<p>That’s a nice story, romanigypsyeyes.</p>
<p>My upper-upperclass grandmother was cast aside and cut off by her family for having the bad taste to marry a dentist.
Her grandson , my brother, is finally engaged to the person of his dreams. Not white, wrong social class, and male. NOT the upper class white girl that my folks would have chosen if they had had the chance. NOW THAT’S PROGRESS.</p>
<p>Nice, musicamusica.</p>
<p>Musica… :)</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. There was a time where society expected, and teens did take on their responsibilities in the world. Now many of them are on an extended adolescence until their late 20’s. Would you really count Kim Kardashian having an illegitimate baby in her 30’s as superior to someone’s grandparents getting married in their teens, having children and staying together for 50 years?</p>
<p>I think the jury is very much out on the actual result of all this progress when taken in aggregate.</p>
<p>I think Kim Kardashian should live the life she wants. I don’t care what she does. It is her business. </p>
<p>Who the hell am I to tell her how to live?</p>
<p>She should be free to make her own choices.</p>
<p>I want my kids to make their own choices. I don’t want to make my kids’ choices. I don’t want them to make my choices or your choices or anybody else’s choices. </p>
<p>And the same for Kim whats her name.</p>
<p>What is this thread? A liberal fest?</p>
<p>So sappy I cannot even.</p>
<p>I love that my children are both surprised and appalled when they hear discriminatory comments of any kind (race, religion, class, sexual orientation, etc.).
I am happy they will be able to marry whomever they chose.
I love that my D will never have to be dependent on a man to support her.</p>
<p>We have more economic freedom now than we had 50 years ago. Tax rates are lower. Taxes as a percentage of gdp are lower in the US than yes, most of the other first world countries.</p>
<p>The stock market is at all time highs. The net worth of the country is estimated at over 75 trillion dollars. Housing is more affordable now than probably in decades, if you can get a loan.</p>
<p>Trade is larger than ever. We have a lot of billionaires around. There are almost 10 million milliionaires in this country. </p>
<p>We have more college graduates than ever. </p>
<p>You can check out David Frum’s article on freedom by googling it.</p>
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<p>As soon as you start counting in and out of wedlock babies as an indicator of something you care.</p>
<p>Momof2kids, sounds good to me.</p>
<p>I always tell my son that if he makes a baby, he better be prepared to raise and support that baby until it is an adult or he will answer to me. Nice to have a good time, but one needs to be as responsible about sex as they are about alcohol. When a couple chooses to have unprotected sex and a baby results, it’s not just about them and their good time and their happiness anymore. In fact, their happiness should come behind the well-being of the child. To mis-paraphrase Beyonce, I tell my son “if you don’t like her then you always put a condom on it.” And, frankly, it should be noted with respect and admiration that Beyonce married her child’s father long before she became her mother, unlike Ms. Kardashian, who is pregnant by one and married to another. While I couldn’t care less what happens to her, it’s an opportunity to point out to children an example not to emulate.</p>
<p>No, argbargy. I don’t have the right to tell others how to live. I can care. You can care. If the illegitimate baby issue is the most important issue for you and therefore you don’t think we are progressing, that’s your right. Go for it. </p>
<p>It’s a little sour, isn’t it? To concentrate on an issue that upsets you while other parts of society are improving, can leave a person feeling down.</p>
<p>I could dwell on the jerks, but I have found that what they do doesn’t really affect me that much.
The older I get, the more I want to look at the good stuff in life.
When I look at our kids, I feel good. I think they are ahead of us in areas that count.</p>
<p>So you are capable of judging that things are getting better in some areas but not qualified to judge that they are getting worse in others? That doesnt make sense. </p>
<p>Just because things worked out for you doesnt mean that writ large they are a good general idea. I have a LIBOR pegged ARM that puts me ahead of the game but I can recognize that ARMs didnt work out so well for everyone and if everyone had them it could be a major issue for society.</p>
<p>“So you are capable of judging that things are getting better in some areas but not qualified to judge that they are getting worse in others? That doesnt make sense.”</p>
<p>Did I really say that or did you say that I said that?</p>
<p>People love to argue that way. Put crap in somebody’s mouth and then argue against it.</p>
<p>I am going to get some exercise now. Have a nice day.</p>
<p>Ah, Dstrk, going back to your original post on this thread, got me to thinking of Nicholas Gage’s book he wrote about his mother, “Eleni”. One that really tears at the heart, especially mine, as my parents were separated with the one in the home country making do for a number of years. Not as horrible of an outcome, but tough times indeed.</p>
<p>In the ending chapter when Gage discusses his sisters’ lives after they came to the US, he notes that they all were married in arranged situations except for one That one’s marriage is the only one ending in divorce.</p>
<p>As a young woman, the very idea of an arranged marriage made my blood boil. The very idea was repugnant to me. And I would not embark on any such thing for my kids, but,…sigh…they can do worse, I’m afraid. Much worse. </p>
<p>I’ve spoken with some women of my generations whose marriages were arranged. Theirs were not as one might expect, where a business deal is made and the two marrying parties have nothing to say about it. More the sort of thing where eligible young people that the parents learn about through others in their circle, that they want their children to meet, and they just hope for an outcome of marriage. My one friend said she felt the whole thing was a big joke until she met the right young man, who also so regarded it, and they’ve been married for 30 years now. In any situation, there are tyrannical parents who make unreasonable demands, and in this sort of thing, I’m sure it happens as well, but it isn’t always this way. </p>
<p>In my case, I doubt if I would have fared so well had my parents picked for me, as they were not involved in many social situations and most of the children of their friends did not go to college, and did not have career goals or interests like the ones I met at college. I was an outlier from my crowd at school and community when I went to college, as was my husband, and we met there, something that would have never happened had it been left to our parents. But I think his mother would have much preferred a hometown girl to have become her DIL, and who knows if that would not have worked out just fine and even been better? </p>
<p>I do care about the choices my kids make. They’ve made some that hurt me quite a bit as I don’t agree with them, but more importantly those choices have had consequences that have hurt them too. So far no babies out of the deal, and for that I am glad, because to bring innocent lives into chaos is really a shame, IMO But I do have friends and family members who have gone that route of having children at times and in situations that are clearly far from ideal. That has always been the case, since the beginning of time, but now I hope opportunities for such children are not as dismal. I was an unexpected birth and the possibility of being a Pearl Buck baby in Asia back then would have been there had my parents not married. Many of us had beginnings that were not ideal. </p>
<p>I’m glad you are looking at the good stuff in life. I try. I worry, however. It seems more difficult these days for young people to get into a self sufficient, stable life. For mine, that is a certainty, those that are now young adults and out there. I had hoped that I would be able to help them more than my parents were able to help me, since DH and I are more attuned their worlds. My parents did not have a clue. But I feel as clueless as they might have been.</p>
<p>Looking at ‘progress’ another way: </p>
<p>I don’t see ‘progress’ when I see too much development eating up farmland and forest land. When I was younger, there was open space between L. A. and San Diego, L. A. and Ventura. Now nothing but stores, housing tracts, office complexes…</p>
<p>A growing number of people on a finite amount of land is not progress.</p>
<p>dstark:</p>
<p>re-read your first post. Apparently you are capable of judging that fewer arranged marriages, tolerance for living together before marriage, and support for gay marriage are all good things. </p>
<p>I point out that there are now more broken marriages, more out of wedlock births and more children without fathers. I’d say those are bad things. </p>
<p>In PARTICULAR cases it would have been a bad thing if the woman married the guy, or stayed married or an abusive father was still in the picture. But when you are talking about in aggregate- and with nearly 75% of black children illegitimate we are talking huge numbers of kids- the trend has been bad. And we should feel free to point that out if there is going to be any improvement in it.</p>
<p>Saying “Everything gr8!” but excluding whole sections of societal problems doesnt make much sense.</p>
<p>In my extended family, divorces are still extremely rare, but that’s a small data point or cluster. It seems those living in pressure cooking situations have much higher divorce rates.</p>
<p>Hey, I have the right to tell others how to live. They have the right to ignore me.</p>
<p>By the way, I think the term “illegitimate birth” or “illegitimate child” should be dropped forever. Out of wedlock, OK, but no human being is “illegitimate.”</p>