Sounds like a good plan.
Maybe you can answer this question for me tomorrow.
Why would you address a post to me AND yourself?
I'm not particularly bothered by your soi-disant magnanimity.
Then you took a government subsidy for your kids. I don't care if you 'need every penny,' so does everyone else. That you think you need it more don't mean squat, Pharisee. The welfare queens think they need it more, too.
Did you take free schooling for them?"No. With the exception of public school, I've paid for day care and pre-K when I needed it without using any government program. And we do not participate in the free lunch program either."
Oh, good answer...as if in saying no you completely negate the fact that you ARE taking free schooling. That you paid for day care and pre-K and lunch just means you're carrying the load you ought to be carrying. Meanwhile, you gleefully send your kids to school on the taxpayer's dime.
"Nope. I go to the second-hand bookstore to purchase books for my kids. And don't folks without kids go to the library too? What a stupid point."
When someone like you is oblivious to the fact that libraries and public schools are primarily handouts to families, I suppose everything that might inundate your sanctimonious claim to be "not signed up with any kind of government assistance" is 'stupid.' You cash a check every day, just as Uncle Sam steals from our paychecks every day to support you and yours.
My kids go to our private community park which is maintained through association fees since it is not county-owned.
But I bet your 'private community park' is there because parks aren't taxed, even though they are a benefit to only neighborhood families. They tax lands used in exactly the same way on private lands, but government has been pressured by developers to give them credits for setting aside faux "parkland," another subsidy for development that will primarily benefit who? Families like yours.
And once again, childless people use those parks too.
Yep, I bet lots of children use those parks every day, and almost none of them have kids. But to make your anecdotal observation more obvious--I bet there are probably ten or fifteen people that use the high school football field for non-athletic events every year. That doesn't mean the public should be subsidizing high school football fields.
"How about I take it to the next level and tell you that you are a jerk who should have stayed in exile. OH! By the way, how does it feel to support a party that never ever wins? Seems like it's made you a wee lil' bit bitter. Walk a mile in my shoes before you start talking. You have proven yourself to be an ignorant fool."
Ooooh, I'll cry myself to sleep over that. When you can't defend your chompin' at the gummint tit, you pull out the childish insults. The only demonstration in ignorance here is 'stupid' l'il you. Families are subsidized in myriad ways, as was the point above. And your holier-than-thou comments to GuvShrinker notwithstanding, you ARE signed up with government assistance. You're just unhappy about not being able to get more by keeping even more of your money. And you're even unhappier when you get called on it. Typical pro-government "conservative"--you're just for the stuff that benefits you.
And one more thing--I support the ideals of the LP in a lot of ways. But I've always voted GOP. It's people like YOU that make it more likely that a pork-loving GOP Congress will get elected. That makes it ever more likely that Americans will vote differently next time, and then your glee at watching libertarians and fiscal conservatives unhappy at the huge imposition of government into American lives and failure of the GOP to do squat about it, will be followed by your own presence in the barrel--you big-government 'conservatives' wail and gnash your teeth, too, when you're taxed at ever higher levels for government you don't like.
---Actually, not only did I drive on a public road, I went to work in a government building. However, since I did it in another country, I felt a lot better about it than I bet you do.
"I've known Ruthy for three years. And I know a lot more about her personal story than you'll ever be privileged to know. She works her backside off to provide for her family. And she does it without government handouts."
---Once again, you ignore the fact that government handouts are not only in the form of welfare and AFDC. Fools like you, who think that gummint money only comes in a check, are the reason Congress gets away with tinkering with the tax code instead of ending the income tax altogether.
"If you knew how she has personally fought for the cause of freedom in this country you would bow in awe."
---Someone as simultaneously clueless and pious as the two of you? Yeah, right. Don Quixote ain't got nothin' on y'all. You've already demonstrated you don't understand the point raised above, which is that claiming you've escaped being a gummint beneficiary if you have kids is for a 'low-income' person an unlikely statement at best. I sincerely doubt your evaluation of what constitues 'freedom-fighting.'
Wow. Took you a whole day and a half to think up that response that was more insults than debate.
In the five and a half years that I have been a member of this forum, I've never encountered the level of rudeness and disrespect that I have seen lately. And you simply exemplify it.
Don't post to me anymore. You're simply not worth the time.
Have a nice "government-free" life.
I'm not gonna say I completely followed your statement, but the fact of the matter is that it's just fine to be for limited government and utilize government services, it's about the only chance you're going to get to even with the tax structure as it stands, and I will not begin to say otherwise. Where I have expended vitriol here is on the folks who attacked GS, who only pointed out that piety inasmuch as taking government funds is concerned is unlikely for anyone, and certainly unlikely for someone with children at the income level Ms. Dupree described. GS's comments were replied to vituperatively by someone who didn't like hearing the truth, and while GS can ably defend herself, posters here have every right to point out hypocrites when they see `em.
"Convenient conservatives make me ill."
Me, too. Which is why I don't like hearing people claim sainthood when they're sinners like the rest of us. I don't mind a sinner confessing, but I hate a Pharisee touting his own piety.
Well, some of us work for a living. Sorry I can't sit with my subsidized rugrats at my feet and claim to be the embodiment of all things conservative at your leisure, but I earn a paycheck at a job where 18 hour workdays aren't out of the range of possibility. Sorry I didn't respond on your gummint-paid-for timetable.
In the five and a half years that I have been a member of this forum, I've never encountered the level of rudeness and disrespect that I have seen lately. And you simply exemplify it. Don't post to me anymore. You're simply not worth the time. Have a nice "government-free" life."
As usual, you wear your sanctimonious nature on your sleeve. When you are so dense as to miss the obvious point GS made, that claiming virtue in a lack of receipt of government largesse when you likely receive in the tens of thousands of such every year is sheer stupidity at best and hypocrisy at worst, I don't feel my time is particularly productively used posting to YOU. You took GS's comments as insult, when they weren't. On the other hand, some of mine were, but you certainly deserved them for your snippy little retort, and you fail entirely to respond to those comments that weren't because you CAN'T. Not because they were all insults--but because those that weren't were so on the mark that you cannot respond to them. I'm sorry it offends you so to have your own sinning pointed out, but don't run with the big dogs if you don't like gettin' bit, puppy, and don't try to beatify yourself if you can't handle listening to the devil's advocate.
If you take your comments to their extreme, YOU are a 'welfare queen' too, if you use any government services.
There, how do you like it?
I don't even know what you are even talking about, but your rudeness comes through loud and clear. You are making it your primary message if that means anything to you. And, fwiw, your bad behavior is making libertarians look bad too. Which is a shame.
You're a moron AND a jerk. Whatever country you're in, I hope they keep you.
Your assinine comments don't deserve my time to respond point by point.
So, I'll just flush and send you on your way with the rest of the crap.
Well said!
Thanks. It needed sayin'.
Daggone - I was hoping to avoid having to revisit this thread - now I see I do.............
Because I was tired and forgot to double check my post.
Works for me, particularly since I am not bothered by anything you have to say.
I suggest you stay in exile
Who the heck do you think you are to speak to any of us the way you have?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you said you worked in another country.....
If I am wrong I will offer my apologies, I expect you will be doing so just as quickly.
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