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For women under 30, most births occur outside of marriage

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This article is from the liberal New York Times. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

 It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.

Once largely limited to poor women and minorities, motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America. The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group that analyzed government data.

[…]The forces rearranging the family are as diverse as globalization and the pill. Liberal analysts argue that shrinking paychecks have thinned the ranks of marriageable men, while conservatives often say that the sexual revolution reduced the incentive to wed and that safety net programs discourage marriage.

Actually, conservatives do argue that shrinking pay checks have discouraged marriage – shrinking paychecks caused by higher taxes, which are supported by single women and their overwhelming propensity to vote Democrat.

More:

The recent rise in single motherhood has set off few alarms, unlike in past eras. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a top Labor Department official and later a United States senator from New York, reported in 1965 that a quarter of black children were born outside marriage — and warned of a “tangle of pathology” — he set off a bitter debate.

By the mid-1990s, such figures looked quaint: a third of Americans were born outside marriage. Congress, largely blaming welfare, imposed tough restrictions. Now the figure is 41 percent — and 53 percent for children born to women under 30, according to Child Trends, which analyzed 2009 data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

[…]Almost all of the rise in nonmarital births has occurred among couples living together. While in some countries such relationships endure at rates that resemble marriages, in the United States they are more than twice as likely to dissolve than marriages. In a summary of research, Pamela Smock and Fiona Rose Greenland, both of the University of Michigan, reported that two-thirds of couples living together split up by the time their child turned 10.

In Lorain as elsewhere, explanations for marital decline start with home economics: men are worth less than they used to be. Among men with some college but no degrees, earnings have fallen 8 percent in the past 30 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the earnings of their female counterparts have risen by 8 percent.

“Women used to rely on men, but we don’t need to anymore,” said Teresa Fragoso, 25, a single mother in Lorain. 

Indeed. Ever since feminism produced such cultural advancements as coed classrooms, sex education and no-fault divorce, men have been so surrounded by freely available sex. Thanks to feminism, men don’t have to lift a finger to prove to women that they are capable of performing their traditional roles before sex is offered to them. When women decided to agree with feminists that men are identical to women, they refused to set expectations on men to act like men. When women decide that it’s not men’s jobs to perform their traditional male roles in a marriage, then they choose other men based on other criteria, e.g. – broad shoulders, a deep voice, athletic ability, nice shoes – and other concerns that have nothing whatsoever to do with marital success. Feminism is not good for men – it turns them into boys, who don’t have to prove themselves ready for marriage before they get sex. When men have sex handed to them on a silver platter, they stop caring about doing well in school, getting jobs and sacrificing to honor their commitments.

More:

Others noted that if they married, their official household income would rise, which could cost them government benefits like food stamps and child care. W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, said other government policies, like no-fault divorce, signaled that “marriage is not as fundamental to society” as it once was.

Even as many Americans withdraw from marriage, researchers say, they expect more from it: emotional fulfillment as opposed merely to practical support. “Family life is no longer about playing the social role of father or husband or wife, it’s more about individual satisfaction and self-development,” said Andrew Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University.

[…]Reviewing the academic literature, Susan L. Brown of Bowling Green State University recently found that children born to married couples, on average, “experience better education, social, cognitive and behavioral outcomes.”

Times have changed. Before, men and women looked to each other for support – that’s why they married. Now the government gives single mothers support, so that they don’t need protectors and providers. Legions of social workers, public schools and day care are provided to teach children morality and religion – while women go to work to pay taxes for their salaries. Single mothers like this arrangement because government checks and government programs are much less demanding than husbands and fathers. It makes more sense to single women to choose exciting men to have sex with – men who are spontaneous, handsome, fun and dangerous – and then toss them aside if they try to hold her accountable to behave morally, or ask her to do anything that she doesn’t make her feel happy.

Finally, you might think that the church is aggressive about telling women how wrong it is for them to have premarital sex, but you’d be wrong. Pastors are terrified of offending women in their churches by talking about moral obligations and success factors for marriage. Women don’t want to believe that there are guidelines from morality and from social science research that could override their emotions and intuitions. They want to be happy, and whatever they decide while trying to be happy must be right. Pastors would never dream of telling women in their churches that there was anything from with the view of relationships they get from Bridget Jones’ Diary, Pretty Woman, Kate and Leopold, Eat, Pray, Love, etc.

Men: never ever marry a woman who cannot denounce feminism, socialism, premarital sex, abortion, divorce, adultery, and especially single motherhood – in the strongest terms. That is a pre-condition for marriage. And don’t accept her opinion on these questions. Expect her to convince you using evidence from research – books and research papers. Don’t marry someone who knows nothing about marriage. Don’t make a woman a parent when she knows nothing about parenting. Your future children are depending on your judgment. Fatherlessness puts children at risk for higher rates of poverty, neglect and abuse, and a host of behavioral problems.

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Commentary

For Valentine’s Day, a story of lifelong love and marriage

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I found this story from ABC News on Dr Laura.com.

Excerpt:

A devoted Iowa couple married for 72 years died holding hands in the hospital last week, exactly one hour apart.

The passing reflected the nature of their marriage, where, “As a rule, everything was done together,” said the couple’s daughter Donna Sheets, 71.

Gordon Yeager, 94, and his wife Norma, 90, left their small town of State Center, Iowa, on Wednesday to go into town, but never made it. A car accident sent the couple to the emergency room and intensive care unit with broken bones and other injuries. But, even in the hospital, their concerns were each other.

“She was saying her chest hurt and what’s wrong with Dad? Even laying there like that, she was worried about Dad,” said the couple’s son, Dennis Yeager, 52. “And his back was hurting and he was asking about Mom.”

When it became clear that their conditions were not improving, the couple was moved into a room together in beds side-by-side where they could hold hands.

“They joined hands; his right hand, her left hand,” Sheets said.

Gordon Yeager died at 3:38 p.m. He was no longer breathing, but the family was surprised by what his monitor showed.

“Someone in there said, ‘Why, then, when we look at the monitor is the heart still beating?'” Sheets recalled. “The nurse said Dad was picking up Mom’s heartbeat through Mom’s hand.”

“And we thought, ‘Oh my gosh, Mom’s heart is beating through him,'” Dennis Yeager said.

Norma Yeager died exactly an hour later.

“Dad used to say that a woman is always worth waiting for,” Dennis Yeager said. “Dad waited an hour for her and held the door for her.”

The inseparable couple was engaged and married within 12 hours in 1939 on the day Norma Yeager graduated from high school.

“She graduated from high school on May 26, 1939, at about 10 a.m., and at about 10 p.m. that night she was married to my dad at his sister’s house,” Sheets said.

The vibrant duo had a “very, very full life.”

They worked as a team. They traveled together, they were in a bridge club together and they worked in a Chevrolet dealership, creamery and other businesses together.

“They always did everything together,” Sheets said. “They weren’t apart. They just weren’t.”

I think that this kind of lasting love is a mystery to many people who come from broken homes. It’s good for us to reflect on a couple who got it right on Valentine’s Day.

Commentary

Bank run in socialist Europe begins

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Europe: Annual Budget Deficit as % of GDP
Europe: Annual Budget Deficit as % of GDP

From CNBC.

Excerpt:

Money-market funds in the United States have quite dramatically slammed shut their lending windows to European banks. According to the Economist, Fitch estimates U.S. money market funds have withdrawn 42 percent of their money from European banks in general.

And for France that number is even higher — 69 percent. European money-market funds are also getting in on the act.

Bond issuance by banks has seized up because buyers have gone on strike.

From the Economist’s Free Exchange Blog:

In the third quarter bonds issues by European banks only reached 15 percent of the amount they raised over the same period in the past two years, reckon analysts at Citi Group. It is unlikely that European banks have sold many more bonds since.

Corporate depositors are also pulling their cash.

Free Exchange:

“We are starting to witness signs that corporates are withdrawing deposits from banks in Spain, Italy, France and Belgium,” an analyst at Citi Group wrote in a recent report. “This is a worrying development.”

And there are troubling signs that banks are even running out of collateral to back their borrowings from the European Central Bank .

So far the liquidity of the European Central Bank (ECB) has kept the system alive. Only one large European bank, Dexia, has collapsed because of a funding shortage. Yet what happens if banks run out of collateral to borrow against?

And from the leftist New York Times.

Excerpt:

The flight from European sovereign debt and banks has spanned the globe. European institutions like the Royal Bank of Scotland and pension funds in the Netherlands have been heavy sellers in recent days. And earlier this month, Kokusai Asset Management in Japan unloaded nearly $1 billion in Italian debt.

At the same time, American institutions are pulling back on loans to even the sturdiest banks in Europe. When a $300 million certificate of deposit held by Vanguard’s $114 billion Prime Money Market Fund from Rabobank in the Netherlands came due on Nov. 9, Vanguard decided to let the loan expire and move the money out of Europe. Rabobank enjoys a AAA-credit rating and is considered one of the strongest banks in the world.

American money market funds, long a key supplier of dollars to European banks through short-term loans, have also become nervous. Fund managers have cut their holdings of notes issued by euro zone banks by $261 billion from around its peak in May, a 54 percent drop, according to JPMorgan Chase research.

This is really disturbing. I wonder if any of my economics-minded commenters can explain to me what happens when there is a run on banks. I am guessing that there will be some rioting over benefits as austerity measures are imposed, and interest rates will go up.