Backwards Generation

I am truly saddened by what I see among my friends and other young people my age. They are doing everyhing backwards! I know so many people who I graduated high school with who either have children or are pregnant, but are not married. A generation of children are being born into broken families. They will never get a chance to experience a happy family with two loving parents who love each other as well. Single parenting is becoming the normal thing! It's so very sad...there are so many pregnancies and so little commitment. Young people play with fire day after day without a second thought of the consequences. What's worse is that getting pregnant out of wedlock no longer seems like a 'consequence' at all! It's an 'oh well' sort of thing and the possibility of the relationship between the two future parents not working out is just another detail. It means nothing to them, because they are young and selfish. They are excited about buying baby clothes and picking out a name, but not at all concerned about the child growing up with two homes and no sense of what family is really supposed to be. Some scenarios do end up with the parents getting married, but it's still all backwards. Aren't you supposed to establish a career, get married and then plan the arrival of a child? Why doesn't anybody seem to understand the significance of financial stability and the commitment between man and a woman before bringing a child into this world? Whether you've been dating for years or are even living together, without the bond of marriage you have no guarantee that your significant other will stay in the relationship through thick and thin. But even these days, marriage unfortunately isn't meaning as much as it used to anyway. Just look at the divorce rate...

So, I mourn for the next generation of children. They are going to grow up with parents who can barely provide for them because they did not wait to have a stable life before they had children. They will have to be in the middle of custody battles, child support disputes, and fighting parents. Then what will happen is the parent will eventually come to the realization that they never got to be young and selfish, and then instead of accepting that, they will try to have that part of their life when they're in their 30s and their child is at the point of their childhood where they really need the good influence and attention from their parents. But, their parents will be out partying and being young, paving the way for more and more troubled teens who are missing the parental influence so important to raising an intelligent person. Then, the cycle just repeats itself and those children are having children young and going through the same series of problems and struggles.

So, I am making it a personal goal to go against the grain and do things the right way. I am going to figure out what my career is going to be and do what I need to do to get there. Then, when the time is right, I will get married to somebody I have built a strong foundation with and spend some time strengthening that bond, in order to be able to provide a loving environment for a child. And I will raise my child or children to do the same for their children. I will not contribute to the backwards generation.