The Chill Winds of Winter Set In…
Childlessness among women aged 40-44 has increased dramatically since even the baby bust years of the 1970s.
(CBS) Nearly 1 in 5 American women beyond childbearing years never gave birth as fewer couples, particularly higher-educated whites, view having children as necessary to a good marriage.
An analysis of census data by the Pew Research Center, being released Friday, documents the changes in fertility rates that are driving government projections that U.S. minorities will become the majority by midcentury.
The figures show that among all women ages 40-44, about 18 percent, or 1.9 million, were childless in 2008. That’s up from 10 percent, or nearly 580,000 in 1976.
Among the reasons (blindingly obvious reasons, I might add) for the decline in births is diminished social pressure to have children.
“Social pressure to bear children appears to have diminished for women and that today, the decision to have a child is seen as an individual choice,” according to the report by Pew researchers Gretchen Livingston and D’Vera Cohn. “Improved opportunities and contraceptive methods help create alternatives for women.”
While higher-educated women overall are more likely to be childless, that may be slowly changing. In 2008, about 24 percent of women ages 40-44 with a master’s, doctoral or professional degree did not have children, a decline from 31 percent in 1994.
In the meantime, childlessness has risen sharply for women with less than a high school diploma – from 9 percent in 1994 to 15 percent in 2008.
Okay, then. We now know what to do to restore our culture’s will to survive: increase social pressure to have children. I’ll put that on my to-do list.
But even that may not be enough. There has also been an increase in bastardy. (I lament the decline of shame associated with out of wedlock births. It’s about time we brought back the word “bastard” to shame those too irresponsible to grant their children the benefit of marriage).
More births are from women who never married. Among never-married women ages 40-44, about 56 percent were childless in 2008 compared with 71 percent in 1994.
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This is the reason for the proportional increase in out of wedlock births. Assuming the number of women willing to have a baby without marriage is constant, the dramatic decline of births within marriages both in absolute terms and as a percentage is the real cause of the rising percentage of out of wedlock births. That is, it used to be that a married woman would have many more children.
You have to see the irony. Margaret Sanger preached, more from the fit, less from the unfit.
However, the exact opposite has occurred. Those with the most to offer children socially and economically have curtailed their childbearing the most. The Church needs to bring their A game to promoting motherhood and fatherhood among the faithful lest there be no following generation to evangelize the world.
Baby Conference promoting parenthood.
http://www.visionforumministries.org/events/bc/
“In 2010, as the focus of much media attention centers on the victory of selfishness and the defeat of the biblical family through the introduction of “the pill” fifty years ago, Vision Forum Ministries is committed to defending and celebrating life — in particular, the blessing of children and their role in building healthy cultures and vibrant households.”