Not ever. . .

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.