Somehow I made it through Father’s Day, mostly by totally ignoring it.  I went to my foster grandson’s birthday party and was struck by how few fathers there are in my (former) foster daughter’s world.  Tina, my foster daughter who is now 27,  is  a street kid from rural upstate New York and she and her friends are baby mamas sans baby daddys.  My foster grandson’s father is long gone.    Good riddance too since he was violent and beat up on Tina regularly.

I’ve also been struck by how marriage is almost unknown among her crowd.  None of them get married, they move in together, have babies, split up, have a baby with another guy, split up and so on.  I’m no fan of marriage but this kind of serial motherhood is a social disaster, kids really suffer.  My foster grandson already shows signs of behavior problems, probably because Tina  is too young and too busy with work and school to have enough time and energy to devote to him.    Tina says she doesn’t want to get married because she’d just have to get divorced.  She watched my marriage fall apart, and my marriage was the only one she actually thought would last.  My ex and I were her model for a happy marriage.  Hah!  Some model.  She doesn’t even talk to my ex now because he cheated on me.

I’ve read that the divorce rate is declining now.  I suspect that’s because there are fewer marriages.  The educated  middle and upper  classes are still marrying, but the lower middles and below are not.  I rent my basement to single moms (looking for a playmate for my daughter when she visits) and not one has been married.   It’s kind of scary.  What kind of generation of kids will come of this I wonder?