Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET The Only Thing Certain in Life by MARGARET DICKSON We all get into our own routines in the workplace and at home. We all get — that is about 20 percent of our state's 10 million or so residents, are accustomed to what is happening in our officially classified as hungry by the lives and in the lives of those around us. federal government. A quick car ride And, it just seems like human nature that around our city almost surely passes we begin to think of life as we experience our homeless. They are under bridges it as the norm for everyone, but in a downtown, holding hand-written signs nation as large and as diverse as ours, at intersections and pushing grocery that is probably not the case very often. carts along streets and roads. We are People of my generation understand surrounded by poverty even worse than the term "shotgun wedding" perfectly. It our own. Two North Carolina cities, refers to a situation in which the father of Lumberton and Roanoke Rapids, were a young woman stands armed and closely recently cited as among the poorest by his daughter and her intended lest cities in the country, and our next-door the young man bolt before the marriage neighbor, Robeson County, has the ceremony is complete. Pregnancy is third highest food stamp population in often implied if not an actual fact. I the nation. sometimes refer to such circumstances as The divide is also pronounced "emergency weddings" to get away from between our urban and rural areas. the implied threat of violence. While the Triangle, the Triad, Charlotte Whatever they are called, today's and a few other places are exploding 20-somethings, even 30-somethings, with growth and economic activities, have probably never heard any such term. Is America still the land of opportunity? Not everyone thinks so. the pickins' are slim in small towns That is because shotgun weddings have and rural counties. Young people leave gone the way of the dodo bird, and the numbers prove it. these areas, not always because they want to but because there is no economic Our new normal are couples who decide to live together and start families future there for them. without marriage, to "cohabitate" in US Census speak. For the first time in Change does not appear to be in sight. American history, the number of unmarried couples living together, during Happily for some individuals, the economic elevator is going up. and after a pregnancy, is higher than those who marry under "emergency" There is a growing class of people we might call the "new rich" who circumstances. This is a major cultural shift in which cohabitation, once made their money as opposed to inheriting it and perhaps building on that strongly frowned upon, is now mainstream. Christina Gibson-Davis who inheritance. At some point in their lives, the new rich have household incomes teaches sociology at Duke University puts it this way, "Individuals still value the of $250,000 or more, landing them in the top one to two percent of earners idea of a two parent family but no longer consider it necessary for the parents in our nation. In a country where upward mobility is far more difficult than in to be married." other parts of the industrialized world, the new rich have "made it" through For reasons probably related to a slow economy and high unemployment, various combinations of education and good, old fashioned hard work and cohabitation is rising fastest among people with high school degrees or less. stick-to-itiveness. The rate is steady among college graduates, and it is somewhere in between for They see and have found opportunity where others have not. A Gallup poll people with some college but no degree. taken last fall found that 60 percent of people making $90,000 or more do Perhaps that is why cohabitation is sometimes called the "poor person's marriage." see opportunity for themselves and for others, while only 48 percent of those Another area of change involves something we all need and want, money. making $48,000 or less feel the same way. The divide between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots, Another division in our land of growing divides. is deep and growing, but the numbers still shock in our nation of such Our own lives may and those of our loved ones may not reflect advancement and advantages. these changes in American life, but then If you walk into a North Carolina public school classroom, statistically, again, they might. But rest assured, these MARGARET DICKSON, Conone of every four children will be living in poverty. North Carolinians used changes are real as are their impacts on tributing Writer, COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. to be in the middle of the poverty pack in the early 2000s, ranking 26th all of us. in the nation. Today, we are 11th and climbing. About two million of us Celebrate Valentine's Day With Us! Valentine's Day Special 484-0261 1304 Morganton Rd. Mon-Sat: 6am-10pm Sun: 7am-3pm Surf-n-Turf for Two $39.95 Reservations Accepted Serving Fayetteville For Over 50 Years! Focus on the Family 20 Countdown Magazine Adventures in Odyssey Contest & Request Line: 910-764-1073 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Keeping the Main Thing ... the Main Thing. visit us online www.christian107.com JAN. 29 - FEB. 4, 2014 UCW 5