Children and Art

According to Stephen Sondheim (Sunday in the Park With George, sung by the character of Dot), we can only leave two things behind--children and art. I've already screwed up the first part of that equation, and I'm not doing so well on the second.

Yeah, feelin' pretty guilty on both counts.

Especially when I'm reminded that during my childbearing years, I shoulda ponied up 2.1 kids to keep average. Oops!

But what of this other stat recently released by the Feds: Last year, 40% of all births were out-of-wedlock.

Yikes.

Seriously?

Is it me, or is that just plain sad?

We gotta combo of situations influencing this trend. One, after a steady decline, teen mom birth rates were up. And two, more women in their 30's and 40's chose to become single parents. Finally, lots of happy couples just didn't bother to tie the knot.

Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore, that's for sure.

Hard to believe that in the 50's women not only married their "baby daddies,"--they also had, on average, FOUR children a piece. ('Course the 50's were also famous for the rise in popularity of stuff like Miltowns--forerunner to Valium--which is probably the only way to survive four kids with your mental faculties intact, but I digress.)

Anyway, I guess the good news is that we're having enough babies to replace ourselves...but hell, OctoMom covered that with one pregnancy, didn't she??