<p>There is a value to having societal prestige and "coolness’ placed on having children in wedlock simply because it can affect some situations. My cousin’s daugther thinks it’s cool having this baby and not being married. She wants to have another one. A lot has to do with the fact that this has been the most positive attention and gift receiving that she has gotten in a long time. She has an adorable baby, that much no one can deny. She has absolutely no idea of the challenges that are before her with another person to have to care for. I believe that there is truth in the fact that there are more babies born out of wedlock when the societal taboos are removed and when it takes upon the air of being something quite leading age to do. With so many celebrities doing this, it becomes “cool”. I wish there were some way of conveying to people what a heavy responsibility it is to have a child.</p>
<p>My mother is a single mother. Parents? Never married.
And we’ve been through hell bc of it. My dad is a total deadbeat. </p>
<p>This is why having children all over the place mustn’t become commonplace. It’s usually dreadful. Small pockets of success does not change this.</p>
<p>Regarding stigmatizing various behaviors discussed here (poor marriage choices leading to divorce, teen pregnancy, etc.), it may not by itself work, since the rates of such appear to be generally higher where the stigma is stronger.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/state-data/state-comparisions.asp?id=3&sID=18[/url]”>http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/state-data/state-comparisions.asp?id=3&sID=18</a>
<a href=“http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/state-data/state-comparisions.asp?id=4&sID=44[/url]”>http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/state-data/state-comparisions.asp?id=4&sID=44</a>
<a href=“http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/acrossstates/Map.aspx?loct=2&ind=7&dtm=258&tf=133[/url]”>Births to unmarried women | KIDS COUNT Data Center;
[U</a> S Divorce Rates for Women by State: 2009 | divorcescience](<a href=“http://divorcescience.org/2011/09/07/divorce-rates-for-women-by-state-2009/]U”>U S Divorce Rates for Women by State: 2009 | divorcescience)</p>
<p>Wow. The trajectory of this thread is in a nosedive.</p>
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</p>
<p>A version of this happened to my grandmother. My great-grandmother couldn’t afford to keep her and so sent her to an orphanage for a few years while she (ggm) worked and saved money to go get her. This screwed her up unbelievably - how could it not? But it wasn’t not having a father - it was the brutal poverty of the time. </p>
<p>But those on here who are advocating that there was some “better time” when married couples stayed together are demonstrating abysmal critical thinking skills. There was nothing “better” about when deeply unhappy people stayed together - often with violence or abuse - just because there was social stigma against divorce and the woman would be unable to support herself and / or children outside the marriage.<br>
The bravest thing my mother did in the mid 60’s was to divorce my bio father - and it wasn’t even an abusive or bad situation, just a young marriage between inexperienced people.</p>
<p>If you can raise children with the expectation that education is a given, you can also raise them to know in their souls that they would never abandon their children. There may be such horrible parents in the world that their children are better without their presence, but it’s highly unlikely that most of those children couldn’t benefit from financial support from the absent parent or that society wouldn’t benefit from not having so many children supported by taxpayers. What’s funny to me is that the same people who are shocked by the concept of parenting the children one makes are likely the same people whose children would never, ever get in that situation in the first place. Because they have involved, committed, educated parents upon whom to model their lives. It’s the kids who don’t have those advantages who need society to tell them how to get it right. The biggest source of income inequality is the absence of the second parent.</p>
<p>Social change is not always for the better, and bad trends can be reversed:
[How Divorce Lost Its Groove
By PAMELA PAUL
New York Times
June 17, 2011](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/fashion/how-divorce-lost-its-cachet.html”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/fashion/how-divorce-lost-its-cachet.html</a>)
</p>
<p>College-educated couples may be more reluctant to divorce than in the 1970s because childrearing and preparing for selective college admissions consumes more time and money than previously and because they have read that children raised by their married biological parents do better on average than children from broken homes.</p>
<p>Some folks simply cannot afford to divorce. The incomes that are not even covering one household certainly are not going to work for two. That is the grim reality of some situations. My brother and his wife were stuck for four years for that reason, and even then were financially devastated from the divorce. No children involved, so no pain to spread there.</p>
<p>progress in the health arena: [Baby</a> Boomers Sicker Than Parents? Generation, Study Finds - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>There are many negatives in our society. The US has plenty of problems. </p>
<p>What I find interesting is which posters write negative posts about what is occuring in society in a thread about each generation progressing. There is no doubt that society is progressing in some areas compared to previous generations. Nobody had to point out negative things. When things are progressing in society that doesn’t mean everything is progressing. Some things can be going in a negative direction.</p>
<p>Many posters have probably participated in the experiment where there is a glass, let’s say a 16 oz. The glass has Liquid in it that fills up half the glass. People are asked what they see.</p>
<p>Some people say they see a glass half full. Others say they see a glass half empty.</p>
<p>Interesting. just like this thread.</p>
<p>For those of us who live or work in areas that aren’t middle class, we see that this generation is not progressing. Young black men are not doing better as a group by any measure.</p>
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I think if you ask your friends who are oldest kids you’d be surprised what you find. </p>
<p>When I was in college we had a 20th birthday party for my best friend and got into a discussion about the 20th anniversary party for his parents he had gone home for months ago … it had been 6 months earlier … he had never done the math.</p>
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<p>When I start a thread with the theme “too many people are going to college” I am not surprised when people disagree and explain why they think “not enough people are going to college”. Don’t assert X if you don’t want to read refutations of X.</p>
<p>3togo, I guess I would be surprised. Maybe, not as surprised as that 20 year old. :)</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, interesting story about your grandmother and great grandmother. What a situation!</p>
<p>Beliavsky, I want people to write whatever they believe or think or see or whatever. Posters can respond anyway they want to a post.</p>
<p>If I don’t agree, that is the way it goes. I may comment. I may not. I don’t expect to agree many times. I have friends I don’t agree with on several issues.</p>
<p>I like to read what people think about issues that interest me even if I get aggravated at times. :)</p>
<p>It is true. I am trying to look at the positive side of life. Life is good.</p>
<p>(I never asserted that everything is progressing).</p>
<p>Divorce has always created great financial hardship, especially to those who become single parent households, raising a family. I have seen this in some of my friends, who manage to soldier on anyway. If there is abuse, drugs, and violence, certainly it seems like divorce might be one of the best ways to protect the children and spouse who suffers from the ill effects. It does exact a large financial toll nonetheless.</p>
<p>To me it’s quite wonderful that our potential is boundless no matter our generation. </p>
<p>Why is it positive to think our kids are more evolved or wiser than us? That is actually sort of a preposterous notion to me</p>
<p>Going back to OP points.
“When I talk to young people, I am blown away with their” complete lack of “analytical skills”. I heard the same from some profs at colleges. This skill is getting more and more important. It has been going down and down and there are many who are at the level zero more or less, so teaching someting like Computer Programming becomes an impossible task. I have witnessed it in a classroom full of kids who were very much into computers, you would call them gigs. They were not able to produce a very short and simple program. Why? Complete loss of anything remotedly related to analytical skills.</p>
<p>Miami,</p>
<p>I go back and forth thinking this new generation is completely idiotic and slothful OR completely brilliant and energetic.</p>
<p>I think, alas, that this new generation encapsulates an even bigger, sharper, more stark “divide” in terms of thinking ability and initiative than perhaps in our past, not sure. Certainly not less of a divide.</p>
<p>It’s as if the smart and accomplished keep getting smarter and more accomplished and vice versa.</p>
<p>Something isn’t working . . .</p>
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<p>Yes… now. Such was not true when every generation that is currently alive was the same age as my generation is now. Progress :)</p>