NEWS: Breed! Breed! Breed!

complicatedgirl wrote:

What IS it with Australia these days? Paging Geodyne...

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...017031550.html

It's all too hard
April 5, 2004

Against the backdrop of a declining birth rate, new research shows
more men and women are struggling to form long-term relationships or
simply don't want to. Sushi Das reports.

Tim Wooster has ideas shaped by the disturbing things he's seen. He's
seen his dad grind through long working hours and later regret not
getting to know his kids better. He's known three men in their 50s who
committed suicide because of the humiliation of years of unemployment
in their middle years, and he's watched financially devastated fathers
and single-parent mothers left behind in the wake of a soaring divorce
rate.

"There's no pressure for me to have kids," says Wooster, a research
scientist at Monash University. "When I do think about the
responsibilities, it's a massive burden. I really do want to have
kids, that's a clear goal of mine. But when I look at the kind of
lifestyle I want to have and add kids to that equation, it just
doesn't compute, and that's a concern I have.

"I want to be completely set up before I have children . . . I don't
think about having children and having a marriage all the way through.
One of the things that keeps me up at night is if I have children,
it's likely that it will end in divorce just because of the sheer
numbers of marriages that end in divorce, and then the financial ruin
it will put me in."

At 27, Wooster is already making voluntary contributions to his
superannuation to safeguard his future. He's on a three-year contract
and the job insecurity makes it difficult, if not impossible, to plan
for the future. While he has a comfortable income, he's saving to buy
property.

He works about 60-70 hours a week because that's what he has to do if
he wants to get ahead in his job. But his relationships break down
after several months because he simply hasn't got the time while he's
working so hard.

He's tried internet dating but nothing has come of it, so he's been
single for a couple of years now. He aims to have children in his 30s
and anticipates it will get harder to find the right woman as he gets
older.


In the muddle of statistics, Government policies, ferocious marketing
of singledom and dramatic changes in values from one generation to the
next, it is easy to miss the emotional cost of a rapidly changing
world.
In Wooster's world, financial security is the priority before he can
consider a stable relationship and children. The same is true for many
women: they want partners and children, like the generation before
them, but they say they need more money and it's getting harder to
find the right person.

The Age spoke to men and women about their search for the right
partner and their plans for children. Many see their predicament as a
direct result of Government policies that fail to foster a stable
environment in which to have children. They also blame the business
world for relentlessly marketing the image of a young, free and single
lifestyle as the "coolest" way to live, while isolation, hard work,
loneliness, financial constraints and a longing for children are
closer to the reality of their lives.

Daniel Donahoo found life took on meaning when he had Felix (front)
and Kolya with his wife Tania Andrusiak.
Pictu Gary Medlicott

Last week, new research released by Monash University found that the
proportion of young men and women who are married or in a de facto
relationship has declined sharply since the 1980s, and marriage rates,
in particular, have plummeted. In 1986, nearly half of men aged 25-29
were married. By 2001, it was only a quarter.

Titled Men and Women Apart, the study commissioned by the Australian
Family Association also found that since 1986 most of the decline in
"partnering" has taken place among less affluent men and women.

Furthermore, nearly half of single women in their 20s and 30s who
don't have university qualifications are single mothers.

The reluctance of less affluent men to take on marriage and parenthood
is possibly a reflection of their financial circumstances, the study
says. Of the women who are lone parents, their reliance on parenting
payments reduces their availability and their interest in
re-partnering.

For the more wealthy and educated in society there is still a
"marriage gap". The study found one third of degree-qualified women
aged 30-34 did not have a partner, and that there were now more single
women with a university education than there were tertiary-educated
single men.

In the muddle of statistics, Government policies, ferocious marketing
of singledom and dramatic changes in values from one generation to the
next, it is easy to miss the emotional cost of a rapidly changing
world.

Australia has an unsustainable declining average birth rate of 1.8
children per lifetime. This is the manifestation of crucial individual
decisions relating to the most private sphere of people's lives —
their love interests, their parenting aspirations and their search for
a soul mate.

There are two questions many people are struggling to answer: when is
the right time to have a baby, now or later, and how can I start a
family when I can't even meet the right person?

Linda Berry is one of a growing group of non-university qualified
women who is having difficulty meeting the right man. She's a
37-year-old office administrator who has been working since her
parents split up in the last year of her schooling. Her long, dark
hair frames her open features. She doesn't look 37.

Berry's relationship with a man her age ended because he didn't want
children and she did. Two further relationships with men in their 40s
also ended over the baby issue.

"I made it clear why I was interested in a relationship . . . those
relationships ended quite fast because of that and the men took the
initiative and ended them," she says.

She's tried speed dating, blind dates, enrolling in courses to meet
men and placing ads in the newspaper. But nothing has worked.

"I'm not a career-minded person. I've got a good job . . . if I had a
chance I would have had children in my 20s. I was ready to have
children at 28 . . . I haven't concentrated on my career, but what do
you do when you haven't got a relationship? You work and you buy a
house."

Andrew Price, a 27-year-old chef on $44,000 a year, recently broke up
with his girlfriend, a ballet dancer. They were passing ships in the
night because of his awkward late shifts. In peak season he works up
to 70 hours a week. He says he would like to get something under his
belt before he thinks about kids.

"The shelf life on a chef's career is 35-40 before you move into the
executive head chef position. If you don't get to that position,
you're buggered," he says.

Providing he meets a suitable partner, he plans to have children in
five to eight years. "Maybe I am too selfish in that respect," he
says. "At the moment I'm still just looking after myself, still
looking out for number one."

At the other end of the spectrum is Claire Forester, a single,
41-year-old GP with her own house in the outer suburbs. Her neighbours
on both sides are single women who live alone. Forester's pet dog
keeps her company. She says she is not the "stereotypical woman" whose
youth and beauty is celebrated on the cover of glamour magazines. She
believes her short stature and her looks are part of the reason why
she has always been unsuccessful at meeting the right person.

She admits to having had only one relationship in her life and that
lasted just six months. Her latter 30s were devoted to the care of
both her parents, who recently died of cancer, and her only sister
lives in the United States. Despite a large and lively network of good
friends, she has no immediate family to support her as she enters her
middle age. After years of searching fruitlessly for her mate she is
in the process of adopting a child from the Philippines — a long and
emotional journey to have a family of her own, somehow.

There are endless stories of men and women who have delayed having a
family and who are now finding it difficult to find a partner. For
many, time and financial pressures have conspired to force them to
delay having children.

If today's young rebels are those who buck the trend and have babies
in their 20s, then Daniel Donahoo is one of them. A father of two at
the age of 26, he says he never planned to have children early, but he
has no regrets.

He was an "inner city type" kicking around the music industry when his
girlfriend Tania got pregnant. They moved to Castlemaine and had a
second baby.

"It has given my life extraordinary substance," he says. "Everything
in society, all the magazines, were saying to me: you shouldn't do
this. You're 25, you've got your whole life ahead of you, there's time
to do this later on.

"Except this has given so much more meaning to my life. It made me
actually grow up and take some responsibility."

Donahoo works full time as a public servant and his wife takes care of
the children and sometimes works from home.

Today's young men are "ripped off", he says, seduced by lifestyle
images involving casual sex, consumer goods, and youth and beauty. The
subliminal message of these images is that babies are not "cool"
because they impinge on your dream of self-fulfilment.

Feminism, he argues, liberated women by giving them choice. Today, men
are robbed of choice. He says they are not told that they can have a
fulfilling career that does not dominate their lives, and a long-term
relationship with children.

Fatherhood is just not "sold" as the amazing experience that it is, he
says. "I think men, along with the rest of society, are going to face
some extraordinary challenges in my lifetime."

Such challenges might finally redefine the role of men, he says. As
for him, his own role was redefined in his mid 20s when his son was
born. That was his real introduction to manhood.

"It was overwhelming and surreal. I thought to myself, this is what
we're about. That was my grounding moment — to say, this is your
responsibility now."