As many of us nowadays are leading a busy and modern life, we tend to seek for ways to increase the efficiency and simplicity of our doings while reducing the burdens and hardship. One such a way is that people are less likely to get married, build up families and raise their kids, which eventually causes the reducing in our national birth rates. According to Ross Douthat, a conservative American author, blogger and New York Times columnist, in his article “More babies, Please”, he pointed out the fact that Americans are pessimistic about the recovery of the U.S economy in the future, especially after the Great Recession. As the result, while seeking a solution for global economic decline, they prefer not to have families so that the burden of raising kids can be lessened. To demonstrate this, Douthat mentions a data reported by the Pew Research Center stating that there was a declining trend in the overall birth rate in the U.S right after the Recession struck the economy; specifically, it resulted in the sagging movement of 71 births in 1990 to 63 recorded in 2011 for every 1,000 women who age from 15 to 44. Taking the statistic into consideration, it is obvious that the alarming decline in the U.S birthrates has caused predictable consequences to many aspects of our society, and it surely will continue taking its toll on our economic, political and social development in the long run. As it is mentioned in Douthat’s article, one of the reasons that make the birth-rate picture of the U.S not so promising is because our country still lacks a practical mechanism to reduce the risk of raising children and regain optimistic response from society. For this reason, it is important for the U.S government to enact effective family polici...
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...rther, a question that antagonists might raise is whether we should waste our resources in establishing costly policies such as providing financial support while the situation can still be curable or not yet leaves serious consequences. However, as time does matter, the sooner we start, the more favorable the economic recovery will be, especially in the case when the current solutions might not be applicable to the future matters when conditions already change.
Works Cited
Douthat, Ross. “More babies, Please.” The New York Times. 1 Dec. 2012. Web. 14 Jun. 2014.
Kramer, P. Steven. “Mind the Baby Gap.” The New York Times. 18 Apr. 2012. Web. 14 Jun. 2014.
Last, V. Jonathan. “America’s Baby Bust.” The Wall Street Journal. 12 Feb. 2013. Web. 15 Jun. 2014.
Teitelbaum, S. Michael, and Jay M. Winter. “Bye-bye, Baby”. The New York Times. 04 Apr. 2014. Web. 14 Jun. 2014.
there is also an increase in friends placed in the voluntary kin category. The article states that people who are single or live alone think of themselves as a family. Yet studies shown that these single families tend to keep more in touch with the relatives. A statement that Dr. Coontz makes is that We’re seeing a class divide not only between the haves and the have-nots, but between the I do’s and the I do nots,”. The article also states that the way demographer noticed differences in today’s family from previous one was through the birth rates, today’s rate is about half of what it used to be in 1960. After the era of the baby boom in 1964, the rate was 36 percent, and last year the number dropped to 23.5 percent predicting a 21 percent of child births by 2050. This because less women are become mothers – yet those who are only have one or two children compared the 3 children per family in the 1970s. Another reason the articles bring up about child care is the expenses, a child can easily cost a family as little as 241,080 to about a million dollars. However, the article agrees with chapter when it states that women with a bachelor or higher wait longer to get married and have children (about 90 percent)
With the clash of the cultures increasingly challenging our way of living, we must fight even harder to keep our families practicing good morality and traditional values. The census of the 20s shows us that more and more Americans are making the move to the big city and for reasons I don’t quite understand. There are many that embrace the new modern world, but my family members are plain old country folk that enjoy rural living, living on farms or in small towns. And marriage should be considered sacred and children should be considered a blessing from God, not a burden or imposition. In the essay entitled “Birth Control,” by Ella K. Dearborn, written for the Birth Control Review in March 1928, Dearborn opposed certain women having children
Powell, Bill. "Meet The Parents." Newsweek Global 169, no. 7, September 2017, 16-23. MasterFILE Elite, EBSCOhost (accessed December 2, 2017). http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.kennesaw.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=62e2d339-8ec2-493a-adf2-5e2a20b75989%40sessionmgr101
One of the biggest structural factors that changed the U.S. family structure over the last 50 years is the decline in the sizes of families due to medical advances. From 1800-1900, the average amount of children born was cut in half (Cohen, 44). This large decline was due to health care and technological advances, which has been able to increase the reliability and efficacy of birth control and prevent pregnancy (Cohen, 44). Although not widely available at first, the most common form of birth control, “the pill” first became available in the 1960’s. Nowadays, approximately 76 million women use the pill worldwide (Cohen, 45). The use of the pill
With all the different economic opportunities, it is no wonder some Americans see procreation as a supplemental source of monetary income. During the twentieth century, we propagated the American Dream and placed pressure on Americans to settle down and start families. Prior to the twentieth century, many couples would have children, who would often then become labor assets; children would tend the fields or do various jobs around the home to save the family money by avoiding outsourcing. As the population grew, the laws of supply and demand triggered a need for new technology; this technology made it easier to sustain the population but also made the need for the extra children obsolete. This did not stop Americans from breeding.
Davis, John. "Selecting Potential Children And Unconditional Parental Love." Bioethics 22.5 (2008): 258-268. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 May 2014.
In 1950, 1 in 20 American women with children were unmarried, that number has risen to 1 in 3. The demographic studied is aware of social norms that would encourage young adults to have a stable income, get married and then have children and they agree that the economic positions they are in are not ideal to raise a child. Their behavior is deviant as they do not accept this traditional route and, instead, hastily jump into relationships and have children, seeing it as a “badge of honor” when their partner wants to have children with them. These women have limited economic opportunities and therefore see having children as a situation in which they “have nothing to lose” and when asked, said they do not feel that they had missed out on any opportunities. These young mothers also stated that they felt, for them, there would never be an ideal time to have children and that the timing in which they did have their children actually “saved”
Today 's generation have changed many ways since the beginning of the century. In “The American Family”, Stephanie Coontz discusses many situations that has occurred during the beginning of the 21st century and suggested solutions to solve those issues in the future. For instance, she argued that women are being treated unfairly, family are not discussing their problems openly, and institutions need to change to fit the families’ requirement. In “Complexity of Family Life among the Low-Income and Working Poor” Patricia Hyjer Dyk, argued that women still doesn’t have enough choices, low income families doesn’t have enough jobs, and Government are not helping many families. Dyk’s review of the scholarly research on low-income families support Coontz’ evaluations of the problems faced by 21st century families and the solutions Coontz recommends, like improving women 's lifestyle, discussing problems openly, improving institutions and changing institutions so it can to fit to fulfil families need. .
Terry, Don. “Storm Rages in Chicago Over Revoked Adoption.” New York Times. 15 July 1994: A1:A12.
The American family structure has seen major changes in the ideals, values and ethics pertaining family life. The modern day family in an American societal setting does not only show a break from the ideal family values but also a significant level of democracy, individuality and independence depending from which perspective the situation is being analyzed. The modern day prevalence of single-parent headed families, the political role of women, the struggle on non-white societies in America against discrimination and racism, the feminist movements for the enforcement of friendlier policies and the definition of gender roles in the family paint a picture of the difference between the family life in America 50 years ago and the contemporary family values (Clavan, 1972). The increasing numbers of non-traditional families has been a major component on public discourse pertaining women who bear children out of wedlock. The issue however, has majorly been blamed on a number of sociological problems such as unemployment, high rates of juvenile crimes, poor health and a series of school drop-out (Lopata & Norr, 1980).
Since the dawn of civilised society, children have suffered from losing one or both of their parents. “Half of all American children will witness the breakup of a parent’s marriage” (Bilotta, 1). Children being brought out in single house household are more likely to become depressed and have problems with their peers. In addition “Family Timeline” by ProQuest, in 1920 points out that “The divorce rate is approximately eight per 1,000 marriages” and today that rate has skyrocketed to 50% (Proquest,1). Proquest clearly rationalizes why the divorce rate has risen. “As more women become educated and join the workforce divorce becomes economically possible for them” (Proquest, 2). Marriages have often been a necessity for
The changing of American families has left many families broken and struggling. Pauline Irit Erera, an associate professor at the University of Washington School of Social Work, wrote the article “What is a Family?”. Erera has written extensively about family diversity, focusing on step-families, foster families, lesbian families, and noncustodial fathers. Rebecca M. Blank, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, where she has directed the Joint Center for Poverty Research, wrote the article “Absent Fathers: Why Don't We Ever Talk About the Unmarried Men?”. She served on the Council of Economic Advisors during the Clinton administration. Andrew J. Cherlin, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University wrote the article “The Origins of the Ambivalent Acceptance of Divorce”. She is also the author of several other books on the changing profiles of American family life. These three texts each talk about the relationship between the parent and the child of a single-parent household. They each discuss divorce, money/income they receive, and the worries that come with raising a child in a single-parent household.
Due to the lack of decency and respect in this generation, society has become very dark. There is poor parenting taking place in this overpopulated world, and it is effecting all the future generations. Teenage parents, are uneducated and unprepared to be to raise a child. They believe they are responsible enough to take on the world and raise a family. Unfortunately, this is false information. Considering they are teenagers, they were unable to get their lives set up for success, and then they make the same parenting mistakes multiple times and end up with a huge family way below the poverty line. For every married couple, two children are all it takes to keep the world’s population at a constant rate. In too many families, there are more than two children, causing to exceed the death rate. In Overpopulation: Causes, Effects and Solutions, Rinkesh Kukreja
Finally, Stuart Rachels discusses the objections that do not agree with his opinion. Some think that it is a disastrous result that people do not have children because the whole world may become aging and human beings may not exist anymore and others mention that to bear children is a natural thing for human beings (Rachels, 2013). Aimed at different objections, Rachels has given the explanation. For example, he claims that his opinion is just to say that people should not have children, but do not forbid people to have children. In other words, to have children depends on the economic situation of
The purpose of their book is to underline the different impacts of social class and race over family life, especially in children’s lives as well as marriage. Poor young women tend to choose to have babies first during their “late teens and mid-twenties” (109) even though they know “it is not the best way to do things” (65) because they wish to take care of someone with whom they will share a strong bond. The authors point out that poor youth tends to have a common dream concerning children and tend to have unprotected sex to express their trust.