Recently there have been a lot of changes in
family trends in the world. Some of these current trends include having either
less or no children, delaying having children, living alone, divorce rates,
marriage age and rates, and births to single mothers. There are a lot of
controversial topics here and I would like to present some information on some
and just give some of my personal thoughts.
Divorce. Probably one of
the main reasons people don't get married. "Why get married, if I will
just divorce later?" This can be a common question among single people.
There is a statistic that says that half of all marriages will end in divorce.
This is simply not true. Current data shows that the divorce rate in the United
States is between 3 and 3.25 divorce per 1000 people. This is significantly
lower than 50%. However, this lower divorce rate is also causing other
problems. Maybe the rate has dropped because more people are not getting
married. It is far more common to just cohabit. People say it’s easier and you
can see if you really like or even love the person you are living with. The data
shows however that you are more likely to divorce if you get married after
cohabiting. So yes overall, lower divorce rates, but at the same time less
marriages.
On the topic of marriage,
people are waiting longer and longer to get married. The average age for men is 29.5 and for women it
is 27.4 years old. Even amongst young adult members of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints, where we are encouraged to get married and there
is pressure to do so at a younger age, the average age is still around 27 for
men and 24 for women. Why is this an issue? Maybe for you it isn’t. For one
minute, lets talk about marriage age and having children. Now if you don’t want
to have children (which will be discussed a little later) that’s fine, but let’s
say that you do. Going off of the ages above you’re 27 or 29 when you get
married, on average people tend to wait 3 to 5 years, so now you’re 30 to 34
years old when you have your first child. At that rate you may only have one or
two. This just makes me think of something my professor said. He said that some
people he has met have always regretted not having more children. I have only
been married a year and my wife and I are expecting our first child in June. I
know that we are both college students and money may be tight, and you may be
thinking that we are crazy, but having children is one thing that we both
really wanted and would be the most important thing that we could do in our
lives.
Returning to not wanting
to have children (I said we would come back to this). I just try to understand
why some people who are perfectly capable of having children would not want to.
Now I’m not saying that if you don’t that you should, to each his own, but with
all respect, do you not want to have someone that you teach how to play baseball
or how to fish or how to do any other number of things? Honestly that’s what I am
most excited about with my son. It will be such a joy to teach him all the
things that I like to do and to see him grow up. I’m sure there will be lots of
stress in raising him, but it will be worth it.
So, lots of trends.
Honestly though, everyone has to do what’s best for themselves. At the same time,
just because the world is changing, that doesn’t mean you have to conform to
those changes. The family however is a powerful force to be reckoned with.
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