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From: sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Re: marriage |= (necessarily) commitment
Message-ID: <1828@mnetor.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 19-Aug-85 15:52:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: mnetor.1828
Posted: Mon Aug 19 15:52:00 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 17:32:23 EDT
References: <616@ttidcc.UUCP> <3657@cornell.UUCP> <1773@mnetor.UUCP> <155@unc.unc.UUCP>
Reply-To: sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Organization: Computer X (CANADA) Ltd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 35

In article <155@unc.unc.UUCP> fsks@unc.UUCP (Frank Silbermann) writes:
>In article <1773@mnetor.UUCP> sophie@mnetor.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) writes:
>>
>>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).
>
>Do you think this change is for the better?  I have strong doubts.
>My guess is that most of the children of unmarried couples
>are actually not being raised by an unmarried couple, but rather
>by just one of the parents.  Often, these children grow up
>in poverty, and with low-quality (if any) adult supervision.
>
>	Frank Silbermann

I do not have any figures for this, all I know of are the people I know.
Most of my divorced cousins in France who are getting a second shot at parenting
are doing so without getting married, but as couples anyway.  I am not talking
about kids here.  Most of these people are in their mid-thirties to mid-forties.
As far as I know, their children are fairly normal children with about the
same amount of problems as most other children.   My cousins are certainly
doing a better job of parenting the second time around than they did the first
time even though they were more married the first time.  And I don't think
that this is so because they are not married, but simply because they are more
mature now. 

I know quite a few other unmarried couples with children, and they all have
pretty average problems at a pretty average rate.
-- 
Sophie Quigley
{allegra|decvax|ihnp4|linus|watmath}!utzoo!mnetor!sophie