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From: sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Re: marriage |= (necessarily) commitment
Message-ID: <1773@mnetor.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 9-Aug-85 10:41:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: mnetor.1773
Posted: Fri Aug  9 10:41:21 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Aug-85 12:21:51 EDT
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> I think the correlation between marriage and childrearing is pretty damn high.
> You can question why this is so, but not that it is so, and while they are not
> synonomous, you must deal somehow with the fact that society sees them as 
> pretty much synonomous.  (Notice I'm not saying how to deal with this.  No
> flames for me! :-))
> 
> Rance Cleaveland

It depends on what you call a "high" correlation, and what you call "society".
In a recent newsweek article on single parents, they predicted that by the
end of the century (I can't remember the exact prediction rate), half of all
american families will be headed by one person only.  This of course includes
divorced people.  This doesn't count unmarried couples who have children
already either.

In some countries in Europe. more and more unmarried couples are having
children.  I remember reading somewhere that in Sweden the figure was
somewhere around 40% and in France close to 15%.

I think that society "used" to see childrearing and marriage as synonymous,
but that this is all changing very much (where society here = america +
western Europe).
-- 
Sophie Quigley
{allegra|decvax|ihnp4|linus|watmath}!utzoo!mnetor!sophie