Amazing. She has it exactly bass-ackward.
First off, "our society", and certainly the author's society, if the author lives in SF, is in the process of rapidly rejecting "the idea that children should be raised by married adults." The out-of-wedlock childbearing rate is through the roof.
Back in 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was excoriated for saying the Black (at that time, "Negro") family was in crisis because the illegitimacy rate was 20%. Now the White illegitimacy rate is 30+% and the Black illegitimacy rate is 70+%.
Second of all, though "our society" in practice does NOT embrace marriage as the normal paradigm for child-raising, it should.
Of course causes and effects may be reciprocal. Better-educated parents --> delay children until marriage; married parents --> have completed their education; married parents --> better-educated kids; highly-motivated young people --> don't screw around; highly-motivated young people -->learn more, earn more; stable married parents --> kids with goals; married parents aren't screwing around and don't tolerate their kids screwing around, etc.
Plus: religious people --> marry and then have children; marryied parents tend to become more religious; religious young people --> more highly motivated, etc.
All this adds up to clusters of cultural correlations: cultures which support children's flourishing, and cultures which do not.
There's a reason why every major culture has recognized and approved of marriage as the appropriate way for men and women to match up sexually, and the appropriate way to raise kids. It's because dead-end subcultures which did not do so, did not maintain replacement levels of well-functioning adults for several generations, and subsequently ... pfft.
I don’t think she has it that backwards.
The real lesson here is that people who will not make good parents SHOULD NOT HAVE CHILDREN.
We do have a wave of unsuitable people today, as you say below, it is the result of these many years of disastrous cultural decline. The pressing point however, is what do we do now ? What was once broken cannot easily be fixed.
It will not help to just make these people marry, that I get. Is there some other way to “fix” them ?
I don’t think she has it that backwards.
The real lesson here is that people who will not make good parents SHOULD NOT HAVE CHILDREN.
We do have a wave of unsuitable people today, as you say below, it is the result of these many years of disastrous cultural decline. The pressing point however, is what do we do now ? What was once broken cannot easily be fixed.
It will not help to just make these people marry, that I get. Is there some other way to “fix” them ?
Ho-hum.
How are you, Mrs. D? :)