Trends with Parenting

I grew up with a family of four kids. My husband grew up with the same. I had friends in school who had no siblings and some who had seven. I love big families and I definitely want to have a big family with my husband. It was so sad in class when we were talking about some of the trends in parenting and the reasons for them. Married couples are waiting longer to have children, and we can see this in the church as well. Couples are choosing to have fewer or no children. Parents have more of a permissive parenting style and they just want to be their kids best friend because they don't spend very much time with them. And couples are also finding replacements for children such as pets. I think this is so sad and there could be many contributing factors to this rapid decline. In the 1970's there was a major decline in the number of births. That was the year that the women's rights really started and women began entering the workforce. Birth control pills and abortion started to become popular. There was a scare of overpopulation and people started purposefully limiting their family size because of it. And this was also the time period where divorce rates were the highest. Some other reasons people chose to not have kids were the fact that they were expensive. The statistics show that raising children can be very pricey, but in class we felt like the numbers were very blown out of proportion. It depends on the part of the country you are living in, your lifestyle, if you are self sustaining and many other factors. Couples are also choosing not to have kids because it limits their freedom and they have less flexibility. They like the convenience of being able to get up and go any time they please. They think they won't be able to have fun when they are a parent and they won't have time to do things they want to do. It is true that children are very time consuming, but they should be your primary focus here on earth. It doesn't matter if we make a lot of money or we are famous. We can't take those things with us after we die. We should be focusing on the relationships with those in our lives who we really love and those who matter most to us. Families are a divine unit and they are so important.