While I don't have the sources/links, there are some studies that confirm that religious couples (almost always married since that is part of a religious/faith understanding of God's intent for male-female relationships) have more children than non-religious couples. As we are becoming a more and more secular society (along with Western Europe, and really, much of the world), we are having less children per couple.
Two fairly intuitive reasons for this:
First, most world religions understand marriage as being "blessed" when it is fruitful and bears children;
Second, religious faith teaches selflessness, which is necessary to "happily" raise children. Secular people are more self-centered, and therefore less likely to make the sacrifices necessary to raise children - especially more than one or two.
I suspect this is a large driver. Another, in my mind, is the relatively recent notion among many that they should not think about kids until their education is complete (often including graduate school), they have advanced sufficiently in their careers, etc, etc. Unfortunately, for women, biology is not willing to wait and by the time the "get around" to having kids, it may be very difficult, and certainly impacts the total number of children they have.
Seriously, what the hell does your comment have to do with either the subject of the article or my comment and link to the Birthgap documentary? FYI, the decline in birthrate is happening all over the world except Sub-Saharan Africa (but even that is changing).
Don't you have some pagan ritual to perform? Go away troll.
We are really in uncharted territory here and it’s hard to see how we turn it around. A declining population, with a substantial (perhaps majority in near future) of people growing up in homes without married parents?
---------
And it's worth pointing out that the incentives are designed to get this exact result. We can debate if that was on purpose or not.........
The biggest problem resulting from the Great Society is the breakdown of the black family. This is a sensitive subject, but one that must be broached to fully understand the devastating impact that the Great Society has had on the black community in the United States.
In 1965, when the Great Society began in earnest following the massive electoral landslide reelection of LBJ, the out-of-wedlock birthrate among the black community was 21 percent. By 2017, this figure had risen to a whopping 77 percent. In some cities, this rate is as high as 80 percent, with most of the unwed mothers being teenagers. We have documented extensively in our article on the death of civil society in the United States the negative effects of the single-parent household on child development and outcomes. The black community is now entering its third generation of single parenthood as the norm, something that rose astronomically with the advent of the Great Society.
To provide some historical context, the out-of-wedlock birth rate in the black community was already rising before the Great Society. In 1938, that rate stood at 11 percent. Still, it’s worth noting the difference between the slow and steady increase of 1938 to 1965, and the explosive growth from 1965 until the present day. In any event, black women were more likely to be married than white women as late as 1950. It’s also worth looking at single parenthood over time: In the 1950s, 52 percent of all black children lived with both parents until the age of 17. By the 1980s, that number had plummeted to 6 percent.
Thanks. Those numbers are tragic. I'm sure the data would show that a child raised without two parents is more likely to raise a child themselves in a similar fashion.... thus each generation has a higher and higher % in this situation. And when we talk about race and/or poverty, no one is talking about this.... it's all side shows. Depressing.
I’m a mother and probably part of this trend. I don’t think its all bad on the unmarried part.
I am educated, and had a professional career through my 20s. I met my boyfriend at 31 and we talked about marriage and children. Before he proposed though, I fell pregnant. There is no shame in being an unmarried mother here (UK) now, so we had our daughter as unmarried parents. We married once I could fit into a wedding dress and had our son a year or so later. By this time I was 36 and didn’t want a third child: I wouldn’t have been able to go back to work, we’d have needed a bigger car and house and we wanted to pay for private education for our children - too expensive to do for 3. Besides, we had one of each gender and didn’t feel the urge for more. They’re 14 and 16 now and we are still a happy family, by and large.
I work with a lot of highly paid single women in their 20s and 30s. Most of them want children. The difficulty is finding a partner - they work so hard they don’t meet anyone. They want kids and are freezing their eggs and stuff. They are - for the most part - going to be very disappointed in their lives. I stopped work to find a husband because I could see the same thing happening to me. It has to be an absolute priority if you know having children is important to you. Making the next promotion cannot be the most important priority for a woman if she wants a family. There will always be jobs out there, but you won’t always have viable fertility.
Thanks for sharing & I'm glad your family is in a happy & healthy.
To be fair, I'm much less worried about the marital status of people than I am about the norm being that children have 2 parents in the home. Perhaps I can get more direct data on that... I guess I was using the children born to unmarried women as a proxy. Your last paragraph rings true to me & something I hope people start to think harder about.
Sophocles' point about the expense of adding a third child to the family vs adding a second is also important. I had a friend call it "car seat contraception" lol.
It’s a consideration. My brother did the same: one child born before the wedding. So technically between us, two children born to single parents, two to married.
I’m in London and I notice in particular my European colleagues are not married to the mothers of their children. They are in happy stable relationships, but refer to them as “partners”. Statistically, these relationships are more likely to break down, but I think that probably obscures a more complex picture than marital status suggests.
I don't know that I disagree & certainly is a discussion that should be happening.
In this post, I said I didn't want to judge as I think if we have any chance of reversing these trends, we will need a large majority of folks to agree its a problem. The number of people at this point who have either had a child outside of marriage, or have a sibling or best friend, etc who did is very large. If those folks feel attacked or feel their family or friends are being attacked, I suspect they will be much less willing to hear the argument that these trends are worrying.
While I don't have the sources/links, there are some studies that confirm that religious couples (almost always married since that is part of a religious/faith understanding of God's intent for male-female relationships) have more children than non-religious couples. As we are becoming a more and more secular society (along with Western Europe, and really, much of the world), we are having less children per couple.
Two fairly intuitive reasons for this:
First, most world religions understand marriage as being "blessed" when it is fruitful and bears children;
Second, religious faith teaches selflessness, which is necessary to "happily" raise children. Secular people are more self-centered, and therefore less likely to make the sacrifices necessary to raise children - especially more than one or two.
I suspect this is a large driver. Another, in my mind, is the relatively recent notion among many that they should not think about kids until their education is complete (often including graduate school), they have advanced sufficiently in their careers, etc, etc. Unfortunately, for women, biology is not willing to wait and by the time the "get around" to having kids, it may be very difficult, and certainly impacts the total number of children they have.
It’s called socialism. Children don’t need parents and families when they belong to the state.
I recommend the following documentary:
https://www.birthgap.org/spaces/10215679/page
thanks for the pointer
You might want to block Herr Spangle. Read below. He's a charmer.
Seriously, what the hell does your comment have to do with either the subject of the article or my comment and link to the Birthgap documentary? FYI, the decline in birthrate is happening all over the world except Sub-Saharan Africa (but even that is changing).
Don't you have some pagan ritual to perform? Go away troll.
Not Jewish, fool.
We are really in uncharted territory here and it’s hard to see how we turn it around. A declining population, with a substantial (perhaps majority in near future) of people growing up in homes without married parents?
---------
And it's worth pointing out that the incentives are designed to get this exact result. We can debate if that was on purpose or not.........
I have a few in mind, but would be curious to hear which incentives are on yours....
It's coffee o'clock, but the incentives that provide more "assistance" if you're NOT married to the person you have a kid with....
https://libertarianinstitute.org/economics/lbj-great-society-war-on-poverty-welfare-state-helped-ruin-black-communities/
The biggest problem resulting from the Great Society is the breakdown of the black family. This is a sensitive subject, but one that must be broached to fully understand the devastating impact that the Great Society has had on the black community in the United States.
In 1965, when the Great Society began in earnest following the massive electoral landslide reelection of LBJ, the out-of-wedlock birthrate among the black community was 21 percent. By 2017, this figure had risen to a whopping 77 percent. In some cities, this rate is as high as 80 percent, with most of the unwed mothers being teenagers. We have documented extensively in our article on the death of civil society in the United States the negative effects of the single-parent household on child development and outcomes. The black community is now entering its third generation of single parenthood as the norm, something that rose astronomically with the advent of the Great Society.
To provide some historical context, the out-of-wedlock birth rate in the black community was already rising before the Great Society. In 1938, that rate stood at 11 percent. Still, it’s worth noting the difference between the slow and steady increase of 1938 to 1965, and the explosive growth from 1965 until the present day. In any event, black women were more likely to be married than white women as late as 1950. It’s also worth looking at single parenthood over time: In the 1950s, 52 percent of all black children lived with both parents until the age of 17. By the 1980s, that number had plummeted to 6 percent.
Thanks. Those numbers are tragic. I'm sure the data would show that a child raised without two parents is more likely to raise a child themselves in a similar fashion.... thus each generation has a higher and higher % in this situation. And when we talk about race and/or poverty, no one is talking about this.... it's all side shows. Depressing.
I’m a mother and probably part of this trend. I don’t think its all bad on the unmarried part.
I am educated, and had a professional career through my 20s. I met my boyfriend at 31 and we talked about marriage and children. Before he proposed though, I fell pregnant. There is no shame in being an unmarried mother here (UK) now, so we had our daughter as unmarried parents. We married once I could fit into a wedding dress and had our son a year or so later. By this time I was 36 and didn’t want a third child: I wouldn’t have been able to go back to work, we’d have needed a bigger car and house and we wanted to pay for private education for our children - too expensive to do for 3. Besides, we had one of each gender and didn’t feel the urge for more. They’re 14 and 16 now and we are still a happy family, by and large.
I work with a lot of highly paid single women in their 20s and 30s. Most of them want children. The difficulty is finding a partner - they work so hard they don’t meet anyone. They want kids and are freezing their eggs and stuff. They are - for the most part - going to be very disappointed in their lives. I stopped work to find a husband because I could see the same thing happening to me. It has to be an absolute priority if you know having children is important to you. Making the next promotion cannot be the most important priority for a woman if she wants a family. There will always be jobs out there, but you won’t always have viable fertility.
Thanks for sharing & I'm glad your family is in a happy & healthy.
To be fair, I'm much less worried about the marital status of people than I am about the norm being that children have 2 parents in the home. Perhaps I can get more direct data on that... I guess I was using the children born to unmarried women as a proxy. Your last paragraph rings true to me & something I hope people start to think harder about.
Sophocles' point about the expense of adding a third child to the family vs adding a second is also important. I had a friend call it "car seat contraception" lol.
It’s a consideration. My brother did the same: one child born before the wedding. So technically between us, two children born to single parents, two to married.
I’m in London and I notice in particular my European colleagues are not married to the mothers of their children. They are in happy stable relationships, but refer to them as “partners”. Statistically, these relationships are more likely to break down, but I think that probably obscures a more complex picture than marital status suggests.
Why not judge the unmarried parents? The trend is dysfunctional and very harmful to kids.
I don't know that I disagree & certainly is a discussion that should be happening.
In this post, I said I didn't want to judge as I think if we have any chance of reversing these trends, we will need a large majority of folks to agree its a problem. The number of people at this point who have either had a child outside of marriage, or have a sibling or best friend, etc who did is very large. If those folks feel attacked or feel their family or friends are being attacked, I suspect they will be much less willing to hear the argument that these trends are worrying.