Monday, March 27, 2006
Changing Concepts of Marriage and Raising Children
I read an article in the Outlook section of the Washington Post on Sunday, and the issues that it raised were quite startling. The author's project is that the socioeconomic status of black women is opposed to the idea of marriage, and that more frequently black women prefer to raise children and create families alone rather than have an involved father figure. I understand that this is not a new circumstance, but the fact that women are actively having children without a father is a very unsettling idea, especially if you take the author's prediction that this is foreshadowing for what is to come for other race/class combinations in the United States.
Jones' idea comes from the fact that the male counterparts of black women in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties usually earn far less money, are more likely to have problems steming from their youth (drug use, other illigitimate children [can we even use this term anymore?], etc.). If you couple this idea with recent studies that show that women have been doing much better than men in college (I had a good article on this, but I lost the link. I'll post it if I find it), then the idea of women settling down into a more 'traditional' role in the family will be fading quickly.
I'm fine with the idea that women will soon outpace men in terms of career-oriented success, but the idea that this will directly lead to the utter demise of the family as we know it is horrifying. If you couple this trend with the increasing use of artificial insemination that I mentioned earlier, the effects of this are incalculable to coming generations of the American family. I am not against women in the workforce, at all. But I sincerely believe that a child should be raised with a loving and constantly present mother and father. Having kids is not the right of any single parent, or anyone as a whole. But once someone has a child, they have a responsability to do whatever necessary to bring that child up as good as they possibly can. It doesn't seem to me that this really matters to people.
Even the way that children are being raised is changing. Many suspect that the generation gap is dead and that parents are no longer 'growing up' the way that they used to. I sincerely hope that my concerns are for none because the future would be quite bleak if these children develop into the type of people who are hurting morality, philosophy, and American politics today. ¶ 10:15 PM
Jones' idea comes from the fact that the male counterparts of black women in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties usually earn far less money, are more likely to have problems steming from their youth (drug use, other illigitimate children [can we even use this term anymore?], etc.). If you couple this idea with recent studies that show that women have been doing much better than men in college (I had a good article on this, but I lost the link. I'll post it if I find it), then the idea of women settling down into a more 'traditional' role in the family will be fading quickly.
I'm fine with the idea that women will soon outpace men in terms of career-oriented success, but the idea that this will directly lead to the utter demise of the family as we know it is horrifying. If you couple this trend with the increasing use of artificial insemination that I mentioned earlier, the effects of this are incalculable to coming generations of the American family. I am not against women in the workforce, at all. But I sincerely believe that a child should be raised with a loving and constantly present mother and father. Having kids is not the right of any single parent, or anyone as a whole. But once someone has a child, they have a responsability to do whatever necessary to bring that child up as good as they possibly can. It doesn't seem to me that this really matters to people.
Even the way that children are being raised is changing. Many suspect that the generation gap is dead and that parents are no longer 'growing up' the way that they used to. I sincerely hope that my concerns are for none because the future would be quite bleak if these children develop into the type of people who are hurting morality, philosophy, and American politics today. ¶ 10:15 PM
