Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe of the National Marriage Project have come out with their State of Our Unions report for 2006 (the reports come out annually, in the summer). The report is titled Life Without Children, highlighting the troubling trend of (often deliberately) childless marriages.
Their Executive Summary:
For most of the nation’s history, Americans expected to devote much of their adult life and work to the rearing of children. Today, life without children is emerging as a social reality for a growing number of American adults. Due to delay of marriage, postponed childbearing, increases in childlessness and longer life expectancy, Americans are spending a smaller share of their expected life course in households with children and a larger share of their life course in households without children.
As the active child-rearing years shrink as a proportion of the life course, life with children is experienced as a disruption in the life course rather than as one of its defining purposes. More broadly, it is life before and after children that American culture now portrays as the most satisfying years of adulthood. (emphasis mine)
(Editorial Note: This was one of the concerns, initially impressed upon me by Dr. Albert Mohler, that led to my writing With One Voice. The subject is not without controversy, but it has massive importance for the future of society, both inside and outside the church.)
Noteworthy excerpts from the report include:
1. “The percentage of households with children has declined from half of all households in 1960 to less than one-third today—the lowest percentage in the nation’s history.”
2. “The ‘adult entertainment industry,’ which includes gambling, pornography and sex, is one of the fastest growing and most lucrative sectors of the consumer economy. This multibillion dollar industry has gained respectability and power in the corridors of Washington…”
3. “The expressive values of the adult-only world are at odds with the values of the child-rearing world. Indeed, child-rearing values—sacrifice, stability, dependability, maturity—seem stale and musty by comparison. Nor does the bone-wearying and time-consuming work of the child-rearing years comport with a culture of fun and freedom. Indeed, what it takes to raise children is almost the opposite of what popularly defines a satisfying adult life.”
4. “…parents [in the past] have been rewarded (many would argue inadequately) for the unpaid work of caring for children with respect, support and recognition from the larger society. Now this cultural compensation is disappearing. Indeed, in recent years, the entire child-rearing enterprise has been subject to a ruthless debunking. Most notably, the choice of motherhood is now contested terrain, with some critics arguing that the tasks of mothering are unworthy of educated women’s time and talents. Along with the critique of parenthood, a small but aggressively vocal ‘childfree’ movement is organizing to represent the interests of nonparents.”
The entire report is available.
(HT: Why Family Matters)
Update: I want to clearly state that in no way am I intending to add grief to those who struggle with infertility, or who (for genuine medical reasons) must avoid, delay, or space out pregnancies, or who (based on a spiritual conviction of a call to celibacy, I Cor 7:1-9) will not marry.