According to the Pew Research Center’s recently published study, The New Demography of American Motherhood, 41 percent of the children born in 2008 had unwed mothers. “That’s up from 28 percent in 1990,” reports the Chicago Tribune.  You might imagine this steep rise in single motherhood is due to a similar increase in teenage pregnancy, but teenage pregnancy rates have been on a steady decline.  While the majority of mothers in this country are between the ages of 20-34, 14 percent of mothers are age 35 and above and only 10 percent are teens.  The Pew study also notes that mothers are better educated than they have been in the past: 54 percent have at least some college education. Does this mean that smart, older women don’t want to trade their independence for motherhood, or that men no longer feel they must be husbands in order to be fathers?  Probably a bit of both.

Clarence Page, a columnist for the Tribune, worries that the rise in single motherhood will damage children.  In his commentary on the piece, he writes, “marriage is better for kids emotionally, academically and economically,” and then goes on to quote President Obama’s memoir The Audacity of Hope.  “Children living with single mothers are five times more likely to be poor than children in two-parent households… and the evidence suggests that on average, children who live with their biological mother and father do better than those who live in stepfamilies or with cohabiting partners.” While I respect the President and the apparent strength of his relationship with his wife, I have to politely object to Page’s idea that marriage in and of itself is the answer to saving children from poverty and emotional turmoil.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, staying in a bad marriage for the kids is a bad idea.  If you’re in a bad marriage, chances are you’re going to be a bad parent, and that’s bad for the well-being of your children. Continue reading »

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While some might insist that the proliferation of social networking sites, email and text messaging have allowed us all to have closer connections with more people than ever before, is it possible that just the opposite is true?  Could all this technological interaction actually be turning our kids into a generation of anti-social creatures who someday might not even know how to have a real face-to-face relationship with another human being?

Psychologists and other experts say that might very well be the case.  What’s happening might more accurately be described as anti-social networking and is perhaps changing the nature of childhood friendships forever. Continue reading »

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Just in case all the media coverage hasn’t already tipped you off, this weekend marks the 40th anniversary of  Woodstock. To commemorate that watershed cultural moment, the Pew Research Center recently conducted a survey that attempts to explore the differences between the generation gap during the late ’60s and early ’70s (which, history tells us, was vast and divisive) and the generation gap that exists now. Are the same hostilities between young and old still blowin’ in the wind? Do teenagers today strongly believe that they shouldn’t trust anyone over 30?

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