OTTAWA — A recent survey has “discovered” that women who work are having fewer children and are consciously choosing professional success over motherhood. The study of 281 professional and managerial working women found that almost a third of female professionals and managers had no children and cited the importance of their work as a factor in that decision. Of the women interviewed, 28% had no children and of those who did have children, only 54% had more than two. The study found what pro-family activists have said for years: the declining birth rate represents a threat to economic and social stability.
However, the researchers at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business, instead of criticizing a culture that devalues women's traditional roles as wives and mothers, are blaming governments and organizations for failing to provide flexible work schedules and day care.
Linda Duxbury, one of the study's authors said, “These professional women are making a conscious decision to limit family size because they know that organizations and government haven't responded…. They used to have the kids and worry about the career later. Now, they're worrying about the work first.”
The study points out also the implications for future economic stability in the seemingly unstoppable demographic spiral that women's choices have started. Canada's birth rate, at 1.5 children per couple, is in line with that of most of the industrialized world. Even the most energetic modern economies are expecting disastrous long-term results from an aging population.
Proponents of the traditional family have long criticized the economic trend that is now effectively forcing women out of their homes. They point to the consequent disruption of the family to explain many disturbing modern social developments including high levels of divorce, teen depression, and suicide.
Writer and long-time pro-life, pro-family activist John Muggeridge said that the two ideas — women working full time in professional positions and traditional marriage — cannot be made to mesh. He said, “They've forgotten what marriage really is, it's purpose is not simply to provide recreational activity for people in their off hours.” Muggeridge said that the cracks in the social structure started showing at the very start of the feminist-driven social revolution, with women complaining that they were doing too much. “Now,” he says, “they appear to have chosen and children have lost. Marriage is a full-time occupation. To attempt to take children out of the marriage equation and replace them with work is being married to your job rather than to your husband. It may sound chauvinistic, but it happens, unfortunately, to be true.”
(This update courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.)
