Ha! So, it took a survey did it? Where have this lot been then?
Some say survey spells disaster for parenthood and matrimony
Yours truly and most of us childfree people out there could have told the survey people a thing or two. And we aren’t surprised. Why should we be? We’ve been living happily married or partnered in the face of all the blather about kids being the ultimate necessity for a happy marriage. But of course since we’re childfree (oops,did I hear they prefer to call us child-less?) the only time these pundits want to solicit our views is in order to say how unhappy we are, how lonely we are – cos we haven’t bred an army of kids. We don’t know what life’s about, now do we? I had to laugh when I read this.
Barbara Dafoe of the Rutgers University’s (Rutgers??) National Marriage Project … allows her bias appear when she says slates people who choose not to rear children – with a swipe at poor parenting for good measure. She says:
“The popular culture is increasingly oriented to fulfilling the X-rated fantasies and desires of adults. Child-rearing values — sacrifice, stability, dependability, maturity — seem stale and musty by comparison.”
WTF?
Soooo… that’s what we must be up to, because we choose not to parent. When we choose to have happy relationships without the need for kids? We can be in life-long, long term, happy and stable and fulfilling relationships, without being parents. Does that make us unstable? Undependable? Immature? In need of kids to “stabilize us?” And as for popular culture, well from where I sit it’s very much childed.
Fulfilling “X-rated fantasies and desires of adults?” preferable to parenting?
Hell, yeah! As one commentator said – and I love this -
“The sound you hear is childless child-free people all across America blowing raspberries at these assholes.”
Yes!
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“The sound you hear is childless child-free people all across America blowing raspberries at these assholes.”…
… WHAAAAAHAAAAAAHAAAAA!!! MUAHAAAAAAHAAAAAAAHAAAAAA!!!
Yep! Of course I’m out there participating in grand orgies since I don’t have to raise any children. [rolls eyes] Ms. Dafoe needs to clarify what she said a bit more! Or change her tune.
Is she suggesting that people with kids have no sex lives or sexual fantasies? What a quack! Let’s not forget the x-rated fantasies of people who are pedophiles almost always have kids of their own (and I think the ones who don’t just don’t have kids YET).
I don’t even need to go into all the million examples of parents who are selfish and neglect their kids’ needs in favor of all the things they don’t want to give up. What sacrifice do parents today make? They just do all the things they did before kids, only now they drag the kids along with them, oblivious to the fact that the kids would rather be home playing.
No one with any brains would take her crap seriously.
Let’s talk about Jenna Jamison – one of the most famous porn stars ever, who I’m sure has inspired many of those x-rated fantasies to which Ms. Dafoe refers. But since Jenna Jamison has kids, I guess she’s a more mature, stable, probably all-around better person than me. After all, she has “child-rearing values,” right?
Does shopping with my greater discretionary income count as an “X-rated fantasy?
Chris W – ROAR!!! I think she’s just jealous.
. I’d love to have her answer that question though.
Phoena – She seems confused. Apparently they are mutually exclusive as in good parent = no sexual fantasis, no sex life period. I wonder if she has kids. Bet she does ‘Coz she has something against the “desires” of adults. Oh and as for the sacrifice… well that’s done when they HAVE the kids… after that it’s a crap shoot.
Shelley… hmm. Now there’s a point. I suppose Ms Dafoe would consider the “childrearing values” to more than make up for any other… er… qualifications
Christine – Oooh, yeah. That’ll do. I think it would count because it’s pleasurable…
Child-rearing values — sacrifice, stability, dependability, maturity — seem stale and musty by comparison.
Unbelievable stuff … raspberries indeed.
I suppose being financially secure and having career-related aspirations count as X-rated as well.
Mel: Yes.
I suppose long, relaxing bubble baths with a book and a glass of wine counts as X-rated as well.
Hang on a minute…I suppose taking off on a trip at a moment’s notice, just because you feel like it is also an X-rated fantasy too.
Let us not also forget that Ms. Dafoe is part of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers, which also gives us the drivel of Prof. David Popenoe on a regular basis. This was their commentary on a recent Pew Research poll which seems to have all the pro-natalists’ nickers in a twist. Here is some more related “news” that I endured on the radio this morning. In fact, I don’t think a month goes by that either Dafoe or Popenoe aren’t on the radio whining and moaning about how terrible it is that some people view parenthood as a choice.
http://www.nj1015.com/absolutenm/templates/?a=7219&z=0
New Study Shows Jersey Married Couples Are Less Interested In Having Kids Than They Used To Be
Wednesday, July 11, 2007 – Millennium Radio New Jersey
David Matthau
Back in the good old days, one of the main reasons to get married was to have kids and raise a family… but that was then and this is now.
A new Pew Research survey finds less than a third of households currently have children, and the number is expected to drop to 25 percent in the next few years – so what’s going on?
Professor David Popenoe, the Co-Director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, says “people less and less think of marriage as being a necessary institution for children – you can raise children in co-habiting relationships, you can raise them in single parent families.”
He says “while many of these alternative arrangements are successful, statistically they are not – they are far less successful than the old fashioned married couple raising their own two kids.”
The professor adds the trend represents “the growing individualism of modern times and modern culture- of self-centeredness, if you will- we’re much more concerned with our own interests and self-fulfillment than we ever were in the past.”
He says the bottom line result of all this is that “marriage weakens, and I believe that children are hurt by this trend.”
Researchers Cook Up Recipe for a Happy Marriage
Upon further reading of the statistics, it is amazing how no one has jumped on the sheer discrepancies between surveys, statistics and the right-winged reports on the results. I wrote the above with my opinions on the matter.
Just about every marriage survey recently conducted shows that children are the Jack Kevorkians of happy marriages. Loss of time, sex, money, intimacy, privacy, figure, and sleep will do that.
Yet another article from a self-selecting evolutionary dead-end.
See you in 2030… bet you won’t be laughing then!