An alert reader pointed me to this. The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center General Social Survey (NORC-GSS) is, as it claims for itself, the longest-running, most respected social survey produced by that University. Who am I to argue? If that is the case, then its most recent survey about women and children is even more shocking. It put into a graphic the alarming state of affairs for American women. Indeed, although it does show how political ideology affects the desire of a woman to become a mother, there is little to give hope even to the conservative or traditional woman or mom. I hope it is flawed and its statistics in error but I fear neither is the case.
I am sure you do not need me to read the graph for you. In case you do not get my point, let me say it bluntly. We might expect that liberal thinking women might not wish to have a child ever (if they have not had one by age 35) but did you see that conservative thinking women were not far behind in 2010 and even now a third or more of them agree. No child. Never. So much for the future. They have already decided, 75%+ of those on the left with just under 40% on the right. We have all drunk the kool-aid.
No wonder children are a hard sell today. So many have already decided either they are a bother too much to bear or not important enough to be bothered with at all. Europe has led the way in this and so have some of the Asian cultures (China by governmental policy) but America has learned this terrible lesson and taken it to heart. Not ever. Gulp.
Those who know me know that I am not one of the those men who think that a woman ought to be barefoot, pregnant, and standing either in front of the stove or washing machine their whole lives but wow. Has it become so radical to suggest that children are a blessing from the Lord, that children are normal for marriage, and that motherhood is the higher calling? Have we surrendered that position to those who insist on reproductive rights at the cost of the child, who proclaim self-fulfillment over sacrifice, and who insist that marriage and children are optional? My question is not why liberals think this way but how can one who calls themselves conservative also think this way? I hope and pray that the numbers who do hold this opinion and call themselves conservative are dropping but I also fully realize that their numbers will not drop by the rest of us keeping silent on this point. So consider this one of my initial volleys in the war of words that will certainly follow.
6 comments:
Indeed, the values of the society have changed. Many women today simply do not want to be mothers, and many of their husbands agree. I think it is a form of selfishness which plays into the notion that the most important thing is the freedom of the individual. Hyper feminism also nurtured a dislike for children. They are in the way of a career. Some view it that way. It is a troubling thought, and it is a pervasive belief today. I see no change coming. It is one more consequence related to post modernist anti Christian living, where people will not listen to the word of God, and go their own way.
Soli Deo Gloria
The chickens hatched from the 19th Amendment have come home to roost.
As John "Die Hard" McClane noted: "Welcome to the party, pal!"
Another way of showing the data is seen in the graph of Mean [i.e., average number of] Children by Ideology [conservative vs. liberal] for female ages 25-35 by survey decade (https://scontent-dfw6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/669300477_1535095937972635_9162403189959844825_n.jpg?stp=cp6_dst-jpg_p526x296_tt6&_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=bLRjvJ2t0fwQ7kNvwFW09BI&_nc_oc=AdqjnO35Die859HFoMy2cEcZA_3TRTWtcshul9CZB3jPm3fMvPkHP-PEOanAHhz6pr0&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw6-1.xx&_nc_gid=5dYBrq-7T2e5kkVdnbmdeQ&_nc_ss=7c289&oh=00_Af9mUkJuMg6Y4Oo-M5mSVPTqfwzsTPLkoS7Tn44LskziAA&oe=6A261891)
It can be see that in the 2020s conservative women are having almost twice as many children as liberal women.
Up until the start of the 20th century, less than 5% of men went to college. And in the last 80 years the percentage of men going to college has shot up from 15% to well over 50%. The percentage of college women lagged behind this trend for a while but now, going where there is opportunity to meet potential mates in order to have children, the female college enrollment rate is over 60%.
This pushes childbearing off for at least 4 years, even longer to pay off student loans and for a couple to save enough money to afford a down payment and mortgage on a home to raise children. As a result, compared to a century ago, a significant percentage of women are not having children during the first half of their childbearing years.
According to NIH, 37.6% of U.S. women are having their first child after they are 30 years old, and 12.5% of them are having their first child after the age of 35. In 1970 the average age of a U.S. woman having her first child was 21.4 years old; today the average age is 27.5. According to CDC data, for the first time in U.S. history, more babies were born to women 40 years and older than to teenagers.
PM: "... although it does show how political ideology affects the desire of a woman to become a mother, there is little to give hope even to the conservative or traditional woman or mom."
The graph DOES NOT show the "desire" of a (liberal or conservative) woman to become a mother. The graph simply shows, over the last half-century the likelihood (probability) that a liberal or conservative woman between 18 and 35 years old actually has given birth to at least one child.
This is further demonstrated by the fact that in showing the likelihood of women who have not had a child, the graph does not distinguish women between 18 and 35 years old who have had more than one child. In other words, the effect on the data by a woman who has had only one child is the same as a woman who had had 10 children.
Lutheran homeschooling families buck this anti-natalist trend, I believe.
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