Our relative independence of others is the key to the rise of the new social liberalism. Yet, no matter how independent we get, the ineradicable fact of childhood dependence creates demands for a stable family structure governed by certain moral rules. This is the root of our contemporary culture war. Our lived individualism continually pulls us toward a full-fledged libertarianism, while our childhood dependence exerts a countervailing pull toward moral traditionalism.

Yet for all the importance of the work/family issue (I have spent a lot of my working life thinking about that question) as a sole filter through which we now view motherhood, there is something here both false and slightly tedious.In its cool language - "care" rather than love, "work family balance," "quality child care" - meaning is flattened and bleached out. Such language reminds me of those old, well-meaning sex manuals that surmounted our puritan heritage by depicting sex as a bodily function, all jolly and healthy, even medicinal, like a glass of water or a vigorous hike in the woods. What was missing in such texts was the seething heat and pleasure and murk of it all, the sheer power of sexual desire to intoxicate us, or even blast our lives completely off course. And what is missing in the new discussion about balancing work and family is honest acknowledgement of how a life might be changed by a quite different kind of passion - like the capsizing of my friend's reasoned cost-benefit analysis by one small, warm hand.

Take marriage, for example. In the 1950s, the most common age for brides was 18. ``In 2003, when you hear about an 18-year-old bride, the first thing you say is, 'Boy that's unusual -- and boy, that person should've waited,''' Smith said. According to those surveyed, the average age someone should marry was 25.7, and the age for having children was 26.2. Most respondents considered parenthood the final milestone needed to reach true adulthood ... Those younger than 30 were the least likely to rank being married or having children as important criteria for being an adult. Grant Lammersen, a 27-year-old San Franciscan, said it's true that his generation feels less pressure to get married and have kids -- perhaps, he said, because so many of their parents are divorced. ``I don't think those factors are important in defining yourself as an adult,'' said Lammersen ...

Ryan was not a criminal. He was only skipping school, his parents said in telephone interviews. But in August 2000, they said, in the middle of a bitter divorce and custody battle, they decided to send him away to Casa by the Sea, which calls itself a "specialty boarding school" for behavior modification.

Research by the Institute of Social and Economic Research suggests that partnership decisions are partly based on perceptions of the likely future success of the partner in the labour market and elsewhere. What is more, having a partner who is highly educated and highly motivated boosts your earnings - and that goes for women and much as men.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Intensive programs designed to prevent HIV infection in teens can delay the onset of sexual activity, decrease the number of sex partners and increase the use of condoms, according to a review of studies conducted between 1985 and 2001.

In addition to using condoms more often and having sex less frequently, teens who participated in intensive HIV risk-reduction programs developed better skills for negotiating lower-risk sexual encounters and talked about safer sex more often with their partners than teens who did not participate in HIV programs.

Glenn Shows, ministry consultant with the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board, says churches are paying more attention to the single-again and mid-life trends. Singles between 30 and the late 40s are the fastest-growing group in the Baptist church, he says. "The divorce rate is very high. There's lots of dating and remarrying taking place. More churches are making the effort now to address this group...

The study of these parent-child bonds and their consequences is known as attachment theory, a field of psychology that over the years has inspired both scientifically rigorous research and a stream of unsubstantiated, quick-fix parenting therapies ... Yet recent studies underscoring the lasting effect of a loving, attentive caregiver have generated a surge of renewed interest among family researchers and therapists about the notion of attachment. More than a dozen new books based on attachment have landed in bookstores over the last year, from parenting guides to scholarly works. A wide range of attachment-based research is underway, from studies of mothers in the San Francisco Bay Area to female prison inmates in Baltimore to low-income families in New York ... "The revolution has happened," said Victoria Levin, a behavioral research specialist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. "Attachment theory is now the background and backbone of a lot of the work that's going on in families with young children. This is because researchers who started out studying infants have followed these kids into adolescence. They find that the quality of their original attachment still predicts a child's competence, the way they interact with other people, how they do in school, whether they have behavior problems, and on and on."

"The idea is that we are born to form attachments, that our brains are physically wired to develop in tandem with another's, through emotional communication, beginning before words are spoken," said Allan Schore, a UCLA behavior specialist and leading attachment expert. "If these things go awry, you're going to have seeds of psychological problems, of difficulty coping, stress in human relations, substance abuse, those sorts of problems later on."

Forty years ago, legendary Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown shattered the taboo on sex outside marriage with her revolutionary book "Sex and the Single Girl." Now former Cosmo U.K. and Mademoiselle editor Mandi Norwood aims to do the same for sex inside marriage with her new book, "Sex and the Married Girl: From Clicking to Climaxing - the Complete Truth About Modern Marriage."

There was, as she points out, a time and season for everything -- a time for education, a time for work, a time for marriage, a time for retirement. ``Now a more cyclic approach to life is already beginning to evolve where the stages of life -- education, work and family, and leisure -- are reshuffling and reappearing multiple times throughout each lifetime,'' Dychtwald writes ... ``After all, when marriage was originally conceived, no one expected it to last for 50, 60 or even 70 years,'' she writes. ``Cyclic monogamy has become the norm, with most people enjoying two or even three primary relationships over the span of their lengthening lives.'' Those cyclic marriages, she notes, have ripple effects in the marketplace that benefit those who sell such things as wedding attire, new homes and household goods.

Sure, and one's income level has more to do with whether you have a lucrative job than whether you have a college degree. Framing the issue this way--"stable, long-term relationships" matter more than "marriage"--is almost laughable. These two things are not competing variables; they're pretty darn similar. Yet some people still feel the need to split hairs like this in order to avoid saying that marriage matters. But in what situation is a child more likely to experience "stable, long-term relationships"? One where her parents pledge to stay together as long as they live, or one where her parents say, "We'll see; who knows what the future brings?" Are children more likely to experience stable home lives in a society that supports the ideal of lifelong marriage, or in one that does not?

If you want to reduce the proportion of children whose parents have stable, long-term relationships, it seems to me that the first thing you'd do is cut the tie between childbearing and marriage.

Some parents, particularly younger ones, say marriage is something to consider only after they've achieved a piece of the American dream: finished school, established their careers or saved enough to afford a wedding, a honeymoon or a down payment on a house.

But once the couple decided they couldn't afford for her not to return to her current job as a receptionist and realized getting married would cost them more in federal income taxes, they ruled it out.
...
When they learned Leonard, 21, was pregnant last spring, marriage just didn't make any financial sense. To allow Leonard to spend more time with the baby, they wanted the food stamps, cash assistance and health insurance she would qualify for as a single mother.

�We both came from families of divorce�so marriage was a fairy tale we didn�t buy into,� [said one mother.]
...
Take Tacoma parents Jacy Dahlstrom and Shawn Olson, who struggled to add up all the divorces in their family trees. Dahlstrom's parents have each divorced twice, and she even has a grandmother who was divorced three times. Olson's parents have three divorces between them. "You can see why we're both a little leery of the whole marriage idea," said Dahlstrom, 28.

Olson, 25, said he sees marriage as a jinx that will make a family breakup more likely, and in the meantime, give government and divorce-court judges too much power over their personal lives.