The Horizon Darkens for Families

This morning's 'Spinsters' (WISN1130) discussed the question of bringing children to athletic events.

Negatively, to say the least--and in the case of the woman, with incredible ignorance of child-rearing.

Since there's very little about that group of self-obsessing twits which reflects real-life, I didn't make much of it--returning to WFMR provided salve.

Then Dreher interrputed my ennui with a post which confirmed my worst impressions:

The new issue of Touchstone came in, and draws our attention to a report from family scholars Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe that paints a bleak picture for the future of the family in the US. According to the Touchstone summary:

Adults now live many more years without children in the home, report Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe in "Life Without Children," the 2006 "State of Our Unions" report. Peple are marrying later and waiting longer after marriage to have children, and an increasing number of women (now one in five) are not having children at all. As a result, fewer than one-third of American households contain children, compared with about half in 1960. Many people fear having children, the authors say, partly because their marriages are unreliable, and partly because popular culture increasingly portrays parents critically and parenthood as burdensome and depressing, especially in comparison with life without children. Among the effects, they predict, will be decreased political support for parents -- who already make up less than 40 percent of the electorate -- and more cultural hostility. [Emphasis mine.]

Well, there's little question that some folks are more hostile to children.