>   Women married later and later, fewer women got married and had kids
> right
> out high school.  More and more women of all ages chose to become mothers
> without getting married first.  Being UNWED and a mother came to be seen
> as
> OK, acceptable, fine.  So people shifted their target for accusations of
> immorality to TEEN mothers, with the assumption that none of these women
> were married, as well as the assumption that "girls" in their teens are
> incapable of being good mothers.
>
This kind of thing fascinates me!
Other shifts occured, too. Women began to have smaller and smaller
families, so large families became viewed as burdensome to the mother
and unfortunate for children. Women joined the work force in greater
numbers, the economy changed, and single-income families fell into
poverty. The economy, brain research, contraceptive advances changed our
ideas about child spacing, how much attention children need and what
kind of attention while continuing to ignore the difference BF makes to
all those areas. There were no longer younger siblings to watch and care
for, there was no longer a stay-at-home (or work-at-home) parent to
follow around, children were increasingly cared for according to the
advice of parenting specialists, ECE workers and toy and formula
manufacturers. How many girls and boys saw younger siblings being
carried, breastfed, and nurtured?
So, besides the "immorality" of teen moms, raising children was seen as
an unfortunate burden. I have been told *many* times that it was unfair
to expect my teenagers to help care for their siblings... although,
really, there was not much "baby care" to be done at my house, even with
all the babies there were. They were just, well, I don't know, just
there in the sling...
Jo-Anne, getting muddled by the end of the post.

>
>

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