Holding together, better than most

摘要

The American family is going to hell in a handbasket, as everyone knows, with high rates of divorce, rotten kids and neglected old folks. True, the American family unit breaks up and reassembles itself with unfortunate velocity, but in other ways the picture is positively heartwarming. Here are a few examples. Babies. Americans like them more than other rich folks. America is one of only two industrialised countries (Sweden is the other) to have seen its birth rate go up since 1975. Over her lifetime, the average American woman will bear 2.1 children, compared with 1.67 in the rest of the rich world. Education. Children start school earlier now—more than half go to pre-school training, compared with 37.5% in 1970—and they are staying on longer.