Andrea Peyser

Andrea Peyser

US News

Nuclear (family) alarm!

Georgina Bloomberg is the face of the millennials — a generation of young adults unfazed by the old rules of morality.

At age 31, the elder of billionaire former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s two daughters is a professional equestrienne who, in December, gave birth to a son, Jasper Michael Brown Quintana, by her horseback- riding beau, the Argentine-born Ramiro Quintana, 37. And if you thought the arrival of a bouncing bundle of joy might propel the heiress to gallop to the nearest chuppah, you’d be mistaken.

“I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever get married,’’ Georgina Bloomberg told Hamptons magazine. “It’s just something I never really cared about, but I’m not saying I never will.’’

Such ambivalence. With that, Georgina Bloomberg has gone from a lady who might once have been considered a rebel or worse, a fallen woman, and transformed into something quite different: A normal, average American.

Go back to 1960, the “Mad Men’’ era when wives stayed home to procreate, and the proportion of children born to American women who were not married stood at a mere 5 percent.

Over the decades, the number has risen in a dizzying fashion. Last year, as has been the case for the previous five years, 41 percent of women give birth without the benefit of marriage, according to data collected by the National Center of Health Statistics. Despite the post-baby union of such couples as reality TV creature Kim Kardashian and rapper Kanye West, more than four in ten women with children either chose not to get married, or don’t consider wedded bliss, or misery, an option.

But what happens to the kids?

As numerous studies have shown, children who grow up in fatherless households are more likely than those in standard, two-parent homes to grow up poor, drop out of school or get in trouble with the law. Or, in the case of girls, to get pregnant as teens.

“After birth, children whose fathers play with them, read to them, take them on outings, and care for them have fewer behavioral problems during their early school years. And they have a lower risk of delinquency or criminal behavior as adolescents,’’ Paul Raeburn, author of “Do Fathers Matter? What Science is Telling Us about the Parent We’ve Overlooked,’’ wrote in a piece published in this newspaper.

But should we worry about Georgina Bloomberg? While we moan about the plight of children raised by unmarried moms, or ones whose dads are mere visitors, the biggest problems associated with kids from broken homes or ones in which the parents were never united legally, exist mainly among the 99 percent — not the stinking rich.

Don’t they?

This month, Kevin McEnroe, the 28-year-old son of former tennis great John McEnroe and actress Tatum O’Neal, was busted in Manhattan while allegedly trying to score cocaine and prescription drugs from a drug dealer. Young McEnroe not only came from a broken home, his mother lost custody of him and his two siblings in 1995 due to her heroin addiction. The wealthy are not immune to the ravages of parental dysfunction.

And it’s only getting worse.

Millennials — defined as people who became young adults around the year 2000 — are on track to have the lowest rates of marriage of any previous generation. More than 30 percent of millennial women are expected to remain single by age 40, according to an Urban Institute report. And while the percentage of babies born to black, single women has been pegged as high as 71 percent by National Vital Statistics Reports, the racial gap has narrowed since 1980, with 29 percent of children born to white women without the benefit of marriage.

Rich, poor or in between, I fear for the next generation.

A buck and a quarter for the dismal New York Daily Olds

Like acid reflux or a wicked case of déjà vu, history repeats itself in the New York Daily News — and it’s the dwindling number of readers now forced to plunk down a whopping $1.25 per weekday copy for the boring tabloid who’ve been duped.
In a front-page story Thursday trumpeted as an “exclusive,’’ the paper reported as “news’’ the tired, old revelation that, in 1999, then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton told an interviewer that then-President Bill Clinton turned into a “compulsive cheater’’ because he was abused by his mother.
Where have I read this story before? Oh, right. I read it in the Daily News!
Writing about a new memoir by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lucinda Franks, wife of former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, reporter Nancy Dillon described the supposedly never-before-told story of ill treatment suffered by Bill Clinton at the hands of his mother, Virginia Kelley.
“He was abused,’’ Hillary Clinton is quoted as telling the author, according to the News. “When a mother does what she does, it affects you forever.’’
“Franks relates that Hillary Clinton blamed Bill’s mother Virginia Kelley for ruining her son’s childhood and inflicting permanent damage on his character,’’ Dillon wrote. The article states that a galley of Franks’ book due out Aug. 19 — “Timeless: Love, Morgenthau and Me’’ — contains scandalous information about Bill Clinton’s early years, as described by his wife. The News claims that Franks “left out’’ any references to these horrors in a 1999 article she wrote in the first issue of the short-lived Talk magazine, edited by Tina Brown.
Strange. In 1999, the News published a story about Franks’ Talk piece titled “Hillary Opens Up,’’ which contained exactly the same stuff.
“He was so young, barely 4, when he was scarred by abuse and he can’t even take it out and look at it, Hillary Clinton said,’’ according to a 15-year-old piece by then-reporter Dave Goldiner, who repeatedly misspelled the name Kelley as “Kelly.’’
“There was terrible conflict between his mother and grandmother. A psychologist once told me that for a boy, being in the middle of a conflict between two women is the worst possible situation. There is always a desire to please each one,’’ Franks quotes Hillary Clinton as saying.
That account, as in the one published Thursday, does not detail the precise types of abuse supposedly inflicted on Bill Clinton, but points to psychological damage inflicted on the future president by his mom. This is precisely the same tale the News put out in 1999.
I can’t wait to see what recycled tidbits the paper comes up with next!

Mick & boys’ geezer toys

Further proof that getting old is a drag: The Rolling Stones have given up sex and drugs in favor of watching TV shows and playing board games. After belting out “Gimme Shelter’’ it’s gimme jigsaw puzzles!
“We like them because they are very good for the brain,’’ Sally Humphreys, the 36-year-old wife of guitarist Ronnie Wood, 67, told the Telegraph newspaper. She’s organized a hot backgammon tournament when the band goes on tour in October. Fun!
Core British members of the band of wrinkly rockers include lead singer Mick Jagger — Sir Mick after he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth — a great-grandfather of 70. Guitarist Keith Richards is also 70. Drummer Charlie Watts is 73. Now be quiet!
The Rolling Stones need their rest.