A recent poll found that only 55% of 18-35yos say they are “planning to start a family.” 25% “completely ruled out” having children.
49% say they “want more time to focus” on themselves, and 47% cite financial issues.
There are a number of things going on here:
Women, if they even try to establish a “relationship” (monogamous pairing) that now seems necessary to get to marriage, find that they are shuffling from one “situationship” to another. Online Dating has been revealed as an endless swamp of hookups, from which there seems to be no exit. Nobody talks to them in real life. Even if they do get married eventually, they are coming to realize that they will not marry the Mr. Big of their Sex In The City fantasies, but … an average guy.
Men are afraid that marriage is just a time bomb that will go off whenever their wives declare “I’m not haaaaaappy” and run off with the kind of Harley McBadBoy that she actually spent the first fifteen years of her sexually active life with, Age 16-30, before “settling” for the kind of man that would actually marry her, or anyone. This might be tolerable if a woman just disappeared — good riddance. But, she then takes the house, car, children, and most of a man’s income for the next 15-20 years. Even before then, marriage is too often not a happy cooperation, but a miserable sewer of complaints, demands, and threats that you have to swim upstream forever. Many men are concluding that, in this environment, emulating Harley McBadBoy is the only winning strategy, even if they are not really predisposed to that sort of thing. For one thing: if marriage was the most common avenue to regular sex in the past, it seems that today it is the most common avenue to involuntary celibacy.
This is really not good, but it is moving toward the kind of endgame that I have been expecting, which is a divergence between the “Home and Family Tribe” and everyone else. If you decide to be part of the Home and Family Tribe, then find a like-minded woman, who is not too ugly. This might be about 30% of the population. The other 70% we might call the “Just Focusing On Myself Tribe.”
The Home and Family Tribe will be, ideally, stay-at-home Moms who want to have at least three children before Age 30, probably with homeschool ambitions.
Those who are not part of the Home and Family Tribe will find that trying to “Have It All!!!!!,” or the Feminist ambition, becomes even more dysfunctional than it already has been for the last fifty years. The solution, whether consciously chosen or not, will be to skip having children.
It’s the only thing that makes the Feminist “equality” equation balance. This has been true ever since Mary Wollstonecraft wrote Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792 — as a 33-year old unmarried woman looking forward to a lifetime of childless singlehood. She later became a Single Mother, had multiple suicide attempts, and finally married a communist (“anarchist”) before dying at Age 38. You go girl!
This is “focusing on myself.” This might be career. It might be giving up on marriage as an end goal of “dating.”
It might be the realization that children are very expensive if you are also working. Daycare costs about $1000 a month, as a national average, and in some cities it is about double that. Just this alone is daunting hurdle, but what if there are four children? Are you going to spend eight years pumping breast milk on your office breaks? Or will your children grow up on baby formula, or “liquid Doritos” as some call it?
But, for the stay-at-home Mom, children are not that expensive. They can even have negative net expense, because a Mom that is home breastfeeding infants, is not usually out spending money on restaurants, travel, clothing or beauty. Until they are in their teens, children don’t really cost much. Whether there are four children or one, the cost and the time is about the same — not much, and all day. There are even advantages: Children have brothers and sisters to play with. Maybe that means less driving around town for one playdate after another.
You can get by in a one-bedroom apartment, even with two infants. (I did, along with my sister — my Mom tells me that my first “bed” was a dresser drawer.)
You do not have to be “dating” together for five years, including three years of cohabitation — the average today — before getting married. If you find another member of the Home and Family Tribe, get it done within six months — or pass.
Women: Aim for at least three children before Age 30.
Men: Aim for a woman that wants at least three children before Age 30. Even today, most of the good women are gone before Age 25.
Otherwise, if you want to be part of the “Just Focusing On Myself Tribe,” go right ahead. Good luck!
Cornerstone 