The Pew Research Center has published a poll on American attitudes towards marriage and parenting. Why have they done this? Because they are nasty and nosy and prying, that's why. And why do we read such things? Because so are we. Let's look at the ugly results and as we do so lament the Downfall of Traditional Values.
A Generation Gap in Behaviors and Values. Younger adults attach far less moral stigma than do their elders to out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation without marriage. They engage in these behaviors at rates unprecedented in U.S. history. Nearly four-in-ten (36.8%) births in this country are to an unmarried woman. Nearly half (47%) of adults in their 30s and 40s have spent a portion of their lives in a cohabiting relationship.
Pew expects us to believe that 4 in 10 "births in this country are to an unmarried woman." Well, who is she, then? Who is this unmarried woman who is having so many babies? How does she even find the time? I'm not judging her. Indeed, I am quite impressed.
I'm also astounded that more than half of the country has managed to successfully avoid living in a cohabiting relationship. Lucky bastards.
Public Concern over the Delinking of Marriage and Parenthood. Adults of all ages consider unwed parenting to be a big problem for society. At the same time, however, just four-in-ten (41%) say that children are very important to a successful marriage, compared with 65% of the public who felt this way as recently as 1990.
Further confirmation that most Americans nowadays are hypocritical self-righteous morons. As if any such further confirmation were needed. (Actually, I'd speculate that a lot of this result is to do with Teh Horror we are all expected to feel over teenage pregnancy.)
Marriage Remains an Ideal, Albeit a More Elusive One. Even though a decreasing percentage of the adult population is married, most unmarried adults say they want to marry. Married adults are more satisfied with their lives than are unmarried adults.
Hah! Take that, you unmarried fuckers. Your lives are unsatisfactory, you lot of horrible unfulfilled gobshites, you incomplete unsatisfied hosers. You are worse than dirt, in that you can at least grow wheat in dirt, but there is no wheat growing in you. You are thus less than wheat. And wheat is the shit.
Children Still Vital to Adult Happiness. Children may be perceived as less central to marriage, but they are as important as ever to their parents. As a source of adult happiness and fulfillment, children occupy a pedestal matched only by spouses and situated well above that of jobs, career, friends, hobbies and other relatives.
True. I have never been happier in my life, and I say this with all sincerity, than when my horrible little demon children finally go to goddamn sleep and I can finally drink cheap gross beer in peace and ponder whether the Mets will choose to raid either a nursing home or a junior high school to fill out their starting rotation. People without children will never know such Joy.
Divorce Seen as Preferable to an Unhappy Marriage. Americans by lopsided margins endorse the mom-and-dad home as the best setting in which to raise children. But by equally lopsided margins, they believe that if married parents are very unhappy with one another, divorce is the best option, both for them and for their children.
Duh.
Racial Patterns are Complex. Blacks are much less likely than whites to marry and much more likely to have children outside of marriage. However, an equal percentage of both whites and blacks (46% and 44%, respectively) consider it morally wrong to have a child out of wedlock. Hispanics, meantime, place greater importance than either whites or blacks do on children as a key to a successful marriage – even though they have a higher nonmarital birth rate than do whites.
See the "people are hypocritical judgmental morons" comment above. I'm glad to see that we have a multiethnic idiot alliance here.
Honestly, I got married and had kids because, well, I don't know, it seemed a logical consequence of an argument over the proper interpretation of Joyce's "The Dead" I was having with this particular woman. There was no other way to keep her around long enough to eventually persuade her that she was wrong and I was right. I made a rational assessment that it would take several decades to win the argument and I acted accordingly.
Where are my goddamn footnotes...?