Posted on 11/26/2006 5:02:22 AM PST by 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 2005a new high. These unwed moms aren't all teenslast year teen pregnancies fell to their lowest levels in 65 years. Somelike 44-year-old Mary Lee MacKichan, who used a gay friend as a sperm donorare 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 alonethey'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
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Oho! So it's a good and necessary thing to cut back on your career and feminist corporate life for the good of your kids.
Like your parents did for you....
Why wouldn't you do that for your kids?
That's what we did....
I still remember a time in grad school when a rather mediocre professor who had a couple too many drinks at lunch berated all the grad students for not working hard enough. He felt we should all be in the lab to at least 1 a.m. About a week later, several of us were there at 2 a.m. and wanted to take a photo and post it on his door with the words, "we are here, where the (expletive deleted) are you?" That said, we really felt sorry for him - his daughter got married and he didn't realize she had a boyfriend. The prof was both arrogant and clueless about much of what truly mattered.
I believe it, but I was addressing the false choices our young and naive poster was championing.
Stay with the tour bus.
Precisely my point.
I call 'em like they are! ;-)
Working a forty hour work week is different from becoming a PTA mommy and baking cookies.
I'm a big fan of the Lean Cuisine T.V. dinners myself.
'Cuz y'know working a forty hour week and letting the illegal alien nanny raise your kids = GOOD
And becoming a PTA mommy and baking cookies = BAD
S'matter with you?!
Get your degree; kick ass at your profession; be a professional and make a squillion dollars, but please don't have kids.
The poor little buggers would suffer.
You're about 22-23 aren't you?
22 y/o girls.... The smartest creatures on the face of the earth. Man's laws; The laws of physics and even God's Laws don't apply to them--they know it all.
Just ask them....
This thread is just painful to read...
Still a wide race gap here. According to the CDC, from 2004, White out of wedlock birth rates were 24%. Blacks were 69%. Hispanics were 46%. Asians were the lowest at 15%.
Both of my grandmothers worked as well. My dad's family was quite poor; both grandma and grandpa worked as cleaning people. The older children looked after the younger ones.
I have no idea what my mom's mother did. I'll have to ask. But, as a family, they were middle class.
As a young woman you've realized that life is pretty darned tough. That money is important. And that you have certain standards for a man, a career and a lifestyle below which you are loathe to go willingly.
On this thread you've learned another important lesson. Smile prettily, be positive (cause boys like that in their gals!) and never, ever mention all that foolish stuff about careers and lifesyle again.
My 8 year old played football in one of these leagues. Well, he did until we yanked him out!
The amount of time the coaches insisted we devote to the team was ridiculous given the children's ages. Then, half of the kids didn't get to play. Once I saw that they planned to keep the kids to 2 1/2 hour practices every day, plus games on Saturday during the school year, I took my son out.
That was more football practice than my middle schooler had! Which, of course, was why my younger one wanted to play.
I enjoy intellectual pursuits, i.e. reading, foreign films, lectures, etc. This is different than saying I'm a Harvard professor.
So consuming other peoples' works makes you an intellectual?
No... That makes you a pseudo-intellectual.
Creating new things makes you an intellectual.
Thinking new things makes you an intellectual.
Becoming a new thing makes you an intellectual.
You haven't even paid the entrance fee to Intellectual-land....
In spite of it's trappings, an MBA is merely a high-level vocational degree. It is all concerned with the worries and narrow-mind of the shopkeeper.
It is the concrete world; not the abstract ideas of Science; Math; Medicine; Art; Politics or War.
You may become a highly successful businesswoman without ever having had an original idea....
At least the 'PTA Mom', the 'burger flipper', and the soldier you denigrate all create something new and they all make life better for other people.
In such they are Noble.
You spurn nobility for the narrow-mind of the bottom-line--for the worries of the shopkeeper.
and you consider yourself an intellectual.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.