O.k. Here is the thing. i'm still a little unclear on what point you are trying to make. i think, and i may be wrong, that you are trying to demonstrate that out of wedlock births are not much of a concern do to the fact that many people cohabitate without getting married, therefore it is no big deal. First of all of the responses to your little quiz are from this board. Hardly a fair cross section of the population. Secondly you bend the data. Someone who says they cohabitated before marriage are automatically thrown into the cohabitating category as are those who say they are cohabitating now with definite plans of marriage in the future. i know you never claimed this was at all scientific. Its good that you know that.
Might as well give you a direct answer too, I guess, although I guess I covered most of it in the above post.
No, this is not scientific in any way, it was more meant as an illustration.
Secondly, I am not bending the data, I am getting at the point that co-habitation is not at all uncommon, and as some of the responses showed, it also goes some way back in time. And co-habiting is co-habiting if they plan to marry later on or not.
My point throughout has been that marriage has little to do with what matters here. We are talking human relations, and plain parenting skills. None of which are directly affected or even improved by signing a legal paper and having a church ceremony. With this informal and unscientific poll, I hoped to get a lot of different responses from real people's different circumstances, thoughts and orderings. And I got that. For my own benefit, I highlighted the co-habitation part to further drive the point home. People have before and now had many different ways to organize themselves in their personal matters. My poll of only 28-29 respondents gave a hint at the spread we're dealing with.
So if we're talking about people not wanting to commit or poor parenting skills and the like, realize that the marriage status has little influence on it. I am not out to dis marriage and denigrate it. Not at all, I see it has many good qualities. But neither do I associate with more than it's worth. It comes down to people in the end, not whether they've been hitched or not.
So if I have gotten clear the points that:
1: Nothing magical happens to the person that gets married. The people are still the people they are/were. So marriage is not a cause of commitment and stability, it is an effect of it.
2: There are many ways to go about ordering your personal relationships. Me, for one, don't think that anyone should have a say on what I do personally, or what you do personally in these matters. Alternatives to a permissive attitude, is public control or coercion of some sort. I don't like the sound of that.
3: None way of ordering personal lives should be held higher than other, and none should be stigmatized for what and how they go about it.
Now this may have sounded like I was gunning for you exclusively, but I wasn't really. View this response as partly directed at you, partly as a declaration sort of.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Comments
No, this is not scientific in any way, it was more meant as an illustration.
Secondly, I am not bending the data, I am getting at the point that co-habitation is not at all uncommon, and as some of the responses showed, it also goes some way back in time. And co-habiting is co-habiting if they plan to marry later on or not.
My point throughout has been that marriage has little to do with what matters here. We are talking human relations, and plain parenting skills. None of which are directly affected or even improved by signing a legal paper and having a church ceremony. With this informal and unscientific poll, I hoped to get a lot of different responses from real people's different circumstances, thoughts and orderings. And I got that. For my own benefit, I highlighted the co-habitation part to further drive the point home. People have before and now had many different ways to organize themselves in their personal matters. My poll of only 28-29 respondents gave a hint at the spread we're dealing with.
So if we're talking about people not wanting to commit or poor parenting skills and the like, realize that the marriage status has little influence on it. I am not out to dis marriage and denigrate it. Not at all, I see it has many good qualities. But neither do I associate with more than it's worth. It comes down to people in the end, not whether they've been hitched or not.
So if I have gotten clear the points that:
1: Nothing magical happens to the person that gets married. The people are still the people they are/were. So marriage is not a cause of commitment and stability, it is an effect of it.
2: There are many ways to go about ordering your personal relationships. Me, for one, don't think that anyone should have a say on what I do personally, or what you do personally in these matters. Alternatives to a permissive attitude, is public control or coercion of some sort. I don't like the sound of that.
3: None way of ordering personal lives should be held higher than other, and none should be stigmatized for what and how they go about it.
Now this may have sounded like I was gunning for you exclusively, but I wasn't really. View this response as partly directed at you, partly as a declaration sort of.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde