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Too many members of generation X go childless as they perpetuate a youthful lifestyle of attachment-free independence.

BS. As a card-carrying member of Gen-X, its been my observation that we're having more babies than the previous generation...most of the X'ers in my area have three or more kids. And we're working our butts off to do it too. This whiny loser can bite me - Gen X is working harder at being good parents than our parents ever did.

its been my observation that we're having more babies than the previous generation..

I'm a late baby boomer and I've noticed the same thing. Many women in my generation swallowed the the feminist lies hook, line and sinker. Had careers going full force before even considering kids. By then fertility rates were lower so they had less kids or found they couldn't have any at all

Paul Harvey read an essay one time that discussed how the youth of today was going down a slippery slope. It was written 200 years ago.

"Gen X is working harder at being good parents than our parents ever did."

From what I've seen, I agree. We're younger baby boomers, and had our kids on the late side. Consequently, we meet a lot of elementary school parents who are 10-15 years younger than we are. I've been impressed with these parents, and with their kids. As a group, they're very involved with their kids, with school, and are generally community spirited. Their kids are being given a stricter upbringing that what seemed prevalent half a generation back. The kids in our sons' elementary school are really a credit to their parents and to our community. They are, for the most part, diligent, polite and accomplished. When I hear gloom and doom about our nation's youth, I just think of these kids and their parents, and my spirits lift. Younger parents have learned from the excesses of the past, and clearly are trying to avoid making the same mistakes. We also seem to have a high percentage of stay-at-home moms, despite a pretty high cost of living. Parents are making a lot of sacrifices for their families, and our whole community benefits by it.

its been my observation that we're having more babies than the previous generation...most of the X'ers in my area have three or more kids.

It's virtually impossible to tell anything from looking around your own area. Unfortunately, the National Center for Health Statistics — which keeps this sort of data — makes it extremely difficult to coax any information out of all that data they have. Maybe somebody else will have better luck. The closest thing I found to something that would shed light on this subject is this graph:

The first thing to know about this graph is that it starts the same year that "the pill" went on sale. So all those diving birth rates early on are women adjusting to having control of their own fertility. The slope of the decline is about the same for all age groups at that time.

It looks like around 1975 "the pill" had saturated society to the extent that it was going to, and birth rates pulled out of the dive, again virtually across the board in terms of age.

There has not been a noticable change in the birth rate for women 20-24 and 25-29 since then. Boomers, X-ers, doesn't matter. Among 20-something women, the birth rate has been virtually the same for 30 years.

About 1980, the first Boomers were turning 30, and there is a noticable uptick in the birth rate among 30-somethings for the next ten years. Those are boomers filling the 30-40 cohort.

The first X-ers turned 30 around 1995. The birth rate continues to rise, although not at the same rate it did when the boomers were in their 30's.

The first boomers are turning 40 about 1987. The same slope that had been seen among women in their 30's is now seen in those 40-and-up.

What this ends up saying is that there really isn't a dime's worth of difference between boomers and X-ers in terms of birth rates. The "birth dearth" actually happened in the generation before the boomers, and may be entirely an artifact of the birth control pill. The only age group in which X-ers have a higher birth rate than boomers is 30-34, and the difference (since 1995) is not very large. The majority of X-ers are still in their 20's, and there is virtually no difference between the boomers and the X-ers at that age.