A recent post I read has impressed upon me that cohabitation and/or actively chosen single motherhood may well be the most critical threat facing families and society at large.
Ann Coulter devoted a devastating chapter to it in her most recent book, but Joanne Jacobs has linked to a new study that finds cohabitation and voluntary single parenthood so prevalent that it is now very much the norm. Her report reminded me of this incredible essay in City Journal–part of a theme that they focused on for a while–that details the many problems of our generation’s heedlessly hedonistic lack of values.
I knew a guy who lived with a woman for a few years, having a couple of kids with her. After a while, he started calling her his wife, though they refused to actually get married. When he decided to leave her for another woman, that concept of hypothetical matrimony must have gone out the window. Now he calls the new woman, to whom he also has not gotten married, his wife.
Multiply that to a large scale and you see the environment in which the next generation will grow up.
Gently Hew Stone 
I imagine that in another generation or so, the jump-rope rhyme will go, “First comes love, then comes not-love . . . “
Sally, good call. How about this? “First comes lust, then comes sex, then comes a baby that will statistically be socio-economically disadvantaged due to their fractured familial structure.”
Hmm. Not quite as catchy as the original, eh?