Women: Go to College and Die Childless and Unloved

That seems to be one of the messages coming out of the latest US census report. Apparently women who go to college and postpone childbearing are considerably less likely to ever have children.

Fertility researcher Karen Guzzo, an assistant professor of sociology at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, says many women "are probably not choosing never to have children, so much as … they're not forming relationships because they're investing in their education and careers."

...•Women with a college degree are experiencing what the bureau calls a "delayer boom" — they're having babies at later ages than other women and having fewer children overall. _USAToday

Here are other fascinating findings from the census report:

Women with less than a high school education had three times as many births as women with at least a bachelor's degree. Eighty-three percent of women 25 to 34 with less than a high school education had given birth at twice the percentage recorded by women with at least a bachelor's degree (42 percent).

...-- By age 40 to 44, white non-Hispanic women (20.6 percent) were more likely to be childless than Hispanic women (12.4 percent), black women (17.2 percent) and Asian women (15.9 percent). Black women were also more likely to be childless than Hispanic women. Asian women did not differ from black or Hispanic women. _ChicagoTribune

Women who narrow their focus to just their careers often unwittingly fritter away any chance for motherhood they may have had.

I know...that not being a mother means there is a part of me which remains unused, a love that will be forever unexpressed. I know that what any mother describes as the most profound love she has ever known is, to me, a locked door — there is so much love I will never be able to give, wisdom and understanding I cannot share, shelter and solace I cannot provide.

...My regrets will always linger. My life is a poorer place for not having children, and I am less of a woman for not being a mother. There is a vast realm of experience and growth I will never know. _DailyMail

Women who have blindly shut themselves off from motherhood in their fertile youth often try to project an attitude of indifference and lack of regret to the outside world. But inside herself, she must face the truth of the things she will never know, and the love she will never share.

On the larger scale, for the western world this means that too many her most intelligent women will never have children. Less intelligent and uneducated women will take their place in the birthing wards, and less intelligent children will fill the classrooms, playgrounds, and public spaces of the future.

The US has its poor and uneducated Mexican immigrants, Europe has its poor and uneducated immigrants from MENA, SS Africa, and Asia. The demographic displacement plays out sans fanfare or announcement, to general public indifference.

But the longterm fallout will be severe, as the average population IQ sinks below the level necessary for a complex society to sustain its infrastructure.

Taken from a piece published earlier at abu al-fin

Special Note: An earlier Al Fin posting has been "disappeared" by a Blogger glitch in the course of the blog host updating to a new version. Al Fin is lucky to have only lost one posting. Many bloggers lost several articles, and some lost their entire blog -- at least temporarily.

The previously published piece will be re-published when it becomes available, along with comments which are presumably still attached to it.

AF