Reading complaints a few weeks back that too many Latter-day Saints marry before completing courses of higher education, I felt concerned that a natural corollary of that is that people who don’t complete a college education shouldn’t marry at all. Perhaps the unfolding 21st Century for many will be less like the 20th Century abounding in middle-class families and more like earlier ages when bunk houses, barracks, brothels, servants’ quarters, convents, and monasteries absorbed many whose economic limitations put marriage and children out of reach, and those who want a different future will have to choose paths of their own bucking prevailing trends.
The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia has put out “Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America” There is such discussion of the Great Crossover (mean age at first marriage passing age at first child), and a running theme is that delayed marriage plays out differently for the two-thirds of the nation that doesn’t complete a college degree.
A summary can be found at Washington Post: link. Coming at the topic from another angle, perhaps you’ll enjoy “Settle Down” by Kimbra. Or perhaps you won’t, if your tastes in song and dance don’t run that way.
Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox.
From mysliveroflife.blogspot.com
In Spring the gardener finds out death.
He finds which limbs did not o’erwinter.
Some stems twig and bud and bloom,
Some stems splinter.
I lost a limb some seasons back,
Of my flesh, my firstborn daughter.
Time dried the break, but I still lack
The fruits–a moiety of laughter.
This Ross Douthat piece is worth your while. He points out that most reflex liberalism (equality! fairness!) is really reflex Christianity, and it doesn’t make much sense to criticize Christianity’s sexual ethics, e.g., on the grounds that they conflict with some vaguely remembered echo of Christian doctrine on the dignity of man that’s been worked up into a generalized system.
they had offered this man a free vasectomy years ago. (Maybe they did, the article doesn’t say.)
Before we put the entire blame on the man, know that he did have 11 female accomplices in this matter.
Alternate titles:
1. Modern day polygamy…. more or less.
2. When you reward something, such as illegitmacy, you get more of it. See Jane Galt.
Today would be Betsey’s 11th birthday. This is what I wrote on her birthday seven years ago.
(more…)
This is a review of a religion-sympathetic book about the ‘childishness’ of religious belief from an evolutionary and developmental perspective. I think you’ll find it as interesting as I did.
On the sweetness of Mormon life– (more…)
Why is it Korihor who preached against original sin? (more…)
Today would be Betsey’s 10th birthday. This is what I wrote on her birthday six years ago.
I closed comments to this year’s post to keep the comments all in one place.
Like political theories (libertarianism comes to mind), many theories of the Atonement founder on the rock that is the existence of children. (more…)
On the sweetness of Mormon life. (more…)