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Numbers Drop for the Married With Children (NUCLEAR family MELTDOWN)
washingtonpost.com ^ | Sunday, March 4, 2007 | By Blaine Harden, Washington Post Staff Writer

Posted on 03/03/2007 9:38:09 PM PST by carlo3b

Numbers Drop for the Married With Children
Institution Becoming The Choice of the Educated, Affluent

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 4, 2007; Page A03

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Punctuating a fundamental change in American family life, married couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four households -- a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census.

As marriage with children becomes an exception rather than the norm, social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent. The working class and the poor, meanwhile, increasingly steer away from marriage, while living together and bearing children out of wedlock.
 
"The culture is shifting, and marriage has almost become a luxury item, one that only the well educated, one that only the well educated and well paid are interested in," said Isabel V. Sawhill, an expert on marriage and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: abortion; children; cohabitation; demographics; families; family; gays; liberalism; marriage; media; moralabsolutes; morality; nea; plannedbarrenhood; population; values
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How proud our forefathers would be to see what fighting and dying in the battles for freedom have reaped.. Suddenly, with the greatest prosperity and opulence in the history of the world, the American Dream has become a figment of our imagination, and the life that we once scorned, test-tube babies, gay marriage, and bastard children, has become the norm.. I am becoming ashamed of my beloved country..
1 posted on 03/03/2007 9:38:16 PM PST by carlo3b
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To: carlo3b

Congratulations to the scumbag liberal Democrats.
Apparently, they are winning their war against traditional American culture.


2 posted on 03/03/2007 9:44:51 PM PST by Lancey Howard
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To: carlo3b

Conservatives and Christians need not worry that the selfish and egocentric aren't reproducing. I just had my 4th child and face daily the incredulity of a public taught to view with disdain parenthood. I think it is simple, those that reproduce will inherit the Earth the others shall pass into extinction. I consider it a matter of faith and as I have held onto that faith things have worked out.


3 posted on 03/03/2007 9:46:02 PM PST by Ma3lst0rm (At the end of the Younger Dryas period temperatures rose by 10 degrees in a less than a decade.)
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To: Jim Robinson; Bob J; christie; stanz; jellybean; Angelique; Howie; TwoStep; piasa; Exit148; ...
Pop culture FIZZLES family life..
Let your kids watch all the TV that they wish. Screw the School Board meetings, it's much more important to catch those American Idol shows.. If I had a dollar for every mother at the PTA meeting, that boasted to me that they never cook, I'd be rich.. Hell, they were the parents that at least went to the PTA meetings, only 4% of parents do that.. You should be ashamed of yourselves.. Conservatives indeed.. sheesh
4 posted on 03/03/2007 9:48:10 PM PST by carlo3b ("I find the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."--Thomas Jefferson)
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To: carlo3b

Marriage is now for the rich elites?

It's hard to tell if anything in the article resembles reality with the media as it is today. This could be just their dream of the future.

I do think that our culture is coming to resemble the Islamic culture. With men moving from woman to woman to create children but living their lives with other men.


5 posted on 03/03/2007 9:49:09 PM PST by donna (NMMFF! - No more moral free fall!)
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To: Lancey Howard

its the divorce laws. so long as a man must take the risks in marriage - the potential for financial ruin, the loss of his children, even when he does not initiate the divorce - that's a barrier to entering into marriage.


6 posted on 03/03/2007 9:49:11 PM PST by oceanview
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To: oceanview

Except that men passed those laws.


7 posted on 03/03/2007 9:50:57 PM PST by donna (NMMFF! - No more moral free fall!)
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To: carlo3b

And the radical islamists continue to multiply.


Sigh.


8 posted on 03/03/2007 9:50:59 PM PST by diamond6 (Everyone who is for abortion has been born. Ronald Reagan)
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To: carlo3b
"Punctuating a fundamental change in American family life, married couples with children now occupy fewer than one in every four households -- a share that has been slashed in half since 1960 and is the lowest ever recorded by the census."

But we have diversity. And it's our strength.

9 posted on 03/03/2007 9:52:17 PM PST by StormEye
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To: donna

yeah, male lawyers.


10 posted on 03/03/2007 9:52:24 PM PST by oceanview
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To: carlo3b

I think there is some (more or less deliberate) misinterpretation of statistics going on in analyses like this one. Baby boomers like Mr. Adler and me are the rat going through the anaconda. Our two girls are now 30 and 26 so that Mr. Adler and I now rate as a childless couple for the purposes of statistical calculations. The fact that we have no children in our home now is simply the result of our having aged and our daughters having grown up. Huge numbers of aging boomers simply skew the overall statistics as we always have and will till we die.


11 posted on 03/03/2007 9:53:51 PM PST by Irene Adler (')
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To: donna
It's hard to tell if anything in the article resembles reality with the media as it is today. This could be just their dream of the future.

I believe it.. I see the kids that flock to my home on weekends to get a home-cooked meal and watch a classic movie with my grandkids.. It was the same with my kids before they went to college, we were the place were the parents dumped their kids.. and I THANK GOD that I got to enjoy those great kids..

12 posted on 03/03/2007 9:55:44 PM PST by carlo3b ("I find the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."--Thomas Jefferson)
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To: carlo3b

Carlo...I love you...but you didn't read the story.

All it says is that, if you have a good income, you're pretty much likely to marry and have kids.

The negative quotes are from people like "Together, they earn less than $20,000 a year and are living with Roach's father. They cannot afford to live anywhere else."

The headline is sensationalized.


13 posted on 03/03/2007 9:56:06 PM PST by paulat (I'd rather vote for someone who CAN ACTUALLY BE ELECTED)
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To: carlo3b

In large part, the destruction of the nuclear family, is the root of all evil in any given society.


14 posted on 03/03/2007 9:56:36 PM PST by khnyny
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To: carlo3b
From the story:

College-educated women, whose numbers have risen sharply since 1980, often live with a partner and postpone marriage. But in most cases, they eventually marry and have children, and divorce at about half the rate of women who do not finish high school.

15 posted on 03/03/2007 9:57:53 PM PST by paulat (I'd rather vote for someone who CAN ACTUALLY BE ELECTED)
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To: carlo3b
I don't know if I buy into this. My wife and I no longer have children at home, but that is because they have families of their own somewhere else.

People live a lot longer these days, after the kids are grown and gone, and I really wonder how much this figured into their numbers.

16 posted on 03/03/2007 10:00:52 PM PST by SouthTexas (It's race time again!)
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To: carlo3b
social scientists say it is also becoming the self-selected province of the college-educated and the affluent.

Pseudo-affluent. Largely middle class people who loath their own kind and want to distinguish themselves as better... "Better" by using simple illusions, typically -- not by any real measure.

They used to be called "upward mobile", but now they just declare themselves "there" already, and naturally entitled to high position.

17 posted on 03/03/2007 10:01:16 PM PST by SteveMcKing
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To: paulat

I read the story, I read that the number of families that have a Dad, Mom, and kids has dropped by half since 1960.. Who cares what the grade level achieved and income is? I know that our friends are still marrying, be my country is sinking into the muck..


18 posted on 03/03/2007 10:01:42 PM PST by carlo3b ("I find the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."--Thomas Jefferson)
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To: Ma3lst0rm
I think it is simple, those that reproduce will inherit the Earth the others shall pass into extinction.

Not quite accurate, actually.

19 posted on 03/03/2007 10:02:30 PM PST by dr_lew
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To: oceanview

[its the divorce laws. so long as a man must take the risks in marriage - the potential for financial ruin, the loss of his children, even when he does not initiate the divorce - that's a barrier to entering into marriage.]


Nonsense, you just grow up, become a man, and pick the right woman.

Statistically, I would venture to say that there are far more men who abandon their wives and children, than vice versa.


20 posted on 03/03/2007 10:05:09 PM PST by khnyny
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