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Unit 83

Girls Want to Stay at Home?

Their grandmothers fought for the vote, their mothers battled to have everything, but the upcoming generation of British girls have decided to turn the clock back: They just want to stay at home with their babies.

According to a survey of 5,000-plus teenage girls in Britain, their main ambition is to complete university and return to the homestead.

More than nine out of 10 of the girls believe it should be up to their husbands to provide them with bread.

More than 90 percent of those polled for CosmoGirl magazine's November issue believe it's the man's role to provide the household's money. And 85 percent maintain they would rather rely on their partner for financial support than be a successful, independent woman.

Instead of making a career for themselves, girls today plan to be married by the age of 25 -- three years below the current national average of 28.2 years old.

And, although 43 percent of those questioned believe they should continue with their education until they have a university degree, one in four say that getting married is their number one priority in life.

The supposedly super-modern, "fun comes first" teenage generation has proved to be remarkably traditional in every area of beliefs: Over 50 percent say they would not dream of having children before seeing a ring on their finger.

The desire to have children is kicking in earlier too. On average, teenage girls plan to have their first child at 26 and most plan to have one or two more children over the following four years. The national average now is 1.64 children per couple.

"This is so unsurprising," said author Claire Rayner. "The majority of girls have no bright future and nothing very special to look forward to. All they can hope for is their own man and their own baby."

"This survey doesn't indicate that the battles of feminism have been lost," Rayner added, "It was never opposed to marriage or children. It's about equal chances for women to do what they wanted to do, which is exactly what these girls are choosing to do."