WaPo: As Loudoun Grows, So Do Its Families

By Stephanie McCrummen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 21, 2006; Page A01

On a bright Thursday afternoon in the planned community of South Riding, parents lounged at the edges of a field watching Little Leaguers. Nancy Caruso had one kid at bat, twins in a stroller and another running around someplace. Katie Hall bounced her fourth on her hip -- "I could always have another one!" she said -- and Diane Nielsen belted out, "Good job, Peter!" to one of her three.

<snip>

If suburbia has always been for child rearing, to enter the quaint and shaded 10-year-old neighborhood off Route 50 is to find the fertile epicenter of a county with one of the highest birthrates in the nation. Loudoun County rivals parts of suburban Utah, where the Mormon faith encourages large families, and areas such as Hidalgo, Tex., and Manassas Park, where large numbers of recent immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries account for the growth.

<snip>

Caruso has plenty of friends with four. And she has another, Bethany Narzissenfeld, who stays home with five. She reads romance novels in her downtime and likes to say that she probably belongs in her vision of the 1950s -- maybe back in Waukegan, Ill., where she grew up going to church five times a week.

"I never fell in with the give-women-all-the-same-rights-as-men thing," she said. "I wanted to be a homemaker. I intended not to work. I really get upset when I watch TV, when some liberal woman gets up and talks about what women want. Because she doesn't speak for all women."

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/20/AR2006052001344.html
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Get a clue, Bethany. If women hadn't stood up in the 1960s and 1970s, staying home and raising a brood would be your only option.

It's a THEOCRACY! My country, America, is NOT A THEOCRACY!!!

Salt Lake City is the only blue area in the state. Otherwise, it's a frightning place.

Like, The Utah Democratic Party? :shrug:

She would be another...

roles, women as property, no options for a career beyond nurse, teacher or mommy. yeah, the 50's.

wants a "fresh-start"...and she's working at KMart and trying to keep an eye on her "brood" as they enter their teens.. And forget about that big house you got now bethany.. Probably have to sell it to settle the divorce.. Hubby's "new" family will want their own new house, so expect to be fighting for child support as his new family enlarges..

Good luck, beth

I was born in Arlington, Virginia in the 1950s, and grew up in Fairfax County in the 1960s and 70s. My mother went through this very same situation - twice.

After my abusive, chronically alcoholic stepfather moved out on us in the early 1970s, I raised my own family while my mother worked three jobs to support us and keep a roof over our heads. I was both mother and father to my three siblings from the time I was fourteen until I left for college at eighteen. Most of the girls I met at school were only there to get their "M.R.S." degrees. They couldn't understand why I didn't want the entire "Cleaver family experience".

I went to work for the U.S. Government at 22. Had an exciting career; mingled and worked with the famous and infamous. Many of my male colleagues were the guys who married women like the ones mentioned in this piece. They'd muse about how their wives made the children their entire lives, how their spouses never fixed themselves up, or complained and nagged them. One guy told me about his tramp of a wife's affair with a friend of his (the friend took pictures of the guy's wife in the nude - he bought 'em in and showed 'em to me!). Here's me - young, attractive, single, not a care in the world - and these guys are telling me things they wouldn't even tell their own spouses. Unfortunately, sooner or later, those women ended up by themselves, their hubbies having run off with younger women who weren't hampered with family responsibilies.

It sounds cruel, but most men I known and/or worked with don't want someone whose entire worlds is nothing but the PTA, the Scouts, picking the kids up from school, etc. They want to be with someone who is as accomplished as they are and have time for THEM.

I used to live in South Riding, and it is NOT some whacko place with women whose heads are in the 1950s. There are an abundance of townhomes, which are what many younger families can afford, and in general, the houses are packed in - very close together.

There are PLENTY of liberals in the town as well.

I remember when that area was nothing but farms - but if this is representative of the denizens living there now, I want no part of it.

And you're right, phylny: The reporter should've offered a broader perspective of both liberals and singles living there.

Check out the photo gallery accompanying the article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2006/05/21/GA2006052100025_movie.htm?startat=12