American Idol-- Free Child with Every Song

So I finally sat down to watch American Idol in earnest this season. I've sort of popped in and out the past few weeks, but after watching both of the last seasons in full, I just wasn't ready for another few months of auditions and Hollywood week. I didn't even really watch the first few weeks of public eliminations as they went back to the original way of eliminating contestants and I didn't want to watch 9 people sing every week that I wasn't going to see ever again.

So this was my first introduction to most of the contestants this season and I must say I was decently impressed. It's hard to choose an absolute favorite at this point, but Adam Lambert's version of "Black and White" was the best of the evening by far. Though how awesome would it have been if he performed the Macaulay Culkin rap piece from the song?

Anyhoo.....not that I'm old...I'm not....and maybe it comes from living in close proximity to NYC, but I was shocked at and lost count of the number of contestants who were 23 or under and were married with children or unmarried with children. Holy Crap! It seemed like every other person had a child or was divorced. I was just basically out of college at 23, and even if I could have gotten married in this country back then, it was the last thing on my mind. Even my sister didn't get married until she was 28 and was 30 when she had her first child. Is this something new, or has my head been stuck in the sand?