We shouldn’t have to choose
| October 8th, 2006Alas readers who saw Whale Rider might remember Keisha Castle Hughes, she was the young Maori actress who was nominated for a best Actress Oscar for her role as Paikea. It has just been announced that she is pregnant at 16. Span and Cactus Kate (of all people), have already covered some of the ways the coverage of these facts has been extremely offensive. But I want to look at this discourse in a little more detail, because it is pissing me off. From the NZ Herald:
National MP Paula Bennett, a mother at 17, said whichever way you looked at the situation, 16 was far too young to have a baby.She believed there was no way a 16-year-old had the maturity to cope with the demands of raising a baby.
and from The Dominion Post
Family Planning executive director Jackie Edmond said New Zealand had the third-highest rate of teen pregnancy in the world. She hoped other teens would not want to “copy” the actress.
This level of tsk-tsking has a very clear subtext about young Maori girls who get pregnant. It’s part of a concerted strategy to blame poor people for being poor.
Look I’m a middle-class white girl, I find the idea of having a baby before I’m economically and socially secure terrifying, but I get to think that one day I will be economically and socially secure. Not everyone grows up with those set of assumptions about their life, and if you don’t have those assumptions your feelings about pregnancy and motherhoood are going to be qutie different.
But there’s actually a bigger issue here. Anika Moa has a song on her new album about the abortion she had when her music career was taking off, that she now regrets. She was told from all sides that if she continued the pregnancy she wouldn’t be able to have a music career - that she had to choose.
That’s why I hate the rhetoric of ‘choice’. Women shouldn’t have to choose between being a musician and a mother. Obviously in the months immediately after you give birth you do have physical restrictions on what you are going to do (longer the longer you breast feed). But so? Why does that mean that you can’t make music - and if you make music people want to listen to, why can’t they get to listen to it?
The answer is, of course, ‘capitalism’. I get that - most women do have to make that choice. But the way most people talk about it you’d think these choices forced on us by something people have no control over, rather than our economic system. You’d think that there was some law laid down that once you had a child you couldn’t do anything else, or if you did it would be 100 times harder. The reason that having a child at 16 is so very hard is that having a child is seen as an individualised project. Parenting gets no economic resouces and no support. It’s hard enough to do with a reasonable amount of money - if you don’t have a reasonable amount of money being able to do anything but parent when you have a child is really difficult.
We could organise our world so that parenting wasn’t just supported, but treated as the necessary work that it is. If we did that, if parents didn’t have to work huge amounts of outside hours (or live on the DPB, and all the poverty that that implies), then parenting wouldn’t be the end or your life. Women who were mothers, whether at 16 or 40, could do other things as well, parenting wouldn’t be seen as the end of your life, and your chance to develop.*
Maybe if we lived in a non-capitalist world that valued parenting women would have children young - when they had lots of energy. Maybe women would have them late, because they wanted to grow up first. Maybe women would make a wide variety decisions based from what they want from life.
But until we build that new world I wish people would just stop judging young women.
Note for commenters: This is not the place for a discussion about Keisha Castle-Hughes or her pregnancy - please keep the discussion general rather than specific, or on the discourse rather than the event.
Also published on Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty
October 9th, 2006 at 12:02 am
Maybe if we lived in a non-capitalist world that valued parenting women would have children young - when they had lots of energy. Maybe women would have them late, because they wanted to grow up first. Maybe women would make a wide variety decisions based from what they want from life.
But isn’t that exactly what we see?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 5:49 am
Well two things one would be that at the moment children close huge numbers of options in terms of other things that you can do with your life. Women who have children young tend to be people who don’t feel like they have options to close off (obviously Keisha Castle-Huges is an exception to this). I think people would be making different choices if everyone had options and having children didn’t limit those options.
The other is the amount of judgement there is around about when and if women have children. If women have children young then it’s a terrible thing because they’re going to breed delinquent children and take our money on benefits, if they have them later then they should spend all their time terrified about their fertility and the fact that we’re not producing enough babies.
This comment was written by Maia.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 8:02 am
I think you’re being a little too generous to sexism and any other number of isms here by not mentioning them. There are societal forces that keep women at home whether they have the economic resources to pursue other careers or not, whether they are mothers or not for that matter.
This comment was written by Sara.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Surely the economic aspects of having a child are only one of the problems with having a child at sixteen. I think it reasonable to say that if you are not prepared to spend at least half your waking hours taking care of an infant, you are not ready to have a baby. At sixteen, most people agree that girls should be spending eight hours in school, which means that the baby will consume all of her other time. Very few sixteen year olds are ready to have their whole waking lives completely taken over by someone else’s needs.
Teenagers have a relatively poor grasp of long-term consequences and are much more impulsive than adults–how could they not be, when they have no way of emotionally understanding the kind of timespans implied by “The rest of your life”? They are thus much more likely to behave irresponsibly during gestation, which research increasingly shows has lifelong consequences for the health, cognitive ability, and wellbeing of the child. They are also less likely to engage with the child, no matter how much social services support they have. They have never had to take responsibility for anything, making it a major emotional shock to suddenly assume responsibility for another human being’s life. Their friends are energetic and likely to be out doing things that sound a lot more fun to a sixteen year old than changing diapers, which can make them resentful and neglectful of hte baby.
Teenage girls are also extraordinarily likely to confuse the attention they receive during pregnancy with a fantasy of what things will be like when they have the baby. If you’ve ever worked with girls who have babies young . . . including middle class girls, so this is not an artifact of poverty . . . you will hear them saying over and over that “I want somebody to love me.” They have absolutely no grasp–and no life experience that would let them grasp–the fact that the love only come in return for totally sacrificing all their wants and desires to the needs of the baby. This is true even when there is excellent childcare available, whether from the state or a grandparent. Though they don’t necessarily realize that it is so, most teenagers, unless their mother is severely dysfunctional (in which case it is even more crucial that they get away from their troubled household for a while before establishing a household of their own) . . . most teenagers are accustomed to having their wants and needs be the most important in the household. Without at least a few intervening years on their own, it is a horrible shock to abruptly transition from being the most to the least important person in your home. Again, this is regardless of whether you have childcare, good social services, and so forth. Babies are gigantic sucking holes of need, and the person responsible for them has to be prepared to set aside everything whenever one of those needs arises. And given that all the responsibility, impulsivity, bad planning, etc. that afflicts teenage girls goes double for teenage boys, they are almost certain to have sole responsibility.
One might say that teen birth “works” in more traditional societies–but only because women’s opportunities for anything but child-rearing are sharply limited, and also because older women have the authority over younger women to force them to parent effectively, which I assume you don’t endorse.
Obviously, there’s no ideal age for everyone to bear a child, but in a society where any job you would want to do takes more than an eighth grade education, twelve is obviously too young, and so, I would argue, is sixteen. Unfortunately teenagers are impressionable, like to do things that celebrities do, and prone to making bad decisions. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to worry that they will decide to have children before they are actually ready.
This comment was written by Jane Galt.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 10:13 am
Robert, we see complaining that women have babies too young and end up welfare leeches, and that they have them too old when they’ve taken somebody’s “slot” in the college/career track and probably cost all kinds of money in fertility treatments. Apparently we’re all supposed to rely on trust funds and have children between ages 21-29, otherwise we should just join a convent or die or something.
What strikes me about this coverage is that nobody asks about the fathers. Nobody suggests that Keisha Hughes’s baby’s father ought to pitch in; nobody told Anika Moa “You know, your husband/boyfriend/partner can take care of the baby while you’re in the studio.” I’m not even talking about child support here, but about responsibility.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 10:48 am
Yeah, not seeing the connection to capitalism here, though. People complain about women’s choices when huge chunks of the paycheck DON’T go to subsidizing women’s choices; is there a serious argument that this will go away when they DO?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 10:56 am
I think you’re always going to come up against one basic problem. Deciding whether you want to participate in child raising is currently a choice. As horrid as capitalism is, the moment having children ceases to be an individualised project people won’t have a choice not to participate in child raising. Why are some people’s set of choices more important than everyone elses?
We could organise our world so that parenting wasn’t just supported, but treated as the necessary work that it is.
Is it really necesary for 16 year olds to have children? I do suspect much of what socialised childcare would end up supporting isn’t necessary, but is entirely optional.
What strikes me about this coverage is that nobody asks about the fathers. Nobody suggests that Keisha Hughes’s baby’s father ought to pitch in…
Perhaps he has made his choice between parenting and personal development and doing what he wants with his life?
This comment was written by nik.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
We shouldn’t have to choose
Of course you should. Life is all about choices.
but I get to think that one day I will be economically and socially secure. Not everyone grows up with those set of assumptions about their life,
Why not? Do poor people in New Zealand not have access to education? Does the fact that one is born poor mean that one has to die poor? Is New Zealand society that class-bound? Why would poor people in NZ not assume that they could get an education and improve their lot in life?
That’s why I hate the rhetoric of ‘choice’. Women shouldn’t have to choose between being a musician and a mother. … The answer is, of course, ‘capitalism’. I get that - most women do have to make that choice.
I don’t get it. What does capitalism have to do with a woman not being able to make music while she’s pregnant/nursing? And are we conceding that she can’t? A pregnant or nursing woman might have a hard time touring, but she could record and compose.
The reason that having a child at 16 is so very hard is that having a child is seen as an individualised project.
The reason why having a child at 16 is so very hard is because at 16 you’re barely mature enough to make most decisions for yourself (and, in fact, legally cannot do so - at least not in the U.S., I don’t know about NZ). So how can you be considered mature enough to make decisions for someone else?
Having a child is seen as an individualized project? Actually, that’s exactly what’s wrong here. Having a child is not an individualized project; it’s a couple’s project. Where’s the father in all this?
Parenting gets no economic resouces and no support.
Actually, in the U.S. there are various public assistance options available. There are also a number of private agencies you can go to for assistance. There are tax breaks.
It’s hard enough to do with a reasonable amount of money - if you don’t have a reasonable amount of money being able to do anything but parent when you have a child is really difficult. We could organise our world so that parenting wasn’t just supported, but treated as the necessary work that it is. If we did that, if parents didn’t have to work huge amounts of outside hours (or live on the DPB, and all the poverty that that implies), then parenting wouldn’t be the end or your life. Women who were mothers, whether at 16 or 40, could do other things as well, parenting wouldn’t be seen as the end of your life, and your chance to develop.*
So: someone decides to have a child at 16 years of age. It is generally considered in our society that someone at 16 years old isn’t mature enough to take care of themselves. One piece of evidence is that a person at 16 is considered a minor, cannot be bound to a contract they sign in most cases, cannot drive at certain times (in many American states), cannot join the military without parental approval, etc., etc. A young woman at the age of 16 trying to raise a child on her own also apparently was not mature enough to either realize that she needed to choose a father for that child who would stick around and help her support that child (financially, emotionally and physically) and her, or she was not mature enough to make a sound choice.
It seems to me that what you’re saying is that we should enable and encourage 16 -year-olds to do this anyway by taking money out of the pockets of people who were mature enough to make the right choices, money they would maybe like to spend on their own kids, and give it to someone who has proved they are not mature to make the right choices in these matters. I don’t think that’s a good idea.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Mythago:
Robert, we see complaining that women have babies too young and end up welfare leeches, and that they have them too old when they’ve taken somebody’s “slot” in the college/career track and probably cost all kinds of money in fertility treatments. Apparently we’re all supposed to rely on trust funds and have children between ages 21-29, otherwise we should just join a convent or die or something.
I’ve seen complaints that people of a given age are too young to have kids and want me to give them my hard-earned money to support their selfish choices. I haven’t seen any complaints that someone is too old to have a kid, other than the medical issues involved, but maybe I’m not reading the right articles (or maybe it really isn’t a prevalent phenomenon). But there’s certainly plenty of other alternatives besides being 21-29 with a trust fund for people to marry (thus creating a legal tie that makes is much harder for one parent to walk away from their responsibilities) and have kids and have the financial, physical and emotional resources to raise them properly. You seem to be setting up a straw man there to sidetrack the debate.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
“I think it reasonable to say that if you are not prepared to spend at least half your waking hours taking care of an infant, you are not ready to have a baby.”
I don’t know where Jane Galt is coming from, but I think the reasonableness of that proposition depends heavily on (a) cultural context, and (b) individual circumstances. When I hear the idea that a parent-to-be (or is it just a mother-to-be?) has to be prepared to spend half their waking hours taking care of the child, I perceive that as being rooted in a very white, Western, nuclear-family-oriented perspective on parenting and childcare.
In many cultures, as well as in some individual family settings, the assumption that so much of a child’s care comes directly from its mother is a faulty one. Extended families and close-knit local communities can mean that a child has many caretakers, not just one or two, and that the responsibilities of an individual parent are thus constructed very differently than mainstream U.S. society, at least, assumes. Even breast-feeding, in some settings, can be a shared responsibility.
I don’t know what kind of cultural setting Keisha Castle-Hughes will be bringing her child into, or what kind of family that child is going to have, so I think the assumption that she will necessarily be her child’s sole (or even primary) caregiver is unwarranted. And any supposition that she should be–that the white, Western, nuclear-family-centered model is the “right” way to approach parenting and child-rearing–strikes me as blatantly racist, classist, culturist…
(It is less directly relevant to Castle-Hughes’s situation, but I will also add that assuming that there can be no appropriate alternatives to a new parent’s direct provision of child care has horribly ableist implications.)
This comment was written by LauraB.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
I might be talking crazy here but I thought — I’m not sure why, or whether this is true or just a misremembering thing on my part — that in New Zealand it’s illegal to have an abortion. (?)
Not that the actress would have chosen to have one. But if abortion isn’t legal in New Zealand that would sort of spin into another direction this whole question of choice, wouldn’t it?
By the way, I live in the South now and many many women/girls in their teen have children here, I have noticed. There are many many grandmothers who have not yet hit 40, for that matter. Sixteen is too young to have children? A tsk-tsk scenario? It’s biological reality; whether women (of a certain class, maybe) make the “choice” not to carry to term or to carry to term is another question.
This comment was written by Laylalola.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
I have worked with pregnant women and new mothers as a childbirth educator, la Leche League leader, doula, and labor and delivery nurse. I can assure you that 18-year-olds are physically better able to handle the process than 30-year-olds. 16 is a bit early since some girls haven’t fully “filled out,” but their prematurity rate seems about the same as 40-year-olds.
A woman’s fertility peaks at 22 and starts to decline noticeably at 27. Teen mothers are back in their old jeans at 6 weeks and able to weather sleepless nights easily; women in their late 30’s are exhausted and can take months to recover.
If our culture doesn’t accept women starting their families when the human body is designed to, then our culture is a problem. Judgmental comments about when women are educationally or economically ready won’t change the fundamental underlying biological truth.
This comment was written by Shamhat.Report this comment to the moderators
October 9th, 2006 at 8:41 pm
The answer is, of course, ‘capitalism’. I get that - most women do have to make that choice. But the way most people talk about it you’d think these choices forced on us by something people have no control over, rather than our economic system.
Life is all about choices and there is no way to avoid that. Even if we took every dime from all the rich people in the world and distributed it evenly among all the poor people of the world then those formerly poor people would still have to make choices and no amount of money is going to make some choices any easier.
I think that it is terrible that Anika Moa was surrounded by people who told her that the only thing that she could do was to get an abortion if she wanted to be successful.
But as someone already commented, where was the father in this situation? Pro-choicers have turned “my body, my right” into a slogan without any thought as to all of the ramifications. Now many men feel as if they have no responsibility to emotionally support the women they impregnate because after all “it’s her body, her choice” and at the end of the day it’s going to be “her problem”. The very nature of pro-choice politics stands on the platform that the woman has the sole discretion and sole responsibility to make the choice of whether or not to abort and far too often there is no mention of the father and his role oncesoever. There was a post on Alas not to long ago entitled something like “Children don’t always need their biological fathers”. Well, situations like this, where a pregnant woman feels isolated-because all of the burden has been placed on her -and ends up making a decision that she regrets are far too often the result.
This has nothing to do with capitalism.
This comment was written by SmartBlkWoman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Laylalola: Abortion is legal in NZ under most circumstances:
This comment was written by Harpy.http://www.abortion.gen.nz/legal/index.html
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October 10th, 2006 at 12:13 am
“Actually, in the U.S. there are various public assistance options available. There are also a number of private agencies you can go to for assistance. There are tax breaks.”
If you’re not working, it’s not enough to eat and live healthily and raise a baby on. If you are working, you don’t qualify. Our safety net is nothing but a few pitiful threads, and getting worse all the time.
And tax breaks are meaningless if you’re too poor to pay taxes anyway. Not to mention that they are essentially refunds…money you get back because too much was taken from you in the first place. Which means you go without that money for a whole year before you see it.
The way I see it is not so much in terms of a huge welfare program as in terms of restructuring our society in terms of work and life. The too are currently at odds, which hurts anyone with family responsibilities. It ought to be possible to work more flexibly and sanely (with a proper amount of vac time and maternity leave). We ought to be able to work from home more and on more flexible schedules. Businesses should be encouraged to enter into partnerships with daycares so that they can be installed in an office building for the children of employees who work there–if rates weren’t outrageous, most employees would gladly pay to have their kids close by all day (I would). There are other equally good common sense ideas out there that would ease the huge burden we put on parents without requiring them to be isolated in their homes waiting for a dole check. Most parents would rather work, if they could do so without harm to their families; right now, we make them choose between the two, because we can’t stop thinking in the 19th century.
This comment was written by emjaybee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 6:03 am
[...] We shouldn’t have to choose - Alas, a blog » Blog Archive “Alas readers who saw Whale Rider might remember Keisha Castle Hughes… It has just been announced that she is pregnant at 16… This level of tsk-tsking has a very clear subtext about young Maori girls who get pregnant…” (tags: maori gender feminism class international) [...]
This comment was written by links for 2006-10-10 at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 6:19 am
LauraB, I don’t know what extended family cultures you’re talking about, but all of the ones I’m familiar with involve the young woman going about her day with the baby slung from her hip. In hunter gatherer societies, Mom carries the baby while hte tribe moves until the baby can walk. In subsistence agriculture groups, baby comes out to the field with Mom, or plays on the ground next to Mom while she grinds manioc into meal. Yes, there are extended family networks that help care for the baby, but they do not care for it 16 hours a day while Mom goes off to find fulfillment as a taro root farmer.
More to the point, if you are not spending a significant portion of your time caring for the child, in what sense are you choosing to be a parent? It sounds like you’re choosing to have a pet. Or rather, that you’re choosing to have someone else be a parent. That’s not a choice I support. It’s one thing to ask for help from society; it’s another to expect to make the choices, and have society do most of the work.
This comment was written by Jane Galt.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 8:41 am
It is ludicrous to force a choice between parenthood and eating. or education. or not sleeping in a tent. or getting health care. or having an ability to do any work for pay.
I question the drawing of similarities between the first category of choices (bad choices which people should not have to make) and what seems to be a not-so-horrible choice between parenting and “trying to become a relatively famous and well paid professional musician.”
If we conflate those types of choices, i think we do a disservice to women who are in the first category.
Parenting is and probably always will be a huge effect on what you can do in life. I can’t even bgein to list the many choices that have been cut off (happily, I might add) by my three kids. That’s only a problem when the choices drop below some arbitrary ‘unacceptable’ level, and she doesn’t seem to be there.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Shamhat:
If our culture doesn’t accept women starting their families when the human body is designed to, then our culture is a problem.
Our culture does accept women starting their families when the human body is designed to. Our culture accepts women 18 - 20 and older having kids. What it doesn’t always readily accept is that those women should have the choice of choosing to get pregnant by a man who isn’t going to/doesn’t stick around and then expect society to make up the deficit.
Judgmental comments about when women are educationally or economically ready won’t change the fundamental underlying biological truth.
True. But here I am on a feminist blog pointing out that one’s actions are not solely or even primarily based on biological factors. The biological truth needs to be combined with educational and economic truths to be combined into an action plan that actually works and yields good results for both a woman and her child.
emjaybee:
The way I see it is not so much in terms of a huge welfare program as in terms of restructuring our society in terms of work and life.
Many corporations are finding that making the changes you suggest is giving them access to a smarter/better labor pool. I see it in the company I work for. How much of this should be left to market forces and how much of it should be the subject of legislation is worth debating.
If you’re not working, it’s not enough to eat and live healthily and raise a baby on. If you are working, you don’t qualify. Our safety net is nothing but a few pitiful threads, and getting worse all the time.
Which is an excellent argument for a woman to wait to get pregnant until she is in a family situation that will provide adequate support for her and her child.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 10:38 am
I was a white middle classed teenaged mother (17). I can tell you that I was not too young to be a mother–in fact, I loved it. I was a very good mother. But still my daughter and I suffered terribly due to the complete lack of family (who rejected me and her) and cultural support. Without it, I struggled from one wage job to another. Never had health insurance except when I was on welfare, which was never enough to pay even the rent in most places. Finding decent and affordable child care was often impossible, in fact, I made the decision to pull her out of an abusive after school program (rampant bullying) when she was 11, and she became a latch key kid. Dealing with impoverished underfunded really lousy schools and teachers (in neighborhoods I was able to just get by in, they were not the worst in the country) was also very stressful. I cannot begin to describe how hard it was–but I want to emphasize, that the “mothering” part, which is difficult (as it always is, regardless of the economic status or age of the mother) was not felt by me to be a burden. Like I said, I loved being her mother, and I still do.
She is now 30, and struggling over whether to have children (she does want them) but she is not able to erase the memories of my struggles (emotionally and economically) and she is afraid. We don’t have a large extended family–it is still just the two of us. She is ‘waiting’ for an ideal situation (her support will come mainly from a man, and that can be hard to find), and she is also worrying about her biological clock.
This is a problem with the dominant culture, which does not, no matter how you parse it, does not value children and does not respect women (mothers) who care for them and love them.
I do acknowlege that I came from a very troubled family, which did indeed play a role in my early pregnancy. I was looking for love (which I didn’t get from her father, another story) My family tried mightily to get me to give her up for adoption (I ended up in a catholic unwed mothers home), but I refused, ie, I made the CHOICE to raise my child, and it is a choice I have never regretted, even during times when I wondered whether she wouldn’t have been better off in a family who had more money etc. I did become pregnant when she was a little girl, and had an abortion–for her sake as much as my own. But in another circumstance, I would’ve welcomed another child, and she would’ve loved to have had a sibling.
All this to say is that I think that for the most part age is a red herring. Young women have been bearing and raising children well at young ages for eons. If we lived in a system which really valued children, there would be no reason why a young woman could not be an excellent mother and for example, continue her education. But that is not where most priorities in this country lie. In fact, the handwriting was on the wall when communities all across the country began vote down school budgets in order to lighten property taxes.
Sorry for the rambling, but this is a topic which “live” for me and not just theory.
This comment was written by Sunrunner.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 11:13 am
Shamhat:
If our culture doesn’t accept women starting their families when the human body is designed to, then our culture is a problem.
I’m not sure I see where fathers fit into your vision. Do you want women to get married at 18? Unless we return a system of arranged marriages and/or heavily restricted divorce, I don’t see those marriages being very stable. Or are you okay wiht biological fathers not playing a major, permanent role in their children’s lives and having grandmothers, aunts, and uncles fill the void?
This comment was written by Brandon Berg.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 11:18 am
Shamhat:
I understand your point about young mothers bouncing back and having more energy, but I dispute that this means that biologically the ideal time is very young. The way I see it, biological, unfettered fertility means (and meant) that women who survived childbirth would continue having babies well into mature adulthood. Indeed, if you controlled for maternal death, I’m sure that before this very modern notion that reproduction is a choice there were more older mothers than there are now. Remember that all of this hand wringing about women waiting “too long” to have familes is really hand wringing about women waiting too long to have first children, since women have always had subsequent children well into adulthood. If, as I said, they survived childbirth.
And we should bear in mind that biology has a role in mental maturity and impulse control that surely contributes to infant survival. Perhaps this is another example of the many conflicts of interest between a mother and her offspring that occur.
This comment was written by elena.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 11:40 am
Shamhat,
It is true that the human body is “designed” to have children earlier (though we continue to evolve). But of course, this evolutionarily-guided reality is a byproduct of a life only recently past but which no longer applies:
A life in which disease killed a significant portion of the population; in which a number of women, and infants, died in childbirth; in which forty years was fairly old and80 wasn positively ancient; and so on.
When the evolutionary goal is “have lots of offspring” then early birth makes sense: not only can you have more, but you’re younger and healthier when you have them. But now that we’ve bypassed a lot of the driving forces behind our human bodies’ historical evolution, there’s no need to be bound entirely by their goals.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Sailorman- built into “have lots of offspring” is “have offspring for as long as you can”. We are designed to keep having babies until our fourth decade.
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October 10th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
like congratulating them for getting married–I feel like, “Why should I congratulate you for following the life script provided by the heteropatriarchy, when nobody ever congratulates me for resisting it?” However, after reading, over at about Keisha Castle-Hughes’s pregnancy
This comment was written by Laura's LiveJournal.Report this comment to the moderators
October 10th, 2006 at 10:18 pm
I’ve been trying to figure out for a long time why most of my critiques are directed at the contributors to Alas and similar progressive blogs. Yesterday, after reading Maia’s post about how it should easy for young women to raise children, it finally clicked. The people who write for this class of blogs frequently have insightful things to say about what’s wrong in the world, but then they go and tarnish their track record by
This comment was written by Shiny Ideas.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2006 at 8:10 am
Harpy: By U.S. standards abortion is primarily illegal in New Zealand except in rare instances:
“It is legal for you to have an abortion if two consultants agree that this pregnancy would seriously harm your mental or physical health or that your baby would have a serious disability. They may also consider your age and whether the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. Your doctor will arrange for you to see the consultants. If your doctor will not arrange for you to see the consultants, you can go to another doctor. You will also be offered the opportunity to talk to a counsellor.”
“Abortions are legal in New Zealand as long as you have met the criteria above.
This comment was written by Laylalola.There is no legal age limit on the person having the abortion. This means that a female of any age can consent to an abortion - or refuse to have one.
Girls under 16 do not need to inform their parents or seek parental consent.
A woman does not need the consent of her partner before having an abortion.
The father cannot force his partner to have an abortion.”
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October 11th, 2006 at 8:13 am
Sunrunner, it sounds like you’ve done a hell of a job. How exceptional an individual are you? How many other women at 17 would be able to do the job you did? Why would it be desirable to encourage more women to try it?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2006 at 8:17 am
Harpy, even your link says the same thing, but in more of a legalese-type language.
I bring the point up regarding the extent to which abortion is legal (or not) in New Zealand because it seems relevant to why a 16-year-old with such a high profile not only would not choose abortion but announce her pregnancy proudly (it’s not uncommon, apparently, for women in her country, once pregnant, to carry to term, and 16 is a biological reality for when many women get pregnant). It also relates to the original post’s reference to New Zealand having one of the highest, if not the highest, rate of teens having babies (presumably regarding pregnancies brought to term in a first-world country, in part due to the abortion issue and its legality or not). It could be an interesting study not just for feminists but anyone to undertake, looking into these questions.
This comment was written by Laylalola.Report this comment to the moderators
October 11th, 2006 at 8:23 am
Oops, here is the quote from the original post:
“Family Planning executive director Jackie Edmond said New Zealand had the third-highest rate of teen pregnancy in the world. She hoped other teens would not want to “copy” the actress.”
Well that’s rather vague, and I remembered it incorrectly, but it does seem to raise the question of how family planning executives measure the rate of teen pregnancies in first-world countries and is that in part by teen births (as opposed to not having on hand readily available statistics regarding teen abortions?) I mean it’s a fair question why New Zealand would have one of the highest rates of teen pregnancies, period, don’t you think? (And to go back to the original poster, is the answer actually “capitalism”? Probably not exactly, but hey, I haven’t analyzed this but on the fly, obviously).
This comment was written by Laylalola.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
I’ve read the same story about struggling teenage single mothers a hundred times. It’s tragic, it’s heartbreaking, it’s also completely predictable. Who can’t figure out that being a single teenage mother without a college education is going to be difficult? We have to support them for their children’s sake, but we ’should’ make these young mothers eat a little crow for it, they ’should’ suffer a little embarrassment. Their behavior is reckless. What message are we sending if we don’t admonish them?
Our safety net is an excellent one. It excels at it’s intended purpose; catching people who fall on hard times. The problem is that our young men and women increasingly regard our safety net a primary resource to which they have a God-given entitlement. Drawing from it becomes Plan A, placing demands on it that it was never intended to bear and when it’s ability to protect us is compromised by abuse we are all put at risk.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
I want to apologize if my last was insensitive. I can certainly imagine that their situation is already hard enough on them. I don’t want to make things worse but how do we prevent the same thing from happening again? How did it become acceptable to adopt such a high-risk, high-maintenance lifestyle at our expense?
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
CJ:
???
The same message you send by not admonishing a forty-year-old woman (me) who is CF and fine with it. It’s the message of compassion;The knowledge that she’ll probably eat crow galore in society at large, and it’s not necessary to add any more.
It’s the message of reciprocity. That which states that a forty-year-old CF woman would be fine with contributing to the single young woman’s family– with the full knowledge that when that woman’s child is grown, she will be contributing to the care of the now-elderly CF woman who has no child of her own.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
October 12th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
[...] Body Impolitic: Little Miss Sunshine The terrorists who aren’t in the news: Anti-abortion fanatics spread fear by bombings, murders and assaults, but the media take little notice Blackademic: Sorry Ass Baby Parents Susie Bright: Checking Out Hugo Schwyzer: Circumcised at 37 and Which Parent Impregnates a Daughter? Creek Running North: ProPatria Alas, A Blog: We Shouldn’t Have to Choose Feministe: Confessions of a Fun Feminist I, Asshole: Best idea for a parenting book ever LGM: Dred Scott as a Weapon Chaos Theory: Women Can’t Win When It Comes to Film Stone Court: Eating Our Own The Debate Link: Pro-Life Principles Noli Irritare Leones: Facing Dangerous Men With Weapons [...]
This comment was written by Feminism Is Like Styling Your Hair: It’s a Process! at Faux Real Tho!.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 9:29 am
ms_xeno:
CF? I’m afraid I don’t understand the acronym.
Admonishment and compassion are not mutually exclusive.
As far as eating crow in general in society - it seems to me that it’s decreasing quite a bit as time goes on. In fact, for many women who can afford it and many who can’t, it’s an increasingly very open choice.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 9:33 am
CF = Childfree.
Unfortunately, our culture seems to routinely confuse admonishment with compassion. Yes, it is more common to make the choice openly, and I’m all for that. Secrecy has its own issues and horrors. Ask somebody involved in a closed adoption sometime if you don’t believe me.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 10:41 am
Tricky though. On the one hand I think we should have great social services for those young women who happen to get pregnant. I think this even though I also think that in general, having kids at a young age is sort of a “bad” thing in societal terms, for a variety of reasons. (not saying the mothers are bad).
But thgouh i want to social services I can’t ignore the reality: The very existence of good social services removes some of the disincentive to avoid teen motherhood.
Overall though increased service is a positive thing and I think that should be acknowledges. It’s a little like condom use or needle exchanges:
Yes, wide/free availability of condims will increase sexual behavior among some folks who perhaps shouldn’t be having sex. Yes, availability of clean/free needles will increase needle use. This type of “moral hazard” is often discussed.
But the benefits of condoms, clean needles, and (yes!) good social services vastly outweigh the costs. The STDs and pregnancies that are avoided by condoms are much “better” than the increase in “shouldn’t have had sex” sex. The dirty needle problems that are avoided are “better” than the small # of people whose decisions are guided by the availability of clean needles.
And the benefits of good social services vastly exceed the costs of the few teen mothers who would have a baby were there good services, and would not have a baby if good services were not available. (Remember BTW that’s the ONLY GROUP who we’re talking about. Most teens either will or won’t have a baby anyway, without making the decision based on available services.)
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 11:46 am
The moral hazard problem Sailorman mentions is the main reason against a strong safety net. I think there’s a way around it, though, a general principle which would mitigate moral hazards for all social service provisions: tie present income tax rates to past social service utilization. You went on welfare for three years to have your baby, and now you’re a successful real estate agent? Great - that’ll be a 3% bump to your income tax rate, forever. No judgment, no condemnation - just an ex-post facto repayment of the resources you took from society. If you never become financially successful, it’s no big - and if you do, you pay us back.
For the fairly large population of people who take future consequences into account, that would provide the same disincentive to “what the heck, let’s get pregnant and drop out of high school” casualness that shame and condemnation used to provide, without the negative psychic effects on everyone.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Sailorman:
The problem with this analogy is that condoms greatly mitigate the costs of sex. The main reason said folks “probably shouldn’t be having sex” is that it exposes them to the risk of disease and unwanted pregnancy. When they use condoms, these risks decrease dramatically. Unless you’re opposed on principle to young, and/or unmarried people having sex, there’s really no downside to greater availability of condoms.
But welfare doesn’t do nearly as good a job at mitigating the costs of young, single motherhood. Its primary effect is to allow single mothers to externalize the costs. Worse, they don’t just push the cost off onto other people; they also push part of the cost onto their future selves by greatly limiting their own opportunities.
I also think you may be underestimating the degree to which young women respond to incentives. Ampersand had a post some time ago about how teenage motherhood was quite often a conscious choice.
You may also be underestimating the degree to which the presence or absence of welfare programs affects culture. One of the reasons illegitimacy rates are so high in some areas is that it’s culturally acceptable. And one of the reasons that it’s culturally acceptable is that everyone knows that the government is going to pick up a big part of the tab. In an environment where the girls’ parents (or mother, and also the boyfriend and his parents, if you can find them) are the ones who end up on the hook, it may become much less culturally acceptable.
This comment was written by Brandon Berg.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
I think I’ll pass on Robert’s proposal. Once you open the door to this level of retaliation, what’s to stop somebody from tagging a “childfree tax” onto people like me ? After all, we’ll be cared for by the children of others when we grow old. More “externalized costs” right there. Watch some genius sit down and calculate how much that’ll run the community so they can dun me for it in advance. Yecchh.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
It’s “retaliation” to pay society back for investments it makes on your behalf?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
Robert,
I’m not sure I agree that young mothers are very good at taking future consequences into account. They’re teens–and teens in general (not just mothers) are prone to making bad decisions.
So I do not agree with you that “For the fairly large population of people who take future consequences into account” exists.
Where are you getting your numbers? Or, to be more specific:
What percentage of young mothers that are currently using social services do you think would not use social services if the services were lessened?
I don’t think the % is very high.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Robert, it is when one considers that the prime candidates for this degree of special attention would be young, single parents (mostly female, though yes I know there are young, single fathers rearing children). Sounds like kicking someone when they’re already down, to me. The tax system is complex enough as it is, and I’m puzzled as to what this really accomplishes when you consider what a tiny fraction of the national budget welfare makes up at the moment. It’s never, to my knowledge, compared in terms of sheer dollars to, say, military spending or corporate welfare for the food industry. Other than some kind of gratuitous feeling of “gotcha for not spawning inside the nuclear family” that would come to society’s finger-wagging squad if this happened, I don’t see the point.
And, like I said, the finger-waggers don’t need any more encouragement, since I doubt they’d stop with dinging young, single mothers. That kind of moral righteousness is sort of like potato chips. They seldom know when to stop. Today it’ll be single mothers. Tomorrow it’ll be childless/childfree women. The next day it’ll be women who knowingly carry disabled children to term and women who run increased risks by having their babies at forty-five. Where in blazes does it stop ?
Furthermore, where the @#$*! is La Lubu when I need her ? >:
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
I’ve always thought teen boys and young men would get serious about birth control when the teen or young mother legally can leave the baby in the man’s care and take off, never to be seen or heard from again, never make a child support payment, and the boy/young man has to be with the baby 24-7 or be charged with neglegect or worse, and must raise the child on his own, period.
Until then, better birth control options are one of the few solutions. I don’t mean abortion — so few women of a certain class will have abortion once pregnant, the statistics show that of the women who do have unplanned pregnancies exactly half will carry to term, which means abortion cannot be and is not the only or even the best answer, as better birth control options would help address more unplanned pregnancies, whether carried to term or not. I mean birth control that doesn’t make your breasts sore, doesn’t give you cancer if you use more than a few years, doesn’t cost too damn much, is easy to use, and is effective. Even the much-touted “morning-after pill” cocktail of birth control is only equally as effective as the much-maligned (by feminists) all-time most popular U.S. birth control among women, the sponge.
This comment was written by Laylalola.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
I mean legally having the choice to leave the baby utterly in the man’s care with no help or no sign of the woman ever again, period, would be real choice, and would dramatically shake things up fast regarding birth control, among other things.
This comment was written by Laylalola.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Furthermore, where the @#$*! is La Lubu when I need her ? >:
Sorry! Been extremely busy lately—but you’re right, this effing response does seem tailor-made for my opinion! ;-)
First of all, let’s get real. Most young mothers do not go on welfare. It’s ridiculous the way “teenage mother” has become synonymous with “extended generational welfare family”, when that is a tiny proportion of teenage mothers (not to mention a small proportion of welfare recipients).
Most of the arguments against teen parenthood aren’t really about encouraging young women to wait until they have better resources for supporting a family—it’s simple “slut-shaming”. If it were really about “better resources”, we’d be bending over backwards as a society to supply folks with affordable, available childcare. We already know that comprehensive sex education and cheap birth control lower the teenage pregnancy rate, but instead of supporting that, we have schools that teach “abstinence only”—and have a rising pregnancy and STD rate to go with it.
The magazine Brain,Child had a good article awhile back about teenage mothers that blew up some of the myths surrounding the who, what, and whys of young parenthood—one of the biggest myths being “teenage motherhood ruins your life”. Teen motherhood isn’t easy—but neither are a lot of other forms of struggle, like caretaking for disabled siblings or parents, surviving cancer, relocating to a different country and having to learn a new language, etc. Why the special vilification of teen mothers? Again, it’s all about the slut-shaming. There are a helluva lot of teenage young men injuring themselves (sometimes permanently) performing stunts; they somehow escape all the lectures and shaming that pregnant young women get about so-called “reckless” behavior.
We will have teen mothers for as long as human beings continue to have a sex drive. This isn’t a “modern” problem that cropped up after the let-it-all-hang-out-Sixties; for crying out loud, the historical amnesia is shocking! I know I can’t be the only poster here whose mother was a full-grown seven-month old baby, y’know. Folks aren’t upset about teen motherhood; they’re upset that these teen mothers have the audacity to not get married. They’re upset that “shotgun” marriages have fallen by the wayside–for the most part, because the only part that worked with a “shotgun” marriage (the paycheck the young husband was able to bring in) doesn’t exist anymore. Instead of being angry that there are fewer opportunities for young people to earn a living, that anger is turned against the more vulnerable target of teen mothers. Unlike the partners who impregnated them, they can’t “hide”; their bodies “show” who they are.
Also, why the assumption that teen mothers are more of a drain on society than anyone else? Seriously! There seems to be this assumption that there is no reciprocity, that because of the “low status” of these women, that they couldn’t possibly give anything back to society. Many of the women that worked at the daycare my daughter attended were teen moms; without their efforts, I wouldn’t have been able to hold down my job, and hence, would have been on welfare (or doing whatever I had to do to survive).
Teen mothers aren’t having babies because of some mythical financial welfare windfall—if you think that, pull your head out of your ass and go do some investigative work at your nearest Department of Human Services office. Find out what the requirements really are, and what benefits are really available. There are long waiting lists for subsidized housing and subsidized childcare is hard to come by. Schooling doesn’t “count” the same as work, even though a degree is the best poverty prevention program.
This is a good subject from where to observe classist assumptions though. We have Jane Galt up above claiming that anyone who sends a child to daycare isn’t really a parent—because let’s face it, there’s no appreciable difference between a teen mom who has her child in daycare so she can get her diploma and go on to college, and a mom in her thirties (like me) who had her child in daycare (school now) to pay the bills. Earlier on, there was mention of “choices”. I’ll point out that there are real choices, and artifically constructed “choices”. Sure, a woman can keep making music after she gets dumped by her record company for choosing to have a baby instead of an abortion—but that was an artificial choice to begin with, with all the power held by the record company. When the record company (which probably already owns a certain portion of the artist’s work) refuses to back a pregnant woman, because her status as a mother interferes with the image they want to concoct for her—that’s artificial. It has nothing to do with the music, and everything to do with images of women, motherhood, sex appeal, youth—-bah!
And don’t forget the myths of motherhood—who and what “real” mothers are supposed to look like, act like, be like. (We see that here in this thread; unspoken assumptions about work and motherhood, education and motherhood, class and motherhood. These myths all have one thing in common—living, breathing mothers just can’t win.) Real mothers don’t play guitars all night and all day; Rosalita is just supposed to worship the guitar hero, not be one.
Tell me more about some choices. *snort*
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 13th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
A particularly beautiful picture from [IMG [info]]indiaphotoalbum. 24th Carnival of Feminists over at F-Words We shouldn’t have to choose at Alas, a blog. Apparently the star of Whale Rider has been in the news because she’s pregnant at 16. I have to admit that my response to the fact that she’s pregnant is, “… so?” Women get pregnant sometimes. Specific context is everything, and I’m
This comment was written by Rainbow's Ramblings.Report this comment to the moderators
October 17th, 2006 at 11:05 am
La Lubu:
Ensuring each child has two parents as primary caregivers is the most affordable, available and reliable childcare on earth. Shifting the burden of sacrifice off of them just puts it on another part of society, with interest.
If a young single father were found to be ‘playing guitar all night and all day’ would you be defending his right to be a rock star? Cutting him a child support check so he can take his career even further? Or dialing child services to report him for neglect?
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 12:25 am
teen or young mother legally can leave the baby in the man’s care and take off, never to be seen or heard from again, never make a child support payment, and the boy/young man has to be with the baby 24-7 or be charged with neglegect or worse, and must raise the child on his own, period.
In exactly which states is a man allowed to do this? Now, it is very hard to get child support from many of these fathers, as they are only marginally employable, which is more an argument that the teenage mothers make poor choices in who they have sex with than an indictment of capitalism.
This comment was written by Rob.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
No. Actually, it blunts the strain on individual parents/sperm donors by spreading it out over more citizens, including those of us who don’t actually have children.
[sarcasm]But maybe we could add some kind of clause that states each “responsible” taxpayer can win some kind of premium for his/her donation to the raising of one-parent kids. You know, like a cross between public TV drives and those adopt-a-brown-child-overseas agencies. Except, instead of tote bags and CDs and writing letters to our adopted foreign “friend,” we could win the chance to make tape-recorded messages to send to the parent and his/her kid, in which we grumble at how much they’re costing us and why can’t they just get into a nuclear family like responsible people do ?[/sarcasm]
Hey, La Lubu. I know of two women who’ve managed to raise children and still play stompin’ guitar: here and here. But, yeah, we should have the law on them. :p You can tell just by listening to the music that their kids must be total screw-ups. :p
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Rob, I think the point Laylalola was making was that men would take their role in babymaking more seriously if their life were affected by it equal to the mother.
Laylalola, it sounds like you’re saying it’s reasonable for men to be harassed about their commitment to their offspring to an equal degree as women. If that’s true, I’ll remind you that we did once require men and women to marry before babymaking, and they were legally binding upon men, and the consequences for delinquency were fairly severe. We’ve given up that practice in favor of customs that add up to ‘get married, or don’t, hang around, or don’t, pay child support, or don’t’.
We’ve done this because we’ve decided that requiring men and women to commit to a family before having children was oppressive and outdated. You can’t defend your right to have children out of wedlock AND berate your sex partner for not sticking around to help. You can’t pick and choose which fathers and mothers are required to give a hoot and which aren’t. Either all are or none are.
You’re right to say that we need to increase access to safe sex education and to safe methods of contraception. Policies about abortion, sex-roles, marriage, child support and absentee parents are difficult to deal with, but they only matter if you have children, and they matter most urgently when the children are unplanned.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
ms_xeno: Leaving aside the question of ‘why I should be obliged to take any part of your load while your co-parent gets off scott free’, we already spend staggering amounts of money ’spreading the load around’ and the figures rise every year. Our resources aren’t infinite and this money has to come from somewhere. What do you propose we cut out of the budget to support the your civil right to be an absent parent? Education? Housing? Medicare?
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
How about the military budget ? It easily dwarfs all the others you mention. Nice slam at my absent parenting of my non-existent children, though.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
You’d cut national defense? As good a choice as any you could make, but any cut you make will bite you somewhere. How do you know the money ‘wasted’ on defense hasn’t already saved you from suffering the consequences of war? And at any rate, how likely is it that the administration will comply with your priorities? The cuts needed to support this lifestyle will come from anything but the military.
Spreading the load around is a weak argument. Why should I give my dreams of a new car and an oceanfront condo just because I also want a higher education? Why should I have to choose? Why not pay for the car and condo myself, and put the student loan bill on society? Shouldn’t cost you personally more than a penny. Society benefits from the abilities my higher education allows me to offer in it’s service and I benefit from the car and condo. Of course if you fall for it you can expect to receive about a hundred thousand more requests for one of your pennies, all of them just as valid as mine.
As for the slam, I meant no offense. Any right you promote for others you promote for yourself. By defending another person’s right to have children and then walk away while sticking society with the check, you’re establishing your right to do the same. In principle, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve ever done it, or whether you ever will.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
If I defended slavery would it make me less of a monster if I said I never owned a slave in my life? What you defend for others you defend for yourself.
Even if the military budget could be diverted, you haven’t convinced me it should be invested in single parenting. I would like to hear one benefit of the subsidy that could not be equally and more economically achieved by having the absent co-parent assume a responsible role.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
I already have defended it, CJ. That’s what reciprocity is. Go back and read my earlier posts. Money from my pocket to a stranger’s kid’s care is money that will come back to me when I’m no longer able to pay into the system. That’s the reasoning behind programs like Social Security. That money isn’t just set on fire and thrown out the window. Previous payers are helping fund my mother’s upkeep, for instance. Current payers will help fund mine, and future payers will fund mine as well. How does it profit me then to have miserable single parents and miserable children who spend all their time scrabbling for a dime ? How does it profit me to confound their misery by lecturing them about everything they’ve been doing wrong (ie– not doing like I would) ?
And don’t tell me how I am somehow defending “monstrosity” when I point out to you that your assumption of my personal interest in parenting– absentee, single or otherwise– is garbage. Not only because of its unwelcome air of prying but because it’s ridiculous to claim that single parenting is a “monstrosity” on par with owning slaves. Give me a damn break.
There are varying efforts around the country to force absentee parents to pay what they owe for parenting. You only have to spend some time around the feminist blogosphere to note that these efforts are, at best, unreliable or inadequate and at worse, unworkable. By the time a woman realizes this personally, it’s likely much too late for her to change her mind about having the kid even if she’d like to (not exactly a given). Which again, is another strike in my mind against having some kind of designated scold squad to work her over before she can have her Government check. I’ve met a few folks who have collected assistance of various kinds. While I’m sure there are people who regard it as a cakewalk that doesn’t humiliate them in the slightest, I don’t think that’s the general experience.
So perhaps you’d consider that there could be some reasonable attempt to get the co-parent into a “responsible role,” with the allowance that if they cannot or will not, some kind of back up should exist. Well, maybe you’re satisfied with the version of that we’ve got now, but I’m not so sure that I am.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
ms. xeno: I have all of Deborah Coleman’s CDs, and have recently discovered Joanna Connor—she absolutely kicks ass!!!
Ensuring each child has two parents as primary caregivers is the most affordable, available and reliable childcare on earth.
It should probably go without saying that a marriage certificate is not needed for this. Also, that the presence of a spouse does not equal an increased income, increased household help, or increased childcare. Regardless, whether both parents are committed to the raising of that child or not, daycare will still be necessary. I’m sure you would agree that whether or not a couple with a child plans to marry, that having a full education that leads to a full-time, decent-paying career is an investment in the future that pays great dividends not only to the adult individuals, but to the child(ren) as well—the best predictor of a child’s success is the education level of the mother.
we did once require men and women to marry before babymaking, and they were legally binding upon men, and the consequences for delinquency were fairly severe.
Now this is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Women were getting pregnant before marrying long before the Sexual Revolution of the Sixties, and denying paternity and abandonment of those children were time-honored tactics for dealing with throw-away women—the ones good enough to sleep with, but not good enough to marry. The out-of-wedlock births that make certain folks clutch the pearls these days were a fact of life even in Puritan times. It is only very recently that there was any consequence for unmarried paternity. My grandfather didn’t marry my grandmother when he got her pregnant because of any legal consequence—in that day and age, there was none. He loved her, and he loved children, so they got married (which they were going to do anyway) and had several more children. He was not pressured to marry her; in fact, quite the opposite. His mother didn’t think my grandmother was good enough for him; she was (and is) a dark-complexioned Sicilian woman from a poor family. (yes, colorism exists amongst Sicilian-Americans; it’s just not called that. It’s not called anything—it just is.) His marriage to my grandmother flew in the face of societal convention of the day, which not only would have permitted him to deny that child—my mother—but advised that as the course to follow. My grandmother was not a valued woman by societal standards. My grandfather came from the identical background, but simply by being male he had more societal value. No matter—the convention of the day wasn’t enough for my grandfather to abandon his integrity—even when the advice came from his mother. (It should probably also go without saying that white men took special advantage of this setup–that is, the Green Light for child abandonment,–when it came to impregnating women of color, but I’ll say it anyway.)
CJ, the “rock star” reference came from up above; the Anika Moa example. It’s actually quite common for record companies to back away from female artists who get pregnant—and it has everything to do with sexism. Lauren Hill referenced this in her song “Zion” (side note: the song I was listening to when I was quickly wheeled out of my hospital room for my emergency “C”). Record companies have this idea of what the image of their female artists should be, and “motherhood” isn’t a part of it. Fatherhood is irrelevant to the status of a male artist. Shit, we haven’t even got to the point where folks are accepting of a mother working, period (reference the Jane Galt comment above). There is still an image of “motherhood” as June Cleaver and apple pie and all that—The Way We Never Were.
Anyway, I am still mystified by this “taking the load” idea. CJ, are you opposed to all public funding of schools, also? If not, why be opposed to publically-funded daycare? It certainly isn’t just “teenage mothers” using daycare. I used it, my mother used it, my grandmother used it (and before that, we were all dirt-poor peasants who ate ciccoria where we could find it—daycare wasn’t a part of the preindustrial rural economy; come to think of it, neither was literacy).
Look. Let’s get down to the brass tacks here. What is getting the panties of certain folks in a wad isn’t the “teenage pregnancy” and it isn’t the “pregnancy before the wedding”. It’s the fact that teen mothers aren’t having the wedding even after the pregnancy. Folks are pissed that these young women feel no shame about deciding to keep their children. Bottom Line. See, in the past, the woman was supposed to put her children up for adoption, or give her child away to relatives, or have an abortion. Those experiences were supposed to give her the proper sense of shame for having Teh Sex, the little sluts. If that wasn’t enough, throwing her out of high school was supposed to clinch it—and provide warning to all those other little sluts (who may or may not have been having sex) about what happens to young women who have Teh Sex without having their paperwork in order.
Now, we have pesky legalities like Title IX, and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and such that the vast majority of these young women are *gasp* making a noncoerced choice! How dare they!
But see, antidiscrimination laws aren’t why shotgun marriages have fallen by the wayside. The financial rationale behind the shotgun marriage changed. Marriage because of pregnancy is a dumb idea now, because living-wage entry-level employment is an oxymoron now.
I’ll agree that teen parenthood is not easy; that teen mothers have more on their plate when in comes to completing an education and finding employment. But again, this is not materially different from the struggles other folks, including other teens, go through. In fact, it’s not materially different from the struggles many married people go through. Teenage pregnancy has actually been going down—though that is reverting now from the “abstinence only” education (instead of the comprehensive sex ed I had back in the day).
Now here’s a question—if you had a teenage daughter, and she told you she was pregnant, what would your advice be for her? Would your advice to your own daughter be different from the advice you would give for other young women? If so, why?
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Slavery was just an example. I wasn’t calling you a monster or equating single parenting with slavery. Just for the record, is abandoning a child better or worse than slavery?
Every advantage you mention is obtainable at far less cost to you by these stranger’s children having two parents instead of one. To put it on a indentifiable level, if your good friend Jane (hypothetically) is supported by her husband Joe, their son Todd will probably do all right without any help from you. If Joe walks out, Joe will probably do better in the short term while Jane will start to struggle and Todd may be in trouble. He will certainly be less likely to realize his full potential.
You can ease hypothetical Todd’s suffering by subsidizing Jane’s income from your own, but now your lifestyle is reduced, your savings are reduced. Bringing Todd back up to where he should will HURT you, and the net result later in life will NOT equal what you would have had if Joe had done his duty.
Some balance could be restored by sucking reciprocity out of Joe, wherever he is, but as you say. that’s hard to do, nearly impossible. Too many people accept that parents don’t have to make sacrifices for their children if they really don’t want to, and those that don’t accept it, can’t enforce it. Here I am trying to enforce it, and I have to defend myself constantly.
Also, so you don’t think I’m a complete ass, I don’t have any problem with subsidizing single parents whose partners die or are disabled (that’s what social programs are for) or if they’re delinquent in their recognized paternal duty. Society can get it’s money back by taking it out of deadbeat dad’s behind, and well, if we fail to do that, it’s society that’s at fault, not the single parent.
I just don’t agree that the same subsidy is warranted for people who CHOOSE a single parent life. If you’re wealthy enough to afford it, okay, but it’s not society’s responsibility to write you a blank check to cover a life that’s fundamentally unaffordable.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Okay, CJ. You’re not a complete ass. You just appear to think of the word “CHOOSE” as some kind of magic bullet that absolves the general public of responsibility toward any family which has a non-traditional arrangement. You also keep repeating the mantra of two parents over and over again, as if you could will people to accept the arrangement through repetition. It doesn’t matter, at the end of the day, that you believe with all your heart that this is the way it must go. It’s not going to. Others are right to point out that it never has been, all the time, everywhere in which functional societies exist. You’re wasting your time.
It also frankly bowls me over that you seemingly imagine a single mother like LL or some others who post here are asking for a free lifetime at Club Med, sans “sacrifices.” That is not what I get from them at all. Also, as I said earlier, you seem overly confident that it’s invariably “less” work, resource, toil, pain all around to bring the other parent into the equation regardless of individual circumstance. (Leaving aside the possibility that perhaps the other parent can’t be found, is a threat to the first parent and the child, etc.) I can’t agree with that.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
I don’t have time for all of it, but I had to answer this:
Now here’s a question—if you had a teenage daughter, and she told you she was pregnant, what would your advice be for her? Would your advice to your own daughter be different from the advice you would give for other young women? If so, why?
I’d tell her to move back into the house with us, buy her an apartment, send her a monthly allowance, share childcare duties with her. Whatever it takes. That’s what families do, not governments. It’s what the man who impregnated her would do if he had a gram of worth as a human being.
I’d hope I’d have taught her patience, trust, and the perception necessary to plan ahead and form the skills to support her baby without my help. After all, I may not live to see the day. She may have no one to rely on but herself. Even if she finds a perfect husband, fortune can be cruel.
I can’t tell other young women what to do, but I would say that a family does more for us than most of us realize. I would tell them to protect their family, and their family will protect them.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
ms_xeno, I freely exempt criminals from parental responsibility, given that they should be in jail. I know two parent families aren’t perfect but if say one in ten parents were failures (criminals, abusers, delinquents) out of every hundred childred of two parent families, 90 would have two functioning parents, 9 would have one, 1 would have none. Out of every hundred children of single parent families, 90 would have one functioning parent, 10 would have none.
The cost, burden and benefit of the two groups clearly favors two parent families, even though I agree that in any sampling, some some single parent families may outperform some two-parent families. I think spending a dollar on the former is like spending ten on the latter.
Aaah! Gotta go. Gnight, and peace. I really do mean well.
Spending a dollar on the former is like spending ten on the latter, in my view.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 18th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
I’d tell her to move back into the house with us, buy her an apartment, send her a monthly allowance, share childcare duties with her. Whatever it takes. That’s what families do, not governments.
Why would your teenage daughter be living elsewhere? (not to be catty—really. That was one reaction I saw amongst parents of teens who got pregnant when I was in high school; it was supposed to teach shame and the proper level of self-hatred. Another, more common reaction by the fathers of pregnant teens was to slap or punch her on the face—hard enough to leave a black eye or fat lip. Something that would give her “a little something to think about.” Looking back, I see it as a bizarre ritual, but one well in keeping with sexism—the mark on the face was meant to put the young woman “in her place”, make her “ugly”, and be a little reminder while the wound healed of her fallen status. It was also a territorial marker intended for her boyfriend—the fathers’ way of saying “think about this while you’re fucking her” and reminding him who really owned that particular female body.) Seriously, since we are specifically talking about teen mothers, I would hope that your daughter would already be living at home, and not have either been thrown out or have run away.
I’m glad that you would step up to the plate and assist her rather than disown her, which some families do. However—would you advise her to turn down a Pell grant or government-subsidized student loan? Would you advise her to not accept any publically-funded health insurance (such as the All Kids program in Illinois)? Would you tell her that she shouldn’t send her child to Head Start or Early Start? What about kindergarten or any other level of public school? Riding the public school bus? For that matter, riding the public city bus, which is heavily subsidized? Using the public library?
In other words, do you think people who use the above public services are freeloaders? Where do you draw the line? Is public school ok, but a public daycare subsidy isn’t? And if so, should your daughter drop out of high school until her child is old enough to attend kindergarten (if your community has full-day kindergarten) or first grade (if your community doesn’t)? Will your insurance allow you to keep your daughter on your policy if she isn’t attending school? And if not, are you (or your husband) able to quit work to provide the childcare? What about her child—can you fit the grandchild on your insurance policy? And if not, do you think it is better for your daughter to risk not having insurance rather than be a freeloader on the public dime?
I would also tell my daughter that she is much loved and her child would be a welcome addition to the family. I would also assist her with childcare whenever and wherever possible. But I would definitely tell her to keep her butt in school all the way through college—and that means accepting Pell grants, government-subsidized student loans, child care subsidies, All Kids, Head Start, public school and the big yellow bus that takes the kids there, and bus rides on the city bus during times when my work schedule prevented me from giving her a ride wherever she needed to be. I’d still buy her books, and I’d buy my grandchild books too—but we’d still keep the library plenty busy.
One thing I would not do—encourage her to get married. I notice you didn’t mention that either.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2006 at 11:10 am
I assumed you were referring to an adult teen daughter, recently independent. If she were a minor of course she would be at home and the father would be in jail.
My values, where I draw the line about what we can and cannot be allowed to do, are based on the principle of balance in all things. Nothing survives if it is not in balance, because I can think of nothing, no species, no ecosystem, no civilization, no institution, no relationship that has ever endured that was not in balance. Call it yin and yang, call it the golden rule, call it the laws of physics, it is the way the universe runs. What is given must be repaid or you’re killing that which does the giving.
All of your examples of services and programs are provided by tax income. It’s right to use them. But their existence depends upon the wealth of those who have created sustainable lives. No one on this forum has disagreed that single parenting is a form of family unit that is essentially incapable of supporting itself, and keeping them functioning is hemorrhaging resources, so I can think of no reason to encourage it as a lifestyle choice.
I’ll briefly mention that fathers who are absent with the mother’s consent, because she wishes to choose the single-parent lifestyle make it much more difficult to point the finger at fathers who are absent for delinquency. Structurally, the family unit is the same so why is one wrong and the other right? A clever debater could tie that one up in court for decades.
Regarding your last point: encouraging my daughter to marry. That’s something you do before you get pregnant. If it wasn’t on the table before it happened, it does little good to put it on now.
ms_xeno: You just appear to think of the word “CHOOSE” as some kind of magic bullet that absolves the general public of responsibility toward any family which has a non-traditional arrangement.
How much responsibility for other people’s welfare do you want? Traditional arrangements are capable of taking care of themselves, allowing you the freedom to take care of yourself. That’s how they became traditional in the first place: they last. Do you want me to take care of my daughter like fathers traditionally do, or shall we try a non-traditional approach?
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2006 at 11:22 am
CJ:
Given how many breaks and perks come to those in married parenting relationships, I find it peculiar that you would argue that they are entirely capable of supporting themselves. If they are so capable, why do they need breaks ? Shouldn’t tax breaks, mortgage deductions, the right to declare minors as dependents, and the like be revoked, if married couples with children don’t really require them ?
I also find it ridiculous to refer to “hemoraging resources,” as if everyone not in a single-parenting household was a money-earning dynamo every moment of their lives. Come on. There are dozens of reasons why a citizen might “hemorage resources.” Or more acurately, there are dozens of reasons why a citizen might earn the right to be invested in by the general public with the knowledge that the investment would be paid back later.
Sorry. I find this kind of language depressing as all get-out, and not particularly acurate. Bowing out now. :(
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
I clearly see all the problems with two parent families. There a just fewer of them and they bite less than the problems of single-parent families.
Subsidizing single parenting doesn’t get paid back. They aren’t being invested in, they’re being rescued.
I don’t like being the heavy either.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Actually, Maia, as I re-read your initial post, I’d say that it isn’t so much that you don’t think women should have to make choices when it comes to becoming a mother while having a career of one kind or another (or not). I would say that you think that one of those choices should be the ability to take money from other people regardless of those other people’s will in the matter in order to fulfill their own desires.
Do you think that women should be able to choose to have a child and use the force of the state to compel other people who had no say in that choice help her support it?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
ms_xeno, mortgage deductions have absolutely nothing to do with helping people support children. The tax break is there to enable people to own their own homes, which in turn boosts the economy. That’s why anyone who buys a home, regardless of economic, marital or parental status gets the deduction.
As far as not allowing deductions for supporting a minor, why should married couples be discriminated against? What other tax deductions do you lose if you make over a certain income or have certain economic resources? With that kind of policy, the state would actually end up giving parents an economic disincentive to be married; hardly the kind of public policy we want to encourage. Look at what such a welfare policy did.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
I don’t support beating up your kids, nor do I support assaulting pregnant women. I do wonder what facts support your assertion of what the intent of that assault was.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2006 at 5:41 am
Ron F: Hey, you’re a father. You tell me what the motivation would be for a father to punch his pregnant teenage daughter in the face. Sure, I made a guess, but that guess was based on the the kind of shit these fathers would say while they were doing it. And the kind of shit they would repeat to them throughout the course of the pregnancy. Maybe you can come up with some sort of “reasonable” or “more reasonable” theory as to why they punch their pregnant teenage daughters.
CJ, there are millions of single parents who are supporting their families, every single day. I’m one of them. Now, teenage single parents aren’t capable of suporting themselves fully until they complete their education—which is exactly why we need to support subsidized childcare and other programs that enable these young parents to complete their education.
What I find most mystifying about these conversations is the idea that single parent equals bad—differing degrees of bad to be sure, but bad. Along with the assumption that married parents equal some level of good—differing degree of good, but in general, there is an assumed level of “wholesomeness”. There is a long tradition of regarding young women who have sex before marriage as “sluts”. Nothing like a pregnancy to prove who the slut is, hmmmm? Why are married women who have sex not regarded as sluts? I mean, the only material difference between a married and a single woman having sex is the presence of that piece of paper, right?
I also wonder why there is an intense dislike of certain social policies that are socialistic in nature, but not others. I haven’t encountered any conservatives wailing about how the presence of unemployment insurance just encourages folks to sit on their ass and do nothing. The cynical side of me thinks that some folks are only opposed to social policies they think they will never need, while wholeheartedly supporting public subsidy of the programs they use all the time—like public libraries, public roads and bridges, etc.
I am completely thrown by the assumption that teenage mothers will never accomplish anything in life, and never contribute anything of value to society. That just flies in the face of objective reality. Yes, they have to work harder—but realistically, if you did a time-study on the average working day of Lubu, and the average working day of a teenage mother in the local “stay in school” program of the high school Lubu’s daughter will be attending someday, the teen mothers are working just a hard, if not harder at the end of the day. They are putting an equivalent amount of time into their schoolwork/extracurriculars/part-time jobs and childcare, that Lubu puts into her workday, avocations and childcare. These are programs that work. Those young women not only graduate, but go on to college—and their entrance into the young mother program is usually the first time anyone seriously encouraged them to go to college, and made them believe it was a realistic choice.
I gotta get to work—-but I’ll be back to address the absentee father issue (hint: I don’t have historical amnesia like some folks. I remember when this was a time-honored way for young men to deal with the pregnancies of their girlfriends. You really think Playboy magazine supporting the cause of abortion in the Sixties was about reproductive freedom for women? *snort*)
I’ll leave you with the idea that a lot of folks are willing to come down heavy on teenage mothers because they “can’t control” their sex drive—despite the fact that most of these young women get pregnant within the context of a mutual boyfriend/girlfriend relationship; but these same folks willing to play the “heavy” with these young women aren’t so anxious to come down heavy on Lubu. Why? Because they can see themselves as me, if their partner suddenly decided to adopt a bad habit, like domestic violence, drug addiction, gambling away the paycheck(s), etc. They can envision their lives mirroring mine—-and like me, they don’t see themselves being willing to forego sex for the rest of their lives, simply because they don’t have a marriage to go with it.
And if they’re female, they could end up pregnant just like Lubu. But they don’t want to call themselves sluts.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Hi LaLubu,
I agree they need it. I agree that ‘having already happened’ it’s a good idea to do it.
But if they waited to have children until after they complete their education, had a husband to help instead of a government check, the money we didn’t spend on subsidizing them could turn into a scholarship fund, affordable housing, better medicare. We don’t have an unlimited budget, you tell me what the smart thing to do is.
I don’t know what process you use that allows you to accept the fundamental inadequacy of the lifestyle and encourage it at the same time.
Any lifestyle that can’t support itself is a bad choice for a lifestyle. It’s a bad choice. That’s not so hard to understand.
Apart from the piece of paper, there are also vows. Promises of fidelity and faithfulness that have a little more weight than whispers in the dark between randy teenagers. There is a recognition that you are more than sex partners, you are family. Sex in marriage is expected to produce children. You can assume that married couples have considered the natural consequences of sex and are prepared to handle it. You can’t make any such assumption about unmarried teenagers having concurrent sexual relationships with multiple men, in fact you can assume they haven’t considered it and aren’t prepared for it. The bill lands on you and me LaLubu and that is nothing to applaud them for.
I never said they wouldn’t. I’m saying there’s a better way to get where they want to go. The money spent supporting them (and validating a father’s absence) is denied them in some other way as civic and social services balance the expense of dealing with their poor decisions.
We need public libraries, roads and bridges. We don’t need lifestyles that require financial aid just to stay alive.
My awareness of history is just fine. I’m not just blaming young women for this I’m blaming the fathers, the parents of the fathers, the parents of the young women, the friends of the young women who tell them its okay to act this way, and anyone who buys into the industry of fantasy that sells us the image that sex has no consequence.
The problem is, no matter what mixed messages are out there the buck stops at the mom. She cannot ger pregnant by a delinquent jackass without her consent. If the message of responsibility has to get to anyone, it has to get to her most of all.
There’s nothing simple about this. Anyway don’t deny yourself sex, but sex has natural consequences. If you create a child you can’t care for by yourself you put the burden of it on others. Should I say ‘Gee, thanks for doing that Lubu, I don’t know what we would have done with that money if you hadn’t come alone. You’re the best!’ Does that sound logical to you?
We can drop the use of the word slut, but unless you believe having children beyond your means is an intelligent, effective lifestyle choice, nothing flattering will be said about their judgement or morals.
The fact that ‘millions’ of single parents support their kids without financial aid doesn’t move me. That means there a millions of absent parents. On a scale of 1-10 for ‘quality of life standards’ would you say the average single parent can achieve a 5? With the help of a second parent they might have averaged a 7. That’s the harm I see in encouraging this lifestyle.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2006 at 9:52 am
Ron F: Hey, you’re a father. You tell me what the motivation would be for a father to punch his pregnant teenage daughter in the face.
I can’t think of one. But that doesn’t mean that the one you came up with is correct. OTOH, you then say you have evidence of things that these men would say to their children while/after they beat them. There’s sick bastards all over the world, I guess.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2006 at 10:31 am
You can’t stop men from running out on their women and children and defend women’s right to single-motherhood at the same time. You can’t remove marriage as a precurser to childrearing and expect parents to understand that their attendance is obligatory. You have to choose on a societal level whether parents ARE or ARE NOT responsible for their children, and set down your laws accordingly.
More later.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2006 at 10:54 am
Now, teenage single parents aren’t capable of suporting themselves fully until they complete their education—which is exactly why we need to support subsidized childcare and other programs that enable these young parents to complete their education.
Actually, it seems to me that the initial premise spelled out in the above sentence is exactly why we need a public policy that discourages people from becoming parents until they can support their children on their own, without public assistance, and with a legal tie between the child’s mother and father.
I mean, the only material difference between a married and a single woman having sex is the presence of that piece of paper, right?
Is this a serious question? The difference between a single and a married woman is that the married woman has a legal committment from her husband to lend support to her and any children she and her husband may have. Plus, for what it’s worth, she has a publicly made moral and religious statement to that effect. What that’s worth is in part a function of how good a job she did in selecting
her husband before agreeing to marriage and to bear their children.
I haven’t encountered any conservatives wailing about how the presence of unemployment insurance just encourages folks to sit on their ass and do nothing.
Because in fact it does no such thing. Unemployment insurance runs out after a certain period of time, which people receiving it are well aware of. Also, you are accountable for showing evidence that you’re out looking for a job while you’re getting it. I’ve been on unemployment myself and I’ve known people who have been on it, and I’ve not known anyone who just sat on their ass until it ran out. It’s also germane that unemployment compensation is not paid out to someone who quit their job (i.e., made a choice to become unemployed); it’s only paid out to people who were laid off, becoming unemployed against their will.
I’ll leave you with the idea that a lot of folks are willing to come down heavy on teenage mothers because they “can’t control” their sex drive— … and like me, they don’t see themselves being willing to forego sex for the rest of their lives, simply because they don’t have a marriage to go with it.
Sex outside of marriage is a moral issue that there’s a lot of disagreement on, and I’m not going to go into it here. Suffice it to say that while there may be a lot of people who come down on teenage mothers because they’re having extra-marital sex, the main point for most people is not a lack of control of one’s sex drive but a lack of control of one’s reproductive systems, and an expectation that choosing to fail to exercise such control should entitle one to take money from other people to support the consequences.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2006 at 10:55 am
Now, teenage single parents aren’t capable of suporting themselves fully until they complete their education—which is exactly why we need to support subsidized childcare and other programs that enable these young parents to complete their education.
Actually, it seems to me that the initial premise spelled out in the above sentence is exactly why we need a public policy that discourages people from becoming parents until they can support their children on their own, without public assistance, and with a legal tie between the child’s mother and father.
I mean, the only material difference between a married and a single woman having sex is the presence of that piece of paper, right?
Is this a serious question? The difference between a single and a married woman is that the married woman has a legal committment from her husband to lend support to her and any children she and her husband may have. Plus, for what it’s worth, she has a publicly made moral and religious statement to that effect. What that’s worth is in part a function of how good a job she did in selecting
her husband before agreeing to marriage and to bear their children.
I haven’t encountered any conservatives wailing about how the presence of unemployment insurance just encourages folks to sit on their ass and do nothing.
Because in fact it does no such thing. Unemployment insurance runs out after a certain period of time, which people receiving it are well aware of. Also, you are accountable for showing evidence that you’re out looking for a job while you’re getting it. I’ve been on unemployment myself and I’ve known people who have been on it, and I’ve not known anyone who just sat on their ass until it ran out. It’s also germane that unemployment compensation is not paid out to someone who quit their job (i.e., made a choice to become unemployed); it’s only paid out to people who were laid off, becoming unemployed against their will.
I’ll leave you with the idea that a lot of folks are willing to come down heavy on teenage mothers because they “can’t control” their sex drive— … and like me, they don’t see themselves being willing to forego sex for the rest of their lives, simply because they don’t have a marriage to go with it.
Sex outside of marriage is a moral issue that there’s a lot of disagreement on, and I’m not going to go into it here. Suffice it to say that while there may be a lot of people who come down on teenage mothers because they’re having extra-marital sex, the main point for most people is not a lack of control of one’s sex drive but a lack of control of one’s reproductive systems, and an expectation that choosing to fail to exercise such control should entitle one to take money from other people to support the consequences. Forgoing children does not require forgoing sex.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
La Lubu:
I haven’t encountered any conservatives wailing about how the presence of unemployment insurance just encourages folks to sit on their ass and do nothing.
Then you haven’t been paying much attention. A year or two ago, there was some debate over extending the period of time for which unemployment benefits could be collected. Democrats favored it, and Republicans opposed it because it creates perverse incentives.
The cynical side of me thinks that some folks are only opposed to social policies they think they will never need, while wholeheartedly supporting public subsidy of the programs they use all the time—like public libraries, public roads and bridges, etc.
I’m all for privatizing roads and libraries, but the arguments for public roads and libraries simply don’t apply to welfare programs. Roads are generally believed to be a natural monopoly, which is why the government builds and manages them. And since roads are generally paid for with gas taxes, and gas consumption is roughly proportional to road usage, it’s hard to argue that this constitutes any kind of subsidy to drivers.
There are really no good reasons why libraries have to be publicly owned—private provision works just fine for DVD rentals. The argument is that we should subsidize reading because it’s a good thing and we want more of it.
This comment was written by Brandon Berg.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
I’ve been on unemployment myself and I’ve known people who have been on it, and I’ve not known anyone who just sat on their ass until it ran out.
I have.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
So have I.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
First of all, I want to make it crystal clear—I do think that teenagers are better off not becoming parents until finishing school. I believe that the best way to keep teenagers from becoming parents is to provide them with knowledge of and access to birth control—in fact, I am so pro-birth control, I think it should be readily available from the school nurse. (Also, like Dr. Jocelyn Elders, believe that teenagers should be taught that masturbation is a part of a healthy sex life.) However, I also recognize that due to human nature, there are going to be a certain amount of teenage pregnancies. In my mother’s era, that was dealt with by throwing the young woman out of school. If she was lucky, she could get married. If she wasn’t—eh. Who gave a damn, anyway? She was a fallen woman, a woman of no consequence. We have to recognize that it is normal and natural for folks to have sex, and that a certain amount of that sexual activity is going to result in pregnancy. If we have a pro-birth control attitude, there will be fewer pregnancies because there will be more birth control use.
I’m reading a lot of responses that assume that married people have a greater level of sexual control. Considering that estimates of marital infidelity tend to range from fifty to seventy-five percent, I don’t see that at all. Looks to me as if the promises of fidelity and faithfulness actually don’t have a little more weight than whispers in the dark between randy teenagers. Also, there is not evidence that teenage mothers are any more likely to have multiple sexual partners than any other woman. The vast, overwhelming majority of teen pregnancies are the result of consensual sexual intercourse between steady partners.
It should go without saying that again, the majority of teen mothers are not receiving welfare benefits (teens who do not live with their parents—with few rare exceptions—are ineligible, and teens whose parents do not receive TANF are not eligible). I think that a greater emphasis on college (or similar career track) for all would probably result in fewer teen pregnancies. There is some evidence that there is more teen pregnancy amongst young women who feel they have no other future. Let’s be frank—schools still “track” children from the earliest age. Children are impressionable; they internalize the attitudes that adults hold towards them. It is hard to convince a teenager who has been essentially (or directly; I attended school with young women whose parents were quite frank about their only hope for a future being their ability to snag a man—and that they had better do it before they turned 25 and started getting ugly) told her entire life that her greatest asset is her ass, to consider an alternate route.
We already have laws that provide for the collection of child support. We have already reached the limits on the effectiveness of those laws. The laws are nothing to denigrate though; they have managed to change the time-immemorial culture of child abandonment. You are blaming support for teen mothers as the reason some teen fathers are abandoning their children. That isn’t the case. Child abandonment is the default culture; the patriarchal culture that gave the father the right to determine which children he wanted to support based on his affection for or social standing of the mother! It may take several more generations for the default to be automatic assumption of paternal responsibility. But again, let’s keep in mind that a child should not be forced to have visitation with someone who resents his or her existance. Nor should they be subject to “on-again, off-again” parents, which subjects the child to trust and abandonment issues. Children should not be encouraged to bond with someone for whom the bond is not mutual. This is a developmental issue for the child, period.
I don’t know if anyone here has darkened the door of a high school lately, but the message to avoid parenthood until after completion of an education is literally all over the walls! We are already doing what you think we aren’t—strongly discouraging teen parenthood. We have reached the limit of influence of that message. Concurrently advising the use of birth control along with that message will further reduce teen pregnancy. “Abstinence only” is increasing teen pregnancy. Why? Because teenagers figure it’s ok to have sex when you’re in love. You know, just like the adults do. It is ludicrous to expect teens to abstain when adults clearly don’t. How many here are prepared to abstain from sex (possibly for life) in the event you end up not married? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
You can’t remove marriage as a precurser to childrearing and expect parents to understand that their attendance is obligatory. Why the hell not? For the love of all that’s holy, can we please divest ourselves of the societal notion that it takes a marriage for a person to be responsible for a child? I didn’t have any problem accepting responsibility for my daughter, and I’m not married—wtf is so difficult for others? (short answer—they have the societal green light to do so, based on generations upon generations of patriarchal attitude about who are the women for marrying, and who are the women for fucking.) And can we also dump the assumption that another parent is automatically helpful? Sure, that’s the way it should work out, but it often doesn’t. A marriage is no guarantee of any damn thing—it’s just a legal arrangement. If it is more than that, it is because of the personal integrity of the people involved, nothing more.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2006 at 6:45 am
Also, there seems to be an assumption that teen sex follows a similar script to “Girls Gone Wild” or other tripe; that teen sex is the result of drunken orgies, Animal House atmosphere, cherry-busting as a rite of passage, or other Hollywood (Hollowwood?) imagery. Let’s get real—teens have sex for pretty much the same reasons adults do; they are after all, young adults.
So, doesn’t it stand to reason that we should use the same methods to prevent teen pregnancy that we support for adults—that is, using birth control? Adults have a lower unplanned pregnancy rate because they are more likely to use birth control.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:30 am
Robert, CJ, that’s pretty interesting. Of course, that’s self-limiting, since unemployment does run out after a while. What did those people do when their benefits ran out?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:42 am
…go back to work?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:50 am
La Lubu:
I believe that the best way to keep teenagers from becoming parents is to provide them with knowledge of and access to birth control
That’s one way. Children should be taught detailed information about how their bodies work, including their reproductive systems. However, there should also be additional components, including teaching abstinence and the economic and social consequences of teenage/unmarried childbearing on both the individuals involved and society at large.
—in fact, I am so pro-birth control, I think it should be readily available from the school nurse.
With of without the parents’ consent or knowlege? Also, those are pretty powerful drugs to be giving to kids unless there’s a doctor involved.
(Also, like Dr. Jocelyn Elders, believe that teenagers should be taught that masturbation is a part of a healthy sex life.)
I agree.
However, I also recognize that due to human nature, there are going to be a certain amount of teenage pregnancies.
There’s no denying it
I’m reading a lot of responses that assume that married people have a greater level of sexual control.
I’m not reading that. What I’m reading is that married people have a structure in place to ensure that there’s an acknowledged legal and moral obligation to ensure that any children the woman has are supported by those responsible for creating it.
We have already reached the limits on the effectiveness of [child support] laws.
I’m not so sure about that. Great strides have been made, but I think there’s still plenty of room for use of technology to identify fathers, track their movements and efforts to evade their responsibilities, and garnish their assets and income, especially on an intrastate basis.
Child abandonment is the default culture; the patriarchal culture that gave the father the right to determine which children he wanted to support based on his affection for or social standing of the mother!
I’d contest this. For one thing, the most common thing is for people to support their kids, not to abandon them, so the default is for child support. Secondly, the laws are pretty insistent that fathers support their kids and have been for a very long time. There has been a major change in the ability to definitively identify the father of a child and the ability to communicate that information, and that’s all for the good.
For the love of all that’s holy, can we please divest ourselves of the societal notion that it takes a marriage for a person to be responsible for a child?
For the love of all that’s holy, we should be encouraging people to engage in Holy Matrimony before they have kids. No, you don’t have to be married to be responsible for a child. All you have to do is to be the parent of one, and you’re responsible for it. The question is whether or not you’ll live up to that responsibility. Marriage is a public committment between a man and a woman (except in Massachusetts) and between them and the State that they’ll recognize this responsibility, among others, and intend to live up to it. Marriage also gives each parent a legal (and for those who recognize it, a moral) lever to force someone to live up to their responsibilities, which is one of the major problems here.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:56 pm
However, there should also be additional components, including teaching abstinence and the economic and social consequences of teenage/unmarried childbearing on both the individuals involved and society at large.
This is already being done. Focusing on birth control and making it more accessible is not. So, let’s try that in addition. Sure works in Europe.
There is a limit as to what can be done in regards to child support. If someone who owes child support does not have an on-the-books job, there is nothing to garnish.
You and I clearly differ on whether people should be married before having children; I don’t think either one of us are going to convince the other. Frankly, I think of marriage as a personal choice, not a societal good. Kinda like going to church…some people dig it, some people don’t. The presence or absence of someone from a church building has no bearing on the depth of that person’s spirituality.
I will say this though—I’ve listened to a whole helluva lot of folks tellin’ me that their spouse provides a neutral or negative contribution to the household. I’ve been in a marriage like that. My experience was not outside the norm.
What bothers me is that there is a huge push—millions of dollars of budget money—dedicated to promoting marriage as the panacea for young single women who are pregnant. And I feel like that’s a fundamental mistake on many levels. I think its telling that I’m not the only person on this thread that would actively discourage her teenage daughter from marrying in the event of pregnancy.
With of without the parents’ consent or knowlege? Also, those are pretty powerful drugs to be giving to kids unless there’s a doctor involved.
Without the parents knowledge. If these teens had the ability to access birth control with the help of their parents, they’d be doing so. Drugs are not necessarily needed; the diaphragm, spermicide, sponge, cervical cap, and condoms are still around. There should be a “Free! Take One!” bin of condoms available at school. And teens should be told that lube can help prevent condom breakage (not to mention using water-based lube). Also, nurse practitioners can prescribe meds. What is so controversial about this? Why do folks want to keep jamming their damn heads in the sand?
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2006 at 6:59 am
RonF: My daughter’s mother, to whom I was never married, has as much recourse to forcing me to do my duty as she would have if we were married. Not that I’m the sort of scum who acts as if my kid were equivalent to a show that can be turned off at will. Funny how so many of those folks are divorced men and women. Like LaLubu, I know you won’t be convinced on the rectitude of children outside of marriage, but on the facts you’re plain wrong.
This comment was written by Douglas, Friend of Osho.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2006 at 7:40 am
I think its telling that I’m not the only person on this thread that would actively discourage her teenage daughter from marrying in the event of pregnancy.
Include me in that. I would not automatically counsel my daughter to marry the father of her child conceived out of wedlock. I would (and have) counseled her not to get pregnant until she married. I also advised her that while I expected her to graduate from High School as a virgin (parents expectations are not always met, but I have no idea if they were in this case), I had no illusions that she’d graduate from college as one. God knows I didn’t. Of course, I ended up getting married before I graduated from college.
Without the parents knowledge. If these teens had the ability to access birth control with the help of their parents, they’d be doing so. Drugs are not necessarily needed; the diaphragm, spermicide, sponge, cervical cap, and condoms are still around.
Ah, sorry, a disconnect there, probably my fault. I read “birth control” and for some reason presumed you meant birth control pills. In retrospect, I don’t know why. Yes, a nurse would be plenty sufficient to distribute the above.
It does seem, however, that giving kids this stuff without the permission of their parents is a subversion of their authority by the State, which I find hard to justify. If teens’ access to birth control is being limited by their parents, I don’t think the solution is necessarily for the State to overrule them.
Also, I don’t necessarily agree with “If these teens had the ability to access birth control with the help of their parents, they’d be doing so.” What a parent will permit and what they’ll actually actively do are often two different things.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
It does seem, however, that giving kids this stuff without the permission of their parents is a subversion of their authority by the State, which I find hard to justify. If teens’ access to birth control is being limited by their parents, I don’t think the solution is necessarily for the State to overrule them.
How so? How is this materially any different from a teen accessing BC through Planned Parenthood—except that this plan (providing BC options in schools) would increase accessibility? It’s not putting the State in the driver’s seat; it’s putting the teen in the driver’s seat. Why not?
Here’s the rub for me—these are young adults. We should be treating them more like adults, and less like children. By the time they have entered high school, they should be perfectly capable of choosing whether or not to have sex, and which type of birth control is appropriate for them. Too damn many parents want to pretend that their teen isn’t going to have sex, and use slut-baiting terminology to teach abstinence. When abstinence advocates pass around the delicate rose, they (1) aren’t directing this message at the boys, and (2) seek to convey the message that if a young woman is not a virgin, she is damaged goods—soiled, unclean, nasty, used.
But the double standard is a whole ‘nother topic altogether. I don’t understand this comment: What a parent will permit and what they’ll actually actively do are often two different things. Are you saying that many parents who are strongly against premarital sex would still be willing to assist their teen in getting birth control? Can’t say I’ve seen any of that.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
What I’m saying is that there are likely parents who wouldn’t take their kid to a pharmacy to buy a condom or wouldn’t give the kid one themselves might well not oppose him or her picking them up at school.
How so? How is this materially any different from a teen accessing BC through Planned Parenthood—except that this plan (providing BC options in schools) would increase accessibility? It’s not putting the State in the driver’s seat; it’s putting the teen in the driver’s seat. Why not?
Because neither the teen nor the State should be in the driver’s seat. The parents, who know their individual kid’s emotional, physical and mental makeup and state and who are responsible to the State and to society for the morals and actiosn of their kids, are the ones who belong in the driver’s seat. And the State has no right to change that.
Yeah, they’re called young adults, but a better name is “adolescents”; because they are neither pre-pubescent children nor actual adults; they’re something in between, sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both and sometimes neither. Where they are in this process is for the adults responsible for them to decide, not you, not me, and not the State.
By the time they have entered high school, they should be perfectly capable of choosing whether or not to have sex,
They can make the physical choice. But whether they can make a sound judgement on the matter and are capable of dealing with the various outcomes is not at all guaranteed.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2006 at 8:22 am
It’s not putting the State in the driver’s seat; it’s putting the teen in the driver’s seat. Why not?
Because neither the State nor the teen belong in the driver’s seat. The parent should be in the driver’s seat. First, for moral reasons. Second, because young adults are past being truly young but not yet truly adult, and in recognition of this the State holds the parent liable for supporting and teaching and controlling an adolescent’s actions.
By the time they have entered high school, they should be perfectly capable of choosing whether or not to have sex, and which type of birth control is appropriate for them.
I quite disagree. Adolescents are well known for being much worse than adults at taking into consideration the long-term consequences of their actions. The State has no business enabling adolescents to avoid involving their parents in making a decision like this. It is the parents, not the State, who are tasked with raising children and it is the parents who know their child’s emotional, physical and mental development and what’s good for them.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
First, for moral reasons.
Moral reasons? What moral reasons? Sex is not immoral. Birth control is not immoral. Providing birth control is a morally neutral form of medical care, and one is free to partake or not. Providing it at the school is not the same as mandating it. If your teen believes as you do, then your teen will choose not to have sex, and will not have a need for birth control. If your teen does not believe as you do, then your teen will have easy access to several forms of pregnancy protection for sexually active people. Whether BC is provided at school (or anywhere else) or not, your teen is still the person with the final say on his or her sexual activity.
State holds the parent liable for supporting and teaching and controlling an adolescent’s actions.
No, not in this instance. If your son, under the age of eighteen, impregnates a young woman, only he is held responsible for the payment of child support—not you. If your daughter, under the age of eighteen, gets pregnant, only she can decide whether or not to continue her pregnancy, put her child up for adoption, or keep and raise her child. You do not have legal standing in that matter. I don’t think it is out of line to assume that teens are capable of making their own decision to use birth control. And that includes if their choice is different from the choice their parent(s) would rather have them make.
Do you object to a teen choosing a different church or religion from their parent(s)? Choosing a different diet from his or her parents? Different political beliefs? A different course of study than what their parent(s) would choose for him or her? Different clothing? Or is it just about sex?
Again, these are young adults. In the U.S., society encourages an extended childhood for young people, rather than promoting the transition to adulthood. Here, we try to stymie the developmental process of transition to adulthood—why? Is it the Puritan heritage of the U.S., or what? I don’t get it.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Here, we try to stymie the developmental process of transition to adulthood—why?
To defer the economic competition posed by youth, who are often willing to work harder under worse conditions for less money. “No, don’t come down to the job site today, you should do so more schooling first…”
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2006 at 2:36 am
Sex is not immoral.
Of course it isn’t. Sex is a magnificent gift of tremendous power and beauty.
Conceiving a new life irresponsibly (in the Catholic tradition, expressed as a a receptiveness to the equally powerful and beautiful gift of life), is immoral. Nonconsensual sex abrogates that immorality in the case of the wronged party, but not in the case of the aggressor. Precautions such as birth control or fertility methods diminish, but do not abrogate, the immorality; everybody knows where babies come from.
So sex can *lead to* immorality, when it can lead to unconception. Irresponsible conception is what is immoral, to varying degrees.
To switch faith traditions on you, there is a concept in Jewish theology that I’ve seen referenced as ‘a fence around the Torah’. The idea is that there’s a terrible sin that can be committed - and it’s relatively hard to avoid committing the sin, because it’s so evil and/or powerful. But you just know that if you make the rule “don’t do the terrible thing”, people are going to crowd right up against the boundaries of what’s permissible. In which case, some of them are inevitably going to stumble and fall into the terrible sin.
So instead of the law building a moral fence right at the boundary of what is awful, you set it back a ways. Having sex with your children is a terrible sin; let’s broaden the prohibition and prescribe sex with your kin in general. People try to reach standards, and often fall short; let’s make “falling short” less than a disaster. The world won’t end if someone strays over the line a bit and consensually sleeps with their third cousin.
I think it might be prudent to adapt a similar attitude about youthful sexuality in general. Young people are horny and curious and it’s only natural that they will explore things, but we owe them a duty of at least trying to warn them about the consequences of actions. (Even if a woman decides on an abortion, most women don’t find it a trivial experience; all her choices have bad consequences in that situation.)
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2006 at 6:36 am
So, you believe that all unmarried sex is immoral. The marriage certificate is what differentiates moral sex, from immoral sex. Gotcha.
And to discourage unmarried folks from having sex, birth control should be put further out of reach, so that a greater number of women will get “caught” with a pregnancy, (you having already allowed that the evil of sex—’scuse me, sex without the proper paperwork—is so powerful, people are bound to engage in it) therefore demonstrating who the sinners are. Sinners which can then be pointed at as The Sinners, and ostracized as a way of keeping the sex drives of others from being expressed.
So, what you really want to see then, is more State support of your religious beliefs, correct? Because the way I see it, you are expecting a certain number of teens to engage in sex, the same way I do. Certainly, you know that without the use of birth control, a certain number of unplanned pregnancies are going to result from this sex (sex that you view as immoral, and I view as morally neutral; and which for all practical intents and purposes is immaterial to the practical matter of assisting young men and women from having unplanned and/or unwanted pregnancies).
I’m wondering if what really bothers you is the idea that young women on birth control are suddenly free from being publically revealed as “sinners”—that is, they can now (on birth control) be considered free from sin, just as their male sexually-active counterparts are. Before birth control, you could always count on a certain number of Sluts to point one’s finger at. And if the young man who impregnated the young woman didn’t find her appropriate for marriage, and the young woman’s family was not of a social standing powerful enough to force the issue, she and her pesky pregnancy could easily be dealt with by social ostracism—with the side advantage of using her as the Slut to point to in the hopes of getting other young women to fall in line with the status quo.
Birth control upends that system. Now, you have the choice to either admit hypocrisy, or start trying to inflict the same ostracism on young men that has traditionally been visited upon young women. Your comments seem to indicate that you are more comfortable with keeping the existing system of hypocrisy (i.e., girls who have sex are sluts, boys who have sex are being boys), than with trying to convince young men, and society at large, that they are sluts.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2006 at 6:49 am
Sex is not immoral. Birth control is not immoral.
Like many other actions and objects, sex and birth control are amoral, neither moral nor immoral. What’s moral or immoral is the circumstances under which they are used and the willingness of the users to anticipate and be responsible for the consequences.
If your teen believes as you do, then your teen will choose not to have sex, and will not have a need for birth control. If your teen does not believe as you do, then your teen will have easy access to several forms of pregnancy protection for sexually active people. Whether BC is provided at school (or anywhere else) or not, your teen is still the person with the final say on his or her sexual activity.
My teen and his or her proposed sexual partner have the final say on whether or not they will have sex. But I have the right to have a say as well, and that includes whether or not they’ll have access to birth control.
No, not in this instance.
My statement was a general statement. If my kid throws a brick though a window, I’m the one who will have to pay for it. If my kid is truant, I’ll be accountable. I am, in general, responsible for my child, and for the state to draw a line and block aspects of my involvement in my kid’s sexual choices makes little sense.
Do you object to a teen choosing a different church or religion from their parent(s)? Choosing a different diet from his or her parents? Different political beliefs? A different course of study than what their parent(s) would choose for him or her? Different clothing? Or is it just about sex?
That’s all between the teen and the teen’s parents. The State has no right to interfere in any of those cases.
Again, these are young adults. In the U.S., society encourages an extended childhood for young people, rather than promoting the transition to adulthood. Here, we try to stymie the developmental process of transition to adulthood—why? Is it the Puritan heritage of the U.S., or what? I don’t get it.
Because kids have proven that they don’t use adequate judgement at this stage of their lives in matters of life and death.
As an example, back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the Vietnam War fueled the concept that “if they’re old enough to die for their country, they’re old enough to drink.” State after state changed their legal drinking ages to be 18 for everyone. The result was that traffic fatalities for that age group soared, well above a level that would have been equal to that of people in their early 20’s. They just weren’t making the proper judgement on drinking and driving. Education and training of various sorts were tried, but the matter wasn’t solved until the Federal government started to cut matching highway funds for all states that had a drinking age below 21. The states raised their drinking ages, and the level of traffic fatalities for the under-21 age group dropped back down.
Yes, I want teens to transition to adulthood. But deciding whether or not to have sex and making sure that the sex act doesn’t result in conception or infection requires a high level of judgement, maturity, and a consideration for the emotions and feelings of the other person involved. The estimation of whether or not a child’s desire to engage in such activity is properly tempered with such judgements and should be facilitated by the provision of birth control belongs to parents, not the State.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2006 at 7:25 am
I have been browsing through this thread, and it’s interesting to me how discussions like this inevitably devolve onto the conflict between notions individualism and what I will call, for want of a better word, communalism. RonF, for example, argues that the State has no business determining when and whether young people have access to birth control. That determination should be made by parents, and he bases that reasoning on the fact that parents are personally responsible for their children’s behavior in so many other instances, that it doesn’t make sense to exclude sexual behavior and its consequences from the purview of parental responsibility.
Following that reasoning to its logical conclusion, however, it would seem to me, ought to give parents the right also to decide the age of consent for their own children. If I think that my son or daughter is ready to start making his or her own sexual decisions, why should the State be able to step in and say, “No, that 15-year-old and that 19-year-old have to wait [insert the number of years according to the state] before they can have sex.” After all, I know, as RonF says, my “individual kid’s emotional, physical and mental makeup,” so who is the State to tell me that my kid is not ready?
If the State has a reasonable interest in determining the age before which young people cannot be understood as able to give informed sexual consent, then why doesn’t it have an interest in helping young people to manage the consequences of their sexual decisions, if only as a matter of self-preservation? It seems to me that making birth control readily available, even without parental consent, is a lot less expensive than having to assume the costs associated with either teen abortion or the births given by teen mothers to unplanned-for children.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2006 at 11:18 am
So, you believe that all unmarried sex is immoral. The marriage certificate is what differentiates moral sex, from immoral sex. Gotcha.
No, that’s not what I believe. I wrote down what I believe; you can read it any time you wish. You will have to put down the preconceptions about what I must secretly REALLY believe and want first, before you will understand it, but it’s there in black and tan.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
What part of this:
Precautions such as birth control or fertility methods diminish, but do not abrogate, the immorality;
did I not understand?
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
As an example, back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the Vietnam War fueled the concept that “if they’re old enough to die for their country, they’re old enough to drink.” State after state changed their legal drinking ages to be 18 for everyone. The result was that traffic fatalities for that age group soared, well above a level that would have been equal to that of people in their early 20’s. They just weren’t making the proper judgement on drinking and driving
I don’t think this is a good analogy; perhaps a better analogy would be comparing driving and seat-belt laws. Birth control could be more accurately compared to the function of a seat belt while driving, not the use of alcohol while driving.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
What part of this…did I not understand?
I don’t know.
I just know that from a comment where I didn’t mention marriage, you derived the conclusion that I believe all nonmarital sex to be immoral. From a comment where I mention contraception only to classify it as something which diminishes the moral culpability of irresponsible conception, you derived the conclusion that I want to make it harder for teenagers to get contraception. From a comment where I discuss the necessity of warning young people about the powerful negative consequences of certain types of sexual activity, you derive the conclusion that I miss being able to call girls sluts.
Or something; to be honest, it’s difficult to figure out where your thought process went off the rails, when it bears so little correlation to what’s actually here on the page. I wrote a comment about human frailty, missing the bar, and the duty we owe young people; you responded with a cut and paste from a Pandagon rant against the Christofundiefascists.
Whatever. If you feel like engaging what I wrote, instead of what you think I believe, I’m here to do that whenever you want.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Maybe we should start at the beginning, if you actually do want a dialog.
Do you believe that conceiving a new life irresponsibly is immoral?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 27th, 2006 at 4:35 am
La Lubu:
To be fair to Robert, you’ll get a much clearer picture of where he’s coming from, if you read this post.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
October 27th, 2006 at 7:41 am
I don’t think this is a good analogy; perhaps a better analogy would be comparing driving and seat-belt laws. Birth control could be more accurately compared to the function of a seat belt while driving, not the use of alcohol while driving.
My example was intended to show what happens when you give 16 and 18-year olds actual responsibility for a life or death choice, and why such choices need to be restricted. The analogy is “life-or-death choice”, not the actual functions. It would be hard to do this with seat belts, as their use has been mandated for all drivers or none, there’s never been an age differential on who has had to use them and who hasn’t. Also, it would be hard to get age-related figures on frequency of use and frequency of deaths due to failure of their use.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 27th, 2006 at 7:50 am
Richard, you do make some good points there. At some point, society has to say “Hey, it’s time for you to grow up and be considered responsible for your own actions (i.e., become an adult).”
On that basis, and because different kinds of decisions follow from different kinds of responsibilities, there are different ages set for being able to legally make a given kind of decision on one’s own. You’re allowed to drive at age 16, although I’m not clear on what the minimum age is where you can contract for your own insurance (without which you cannot drive). You can enter the armed forces without your parents’ permission at (I think) 18, you can’t drink legally until you’re 21, you can’t sign most contracts on your own until between the ages of 18 to 21, etc. You can’t assent or deny, on your own, to almost all medical procedures until you are 21 (I think, or is it 18?). Given their consequences, it seems to me that the point at which responsibility for decisions related to sex become legally independent of your parents probably shouldn’t be lower than any of these.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 27th, 2006 at 8:46 am
RonF–
I think you have missed my point. As far as I understand it–and I may be entirely wrong about this–what the State does in the case of age-of-consent laws is take away from parents, at least to some degree, the right to decide when a child is ready to have sex. I can’t imagine, for example, that it would be legal in any state for a parent to decide and then act such that her or his 10-year-old started having sex with anyone, much less someone above the age of consent, and I think we would all agree that giving a child that young, or even 13 or 14 years old, into marriage to an older spouse, which would give the spouse sexual access to that child, is wrong and something that the State would have a legitimate interest in preventing, or at least heavily, heavily regulating.
So, if the State can interfere with a parent’s control over her or his children’s sexuality in this way, why is it wrong, from the State’s point of view, not the individual moral or ethical position of the parent, to make birth control available to young people, even without parental permission.
(And I should add that by asking this question, I am not trying to dismiss or trivialize the legitimate concern parents should have over when and whether it is healthy, good, morally correct, whatever, for their children to become sexually active. As the father of an eight-year-old boy who has already learned a great deal more than I knew when I was eight, those concerns are very real to me.)
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 27th, 2006 at 8:47 am
I’ve seen complaints that people of a given age are too young to have kids and want me to give them my hard-earned money to support their selfish choices.
I hate to point this out, but if you live in the US, you’re already contributing your hard-earned money to support other people’s selfish choices–including their choices to have kids. You don’t have to be on WIC to send your kids to public school, get a child-care tax credit, or write off your dependents on your 1040. Oh, I also understand that part of my taxes subsidize people who use their home equity to pay for trips to the Bahamas.
I haven’t seen any complaints that someone is too old to have a kid, other than the medical issues involved
That’s because you’re not really the target audience for hysterical articles and news reports about how women’s fertility supposedly evaporates at 35, and endless anecdotal stories about how Ms. Ivy-League Career Grad put off starting a family to pursue her career and now she can’t find a husband/needs fertility treatments and damn, that bitch is sorry now.
Do you believe that conceiving a new life irresponsibly is immoral?
And have you stopped beating your wife?
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 27th, 2006 at 10:08 am
Do you believe that conceiving a new life irresponsibly is immoral?
Maybe to a small degree (doing anything irresponsibly usually is somewhat amoral, isn’t it?) Though I don’t want anyone else defining “responsible” for me. And I don’t think the morality is the central issue here.
What are you getting at with the question?
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 27th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Do you believe that conceiving a new life irresponsibly is immoral?
I do. I can think of no worse way to begin a life than to be born to irresponsible parents.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 27th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Luba: Considering that estimates of marital infidelity tend to range from fifty to seventy-five percent, I don’t see that at all. Looks to me as if the promises of fidelity and faithfulness actually don’t have a little more weight than whispers in the dark between randy teenagers.
That’s the way you made it Luba. You make marriage out to be a piece of paper, a cheap, meaningless convention with no significance. If you accept that your vows are empty from the moment you utter them then of course they have no gravity.
can we please divest ourselves of the societal notion that it takes a marriage for a person to be responsible for a child? … And can we also dump the assumption that another parent is automatically helpful? … A marriage is no guarantee of any damn thing.
Neither is any written contract a guarantee that its terms will be upheld, neither is any article in our canon of laws, or any right given under the constitution guaranteed us if we as a people do not hold ourselves to them and protect them from those who violate them.
Do you believe we only need the responsible parents to take care of their children? We need the irresponsible parents to accept responsibility for their children too, or we wouldn’t have to bother with vows. We need parents to accept responsibility to each other. We need fathers and mothers and their children to know themselves as family, with all the moral obligations that the label implies. That includes loyalty to one another in hard times, it includes forgiveness for some transgressions that we make out of human weakness. It must be capable of enduring more than other kinds adult relationships need to endure.
I recognize that a second parent is not automatically helpful. No matter how much we encourage good family conduct some parents will still be determined to be harmful. When that happens they are removed from the family lawfully, punished accordingly, and the child still has one parent to protect and guide them. That’s a form of redundancy.
When a single parent becomes delinquent, violent, incapable or reckless, that child is in far more serious trouble. There is no second voice in parenting decisions, no second set of eyes to see signs of abuse. Even a unhelpful parent at least does that much, at least connects a child to another family, and if the worst happens and the strong parent is taken away by a tragic accident, a weak parent is still better than none.
At the end of the day, I see only two choices for us. Either parents are or aren’t required to be responsible for their families. If they are we must publicly acknowledge it through marriage and those that fail in their responsibilities must be punished. If they are not, then we do not require marriage and delinquent fathers and mothers cannot be punished, because you cannot default on an obligation you never had.
I can’t see the latter option leading to anything but disaster for any society.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 27th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
We concentrate so much on where we disagree we overlook our common ground, so here:
Luba, I agree with you on the matters of safe sex education and available birth control. The ’slut’ stigma will diminish as the danger of premature pregnancy diminishes. I doubt it would vanish entirely as the act will always carry an element of risk.
Robert, I agree with you on your definition of morality and immortality as it pertains to sexual acts, and about your reasoning on the standards we adopt as a society: setting the bar, our duty to our younger generation, making the consequences of youthful mistakes less severe by widening the curtain of prohibition around the worst kinds of acts.
RonF, I agree with you that it is a parent’s place to decide what children under their care can do. Anything resource the government intends to make available should be done with the informed consent of the parent. I also agree that high school age is too early to be empowered to make that kind of decision.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
October 27th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
What are you getting at with the question?
RonF and LaLubu are having a disagreement about the morality associated with reproductive choices. I am attempting to ascertain LaLubu’s moral framework with regard to these issues.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 27th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
Do you believe that conceiving a new life irresponsibly is immoral?
Define your terms. What do you mean by “conceiving a new life irresponsibly”? I know how this phrase has been historically used against women, but am unaware of any objective measurement of “conceiving new life irresponsibly”. It isn’t something that can be measured in an ultrasound.
RonF, I am also a parent, so I do have a dog in this fight. It’s not that I don’t understand your concerns. But, I am also trying to keep in mind the very practical matter of giving young people options, so they can make the best decision for them. I’m thirty-nine years old. It still upsets my mother that I don’t share (all) her religious beliefs, and that I still leave the house with what she considers messy hair (translation: not hairsprayed into something the consistency of a brick wall). This is the perennial problem between parents and children—the “dividing line”. Where does the child stop, and the adult begin? The fact of the matter is that our children, making the transition from childhood to adulthood, may do so sooner than we want them to. Or, make choices in their lives radically different than the choices we would rather have them make. And frankly, we can Monday-morning quarterback for the rest of the week—but we can’t really predict what is going to happen in our children’s lives (or our own), and the values we transmit—the ones we think are going to serve them well in this world—may do quite the opposite. Life is unpredictable. Add to that the tendency of teens not to share the more intimate parts of their lives with their parents (whether for fear of punishment, ridicule, lack of understanding, adding to parental worries or stress, or just wanting to stand on their own two feet), and yeah—I think giving teens the tools to most effectively make their own practical choice about how to conduct their sexuality is the best path.
CJ, I sound a lot more hostile to marriage on this thread than I really am. I’m trying to press through the point that marriage cannot be conducted using—-to steal a phrase from the inimitable Vine Deloria—”the Avis approach”, meaning, “just try harder” (he used this phrase to illustrate the spiritual bankruptcy of Western religion and the various commercial gimmicks churches in the U.S. were turning to in the Seventies in an effort to keep congregants; I think the phrase easily lends itself to other forms of spiritual bankruptcy as well). It is disingenous to not recognize that women have been historically, disproportionately considered responsible for the state of our marriages, and that we are the marital partners who are supposed to tolerate a higher level of marital misconduct. I am also mystified at the assumption that single parents don’t constitute a “family”; I come from a background where extended families are the norm. Extended families don’t tend to send children to the orphanage, y’know?
People illustrate how they really feel by their actions, not their words. Like I said before, it didn’t take a marriage for me to be responsible to and for my daughter. It stands to reason that it shouldn’t take a marriage for anybody to be responsible for their child. It isn’t something you talk about; it’s something you do. What’s the old saying—”character is how you behave when nobody’s looking.”—or something like that? Maybe character is also how you behave when no one is forcing the issue.
I don’t want to give a pass to deadbeats any more than you do, CJ. But as a practical matter, I wouldn’t count on any of them changing, either. It takes a special kind of cold to turn your back on a child. And I’ll admit, it is difficult for me to imagine how such a person could possibly be a positive influence in the life of that child.
My idea of comprehensive sex education isn’t just about the sex, either. It would also cover sexism, domestic violence, rape, manipulation, double-standards, etc.
I am attempting to ascertain LaLubu’s moral framework with regard to these issues.
Why? It’s irrelevant. You and I can have different moral frameworks, yet still give the same basic advice to our teens (which, for my part is “avoid parenthood until you’ve got a firmer foundation; you’ve got enough on your plate to deal with getting to that point”—probably not so different from your advice).
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
October 30th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
Define your terms. What do you mean by “conceiving a new life irresponsibly”? I know how this phrase has been historically used against women, but am unaware of any objective measurement of “conceiving new life irresponsibly”. It isn’t something that can be measured in an ultrasound.
It is simply creating a new life without being ready or capable of (or possibly even interested in) caring for it. I would not choose to be born into such a situation, and I’m sure if you had a voice in it, you would not either.
Where does the child stop, and the adult begin? The fact of the matter is that our children, making the transition from childhood to adulthood, may do so sooner than we want them to. Or, make choices in their lives radically different than the choices we would rather have them make.
True, but we have a right as a society to establish standards of behavior. When you remark, correctly, that parents without the oaths of marriage can be as dedicated as any married parent, I think that pilots without licenses can be good aviators, and doctors without medical licenses can be as ethical and competent as any other doctor. The problem is, without the certificates you can’t tell the competent from the incompetent except by trying them out and seeing how they do, but if society allows them to proceed in their professional capacity without qualifications, society becomes liable for any damage they do.
Given the value children have and the damage they can suffer if mishandled, parents unwilling to make family seem like bad risks. The spoken vows obligate them to care for each other. Allowing them to have children without vows obligates society to assume responsibility for their interests instead and that simply isn’t possible on a national scale. We need to able to have faith in family. You often make this kind of argument out to be a promotion of a religious belief but the virtues of family exist whether you believe in God or not. An aetheist should be as capable of appreciating it as any minister or rabbi.
I’m trying to press through the point that marriage cannot be conducted using—-to steal a phrase from the inimitable Vine Deloria—”the Avis approach”, meaning, “just try harder”
Well, would you disown your son because of a gambling problem, or started doing drugs or dropped out of school? Would you stop being a daughter if your father had an anger management problem or your mother drank too much? What could your daughter do to make you give up on her? I believe your answer is that would never stop being family to any of them, is that correct? If you want their father to have this commitment to his family, you must have this relationship to him, and he must have that relationship with you. That is what a family is, and that is what wedding vows mean.
I have seen many children make the journey to adulthood and I’ve seen many adults make the journey to seniority, and I know the difference that being part of a whole family makes in their lives, and it’s helped me appreciate the difference it has made in mine. The word enriching scarcely describes it, and I feel you must know what I’m talking about. Ensuring that your parents are willing to form that kind of union before having you is not oppression, it’s the greatest gift society could give you.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
November 19th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Maia,
Great post. The connections are clear between capitalism and how it limits our choices. It also tends to define proconcieved racist and sexist biased notions of what is “normal” such as proper childbearing age and who we should be before having a child. I’m 25 and definately living the effects of all this, being single and childless, not necessarily by choice but “necessity.” It infuriorates me that I cannot choose begin a family and live the type of life I’d like to lead based on the knowledge of my ancestors and my own creative imagination. It is true that capitalism totally dehumanizes the act of raising a family and demonizes mothers.
I am amazed at the teen mothers I know who are challenging the assumptions about young motherhood, by the their own commitment to their own lives and the lives of their children. I know teen mothers who are still in school and responsible caring mothers who value life. I’ve read a few of the comments above, and I’m disgusted at the assumptions being put out there about our youth. Our youth are capable thinking humans involved in the process of growth as much as adults are. Alot of the assumptions youth get stigmatized with are actually reflected in adult behavior as well.
Motherhood is not valued within capitalist society because of structural limitations against poor families- usually targeting women of color, single mothers (and this is NOT soley limited to young mothers, ok!), and young mothers. Recent history has evidenced this fact, such as the forced sterilization of American Indian, Puerto Rican, and Black mothers in the late 70’s and early 80’s. My mother herself was affected by this. After she had my younger sister in ‘82, the doctor persuaded her to get her tubes tied because she had a heart condition that could worsen with childbirth.. Why couldn’t he recommend heart medication instead? Perhaps because she’s a Dominican immigrant with a thick accent and three children.
Capitalism has its indirect forms of population control: prisons, economic marginalization, and cultural demonization are a few that have real life effects on family planning and the options being presented to them. I’m sorry, but tax breaks and the crumbs of society obviously don’t cut it. Patriarchy and racism works right under our noses, we don’t see it but if you’re affected by it you can smell it. There are practices and beliefs that go on legitimizing racist and sexist institutional and individual behaviors and because they are viewed as “common sense” its hard to pin point them, usually leading to blaming the victim for not complying with norms.
This comment was written by tigera consciente.Report this comment to the moderators
November 19th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Your post has been linked to http://eastoaklandstreetphoto.blogspot.com/ as an educational tool for our photojournalism course at East Oakland Community High School..
This comment was written by tigera consciente.Report this comment to the moderators
November 19th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
That looks like a really awesome class/project tigera - and some beautiful photos. Thanks for the link.
This comment was written by Maia.Report this comment to the moderators
November 19th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
He believed he was targeted because of his middle eastern appearance. [IMG ] BrownFemi also discusses paramilitary action against the indigenous people of Oaxaca, Mexico who are struggling to resist the exploitation of their land and labor. [IMG ] Maia makes the connection between capitalism and its limitations on the right of young motherhood for young mothers (and other mothers) who want to choose to give birth but are faced with a society that demonizes this act and devalues motherhood.
This comment was written by Street Photojournalism Reppin' Da Town.Report this comment to the moderators
November 20th, 2006 at 12:12 am
I wanted to give shout outs to La Lubu –I read all your comments and replies–damn, your voice of reason is in my opinion unparalleled in this thread, specifically in regards to those opposing your beliefs. Thank you for keeping it real and actually caring instead of slut bashing, judging and being part of a realistic outlook and solution.
This comment was written by fiercelyfab.Report this comment to the moderators
November 20th, 2006 at 8:22 am
After she had my younger sister in ‘82, the doctor persuaded [my mother] to get her tubes tied because she had a heart condition that could worsen with childbirth.. Why couldn’t he recommend heart medication instead? Perhaps because she’s a Dominican immigrant with a thick accent and three children.
Or perhaps because she had a heart condition that couldn’t be adequately treated with heart medication, or that would have had a risk of worsening to that point if she had another child. Unless you have some information about her heart condition that you have not disclosed, your statement is nothing but biased speculation.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
November 20th, 2006 at 8:32 am
This is the perennial problem between parents and children—the “dividing line”. Where does the child stop, and the adult begin? The fact of the matter is that our children, making the transition from childhood to adulthood, may do so sooner than we want them to. …. I think giving teens the tools to most effectively make their own practical choice about how to conduct their sexuality is the best path.
The use of the word “tools” brings an analogy to mind. Yes, you should give your children the tools they need to make moral and practical choices. But if you were teaching your 10-year old how to build a shelf, you wouldn’t give him or her a 1/3 hp electric Skilsaw and a pneumatic nail gun. You’d start them out with a hand saw and hammer and finish nails, and supervise them for a while. You wouldn’t let them use the electric radial saw or band saw until they were older, even though they would be physically capable of it.
So it goes with sex, or anything else in life. It’s quite true that the boundaries between childhood and adolescence and between adolesece and adulthood are blurry. The law sets bright lines for various acts because the law can’t be adjusted on individual cases. That’s the parents’ job. It’s up to them to figure out what tools their child should have the training and opportunity to use, and when, not the State’s.
It’s also one more reason why there should never be only one parent of a child by choice; it’s too big a decision for one person to make and implement.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
November 20th, 2006 at 8:37 am
Motherhood is not valued within capitalist society
Ah, but it is. It is so highly valued that capitalist societies build in special incentives to make sure that no one should have to face it alone. It has laws that require that the man who participated in helping a woman become a mother should stand up and take responsibility to aid her.
Human nature being what it is, some men try to duck this responsibility. And human nature also leads some women to have children without either knowing who the father is, or to choose as a father of their children a man who is unfit to meet his responsibilities. Our society does what it can to discourage this by witholding support for the outcome of such a choice.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
November 20th, 2006 at 6:40 pm
fiercelyfab: thank you so much.
And human nature also leads some women to have children without either knowing who the father is, or to choose as a father of their children a man who is unfit to meet his responsibilities.
Ron F, I’d like to thank you for this comment, because it is such a bright, shining example of the slut-bashing I referred to earlier. I like the way you shifted the burden and blame from the man who deliberately abandons his child back onto the mother. Seriously. That’s how prevailing sexism works—the attitude is so ingrained, we don’t even question it.
See, there are prevailing sexist myths about women, mothers, and especially single mothers. By prefacing your comment with a reference to women who don’t know who the father is (a tiny minority), you set up a negative reference point with which to bash the larger group of women—those who couldn’t see into the future.
This is a pattern I see repeated on just about every conversation on the topic of single mothers and their male partners who abandon their children—the reference to “choosing the man who won’t be responsible”. As if these men are distinguishable from men at large. Here’s a tip: unless a man has a previous record of abandoning his children, you can’t predict with any certainty whether or not he will do so in the future—and that includes in the event of a marriage. That sounds a lot more cynical than I want it to—but damn!, why is it so difficult to place the blame for child abandonment on the shoulders of the person who did the abandoning?! Talk about enabling!!
Lemme put it this way: if a man and a woman had a child together, and the man decided to steal some money from his employer—you know, skim a little off the top, supplement his income—would you consider that partly the woman’s fault? No? Why not? Shouldn’t she have been able to see that coming? Shouldn’t she have been able to see that he was destined to be a thief, regardless of his previously spotless record? Shouldn’t she have known better than to get involved with a man who would steal?
I’m curious as to why the discussion is always framed that way—that the blame for child abandonment has to be shared between the parties. That the person who chose to be responsible for her child is somehow to blame for the action of the person who chose to abandon the child. My guess is that it is part-and-parcel of the same prevailing sexist attitude that holds women responsible for the behavior of men, period. Don’t you find that attitude incredibly insulting to men? I do.
Ron F, why do you keep coming back to the strawperson of the State? Providing comprehensive sex education and the option of accessing birth control is not usurping parental rights or responsibilities. Parents still have the option to teach their children on these subject, and still have the option of teaching their children according to their own beliefs or creeds. The fact still remains though, that children become adults, and often have their own ideas about these matters, as part of the normal developmental process of becoming an adult. To go back to your tool analogy: it’s one thing to expect that a 10 year old won’t be having intercourse. It’s quite another to expect that an older teen won’t be having intercourse.
Yes, it is the parent’s job to raise a child. But it is also part of the parent’s job to step back and let the child raise him or herself as the child ages. There comes a time when a parent has to admit that his or her child is no longer a child, but a young adult with a foundation of his or her own—a foundation that is partly the parent’s contribution, and partly the contribution of others—including the young adult’s own. And yes, young people who are scrupulously raised to believe that premarital sex is a sin still engage in it—just like their parents, grandparents, etc. did before them. And still the human race goes on. Thousands of years of shaming and slut bashing haven’t killed the sex drive yet. ‘Nother words, it’s an ineffective tool at preventing unwanted pregnancy. Birth control has proven to be an effective tool at preventing unwanted pregnancy. What’s not to love?
It’s also one more reason why there should never be only one parent of a child by choice; it’s too big a decision for one person to make and implement.
And of course, you couldn’t leave without this parting shot—-the claim that single parents are inherently bad parents, due to being incapable of making and implementing parenting decisions (you do realize that a person who is incapable of making and implementing parenting decisions is de facto a bad parent, don’t you? Good. So don’t come back and claim “I never said anything about bad parenting.”) . Let me remind you (again) that a marriage license does not confer the ability to be a good parent, nor does the presence of a spouse automatically confer any extra parental help or family income.
Also, let me remind you (again) that lip service is not the same as “being valued”. If our society “valued” motherhood, motherhood wouldn’t put one’s career on the fast track to the shitter—it would put one in the forefront of opportunities for career advancement—you know, kind of like how simply getting married does for men. If society valued motherhood, mothers would get social security credit for it. If society valued motherhood, flexible schedules, affordable childcare, a schoolday (and year) that coincided with the workday (an year), and paid parental leave would be the norm. No, society most certainly does not value mothers.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
November 21st, 2006 at 9:26 am
La Lubu, interesting that you failed to comment on my statement:
“Human nature being what it is, some men try to duck this responsibility. ”
then quote the next sentence where I discuss poor choices some women make and then claim that I have “shifted the burden and blame from the man who deliberately abandons his child back onto the mother.” Nicely done.
The bottom line is that people make bad choices, both men and women, and in these cases the people who suffer most for it are the kids. You ask:
“I’m curious as to why the discussion is always framed that way—that the blame for child abandonment has to be shared between the parties.”
It doesn’t always. Sure, there are guys out there whose behavior in such cases had no previous indicators that anyone short of a degree is psychology might have spotted. There are also guys out there who have done such a thing where there were such indicators. Like your example of “unless a man has a previous record of abandoning his children” - astonishingly enough, such things do happen. And people change - a guy who was upstanding when he fathered a child might some point down the line lose his honor and bail. These things cannot always be predicted.
Nowhere in my statement that there are women that become single parents because they’ve made bad choices does it imply that this is the only reason that it happens. But it’s foolish to pass by the fact that there are many occasions where it does happen.
Any woman who has a child by a man who then abandons them has been victimized by that man, and so has their child. And it’s damned unequal; I’d guess that very few women run out on a kid and leave it with the father. So the burden of “I better make sure that the person I have a kid with won’t run on us” falls mostly on the mother. Is that fair? No. Is it real? Yes! If a man finds himself in that position, then I’d tell him that he should consider whether or not he should have done a better job of making sure that he’d chosen the right partner to have a kid with. But I simply doubt that there’s much occasion to do so.
Providing comprehensive sex education and the option of accessing birth control is not usurping parental rights or responsibilities.
Actually, I haven’t argued against sex education. Considering that to be usurping parental rights and responsibilities would have to be a function of what you consider “comprehensive sex education”. If we’re talking biology and the immediately attendant emotional and financial effects, fine. Few people would disagree with that. But if you start getting into how homosexual sex works and the desirability or morality of it, or the desirability and morality of premarital sex in general, then I’d disagree.
Parents still have the option to teach their children on these subject, and still have the option of teaching their children according to their own beliefs or creeds.
Which they don’t need the State using it’s power to undermine.
Yes, it is the parent’s job to raise a child. But it is also part of the parent’s job to step back and let the child raise him or herself as the child ages. There comes a time when a parent has to admit that his or her child is no longer a child, but a young adult with a foundation of his or her own—a foundation that is partly the parent’s contribution, and partly the contribution of others—including the young adult’s own.
And the judgement of when those times occur is something to be determined by the parents and the child. The State’s intrusion into the process should be absolutely minimal.
And yes, young people who are scrupulously raised to believe that premarital sex is a sin still engage in it—just like their parents, grandparents, etc. did before them. And still the human race goes on. Thousands of years of shaming and slut bashing haven’t killed the sex drive yet.
All true.
‘Nother words, it’s an ineffective tool at preventing unwanted pregnancy.
I don’t see how this conclusion follows, though. Unless you have figures on how many unwanted pregnancies there would have been absent people having been raised with such stricturees.
Birth control has proven to be an effective tool at preventing unwanted pregnancy.
Yes, it has, and it should be taught.
What’s not to love?
People giving it to my kid without my knowledge or approval, especially when they use my own money to do so.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
November 21st, 2006 at 10:06 am
Go, La Lubu, go! RonF, if you don’t see that you’re blaming the responsible parent for being a victim of an irresponsible parent, then I can’t help you.
This comment was written by Original Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
November 21st, 2006 at 12:39 pm
the claim that single parents are inherently bad parents, due to being incapable of making and implementing parenting decisions (you do realize that a person who is incapable of making and implementing parenting decisions is de facto a bad parent, don’t you? Good. So don’t come back and claim “I never said anything about bad parenting.”
It seems I went a bit far, then, and I apologize. Single parents are certainly capable of making and implementing good decisions. But it’s certainly a lot harder than when there are two active parents, because there’s only one person to do so.
Let me remind you (again) that a marriage license does not confer the ability to be a good parent, nor does the presence of a spouse automatically confer any extra parental help or family income.
Nope, they don’t. But it increases the odds.
Also, let me remind you (again) that lip service is not the same as “being valued”. If our society “valued” motherhood, motherhood wouldn’t put one’s career on the fast track to the shitter—it would put one in the forefront of opportunities for career advancement—you know, kind of like how simply getting married does for men.
I’m not talking lip service; IIRC there are various levels of government support for single mothers. Not real high, I imagine, but then I don’t think that government should be the prime actor in expressing society’s support for things. People are free to express their support for care for single mothers and their kids by contributing to or working with the various private charities that support such things.
Now, if you want to talk about government support, consider the laws regarding marriage and property, etc., that do things like presume that a married man is the father of his children and grants them certain rights unless he presents evidence to the contrary, presume that ownership of his property passes to his wife and children if he dies, provide Social Security payments for his wife and children, etc. Of course, this means that society places a much higher value on married motherhood, but that’s only wise public policy, since it means that there’s a higher likelihood that the children will have two parents, higher income, etc. Not a guarantee, but it greatly increases the odds.
Getting married puts men on the forefront of opportunities for career advancement? How so?
If society valued motherhood, mothers would get social security credit for it.
Social security isn’t given out to assign “value” to something. It’s given out because money was put in it. Social Security money is given out because the person who contributed money into it is retired, or died and left dependents. It has nothing to do with assigning “value” to single mothers or school teachers or NBA players or anything else.
If society valued motherhood, flexible schedules, affordable childcare, a schoolday (and year) that coincided with the workday (an year), and paid parental leave would be the norm. No, society most certainly does not value mothers.
Some of the changes above are coming about, especially flexible schedules and parental leave. But it seems that the difference between your viewpoint and that of society as a whole in the U.S. is that you think that society should value and thus subsidize to a certain level with tax money all kinds of motherhood. Whereas American society says that it values mothers who are married to the fathers of their children, and that it wishes to discourage single motherhood where the mother was never married to the father. I think that’s reasonable.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
November 21st, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Go, La Lubu, go! RonF, if you don’t see that you’re blaming the responsible parent for being a victim of an irresponsible parent, then I can’t help you.
No, what I see is the presumption that my comment that some single parents are that way because they’ve made poor choice being interpreted as meaning that all single parents being that way because they’ve made poor choices.
Tell me this; do you think that all single mothers became mothers without having made some irrepsonsible choices of their own? If not, do you think they should bear an equal share of the responsibility for those choices?
To me, the fact that a male who ducks out on his parental responsibilities is worthy of moral condemnation and legal sanctions is so blinding obvious as to require little comment. Certainly I don’t expect to see any dispute here on the matter. It’s the mindset that a single mother is completely a victim and has not and should not be held responsible for any part of her situation that intrigues me. When a woman becomes a single parent (presuming that we’re not talking about the father dying in some accident), I think that in many cases we might find that she’s made an irresponsible choice or two of her own. What level of support does society generally give people who make irresponsible choices, and what level should it give?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
November 21st, 2006 at 8:16 pm
It seems I went a bit far, then, and I apologize.
Thank you. Apology accepted.
Single parents are certainly capable of making and implementing good decisions. But it’s certainly a lot harder than when there are two active parents, because there’s only one person to do so.
I don’t know how you mean this statement, but this statement is a version of a ubiquitous claim about single parenting—that it is somehow “harder” than coparenting. I’ve been on a lot of threads across the internet where this idea was expounded upon by others, and the general meaning is that single parents—especially female single parents, don’t have the authority or discipline it takes to raise children. That without the strong hand of a man–literally, as in the ability to give painful spankings—the parenting is inevitably wishy-washy, indecisive, lenient, undisciplined.
And that’s just bullshit. Look. Single parenting isn’t “hard”—it’s busy. There isn’t anything inherently difficult in parenting alone—in fact, it is superior to having an uninvolved, uncooperative or dysfunctional spouse. The only aspect of single parenting that is inherently “harder”—or more accurately, can read as “harder”, is that there isn’t anyone else to foist the mundane, daily jobs onto. If you are the only parent, there isn’t anyone else to cook dinner, do the laundry, help with homework, cut the grass, do the shopping, change the oil, paint the house, take the kids to the park, etc. And if you get sick, you still have to get up and do most of that crap anyway, even if you feel like hell. (That’s the “hard” part—standing at the stove with a fever.) But seriously, the work itself isn’t materially harder—you just get to do it all the time. Then again, some of the married people I know experience this, too.
Nope, they don’t. But it increases the odds.
I agree with you here—it does increase the odds. However, the argument that single parenting is bad because there is only one income is distinctly gendered. See, single female parents are the ones offered this trope (tripe?); none of the male single parents of my acquaintance have ever been accosted by do-gooders questioning their ability to raise a child because of the lack of a second income. I doubt married men who have stay-at-home wives are scolded for not having a second family income, either. Not to mention, in this shitty economy, that everyone, male or female, parent or no, should assume several job losses within the course of their working life, and live (and save) accordingly. Sheesh.
One of the background assumptions behind the “marriage incentives”, is that if a single mother gets married, that her husband will contribute to the family income. In most of these cases, that isn’t true—because the jobs aren’t there. The living-wage, entry-level jobs that were once open to those with a high school diploma (or even less) no longer exist. (And not many, if any, men with college degrees and good jobs are willing to date single mothers with only a high school diploma and a McJob—just putting that out there so we can have an honest discussion about the material advantages of marriage for young single mothers.)
Mind you, I’m not anti-marriage. But getting back to the original basic topic of the thread—teen mothers—we should be giving the assistance necessary to put these young women on the path to self-sufficiency. Translation: higher education. You seem to think that programs that encourage and assist teen mothers at staying in school and furthering their education is somehow encouraging young women to get pregnant. That’s ludicrous. What those programs do is provide the best path for these young mothers to get on with their lives and have the best future—by giving them the tools to rely on themselves. Yes, marriage increases the odds of having a stable family income—but not as much as having your own education, and your own career. Having resources of your own to rely on is crucial. This isn’t sexist or anti-male—we raise young men to rely on themselves, and it’s a strategy that works. It will (and does) work just as well for young women.
I’m all for birth control in the schools for utilitarian reasons—most teens attend high school. There are all kinds of cities that don’t have a Planned Parenthood outlet. If everyone went to church, I’d recommend putting birth control outlets in the churches! It’s just a matter of reaching the most people in the easiest way. If most parents were adult about their sexually-active teens, this wouldn’t even be a topic of discussion. Birth control would be used, condoms would be considered an essential element of sex, and young women who used birth control (translation: planned in advance to have sex) wouldn’t be regarded as “slutty”. They’d be regarded as “sensible”.
Poor choices. *snort* Here’s some scenarios, you tell me the percentage of blame you would accord the perpetrator, and what percentage of blame you would accord the person harmed by the actions of the perpetrator? Ready?
1. A person who did not drink and drive, who was struck and severly injured by a drunk driver. What percentage blame does the non-drunk driver own, as compared to the drunk driver? Does the percentage change if the non-drunk driver admits to driving along a route where there are taverns? Does the percentage change if the non-drunk driver admits to not only driving along a road where there are taverns, but also on a Friday night? How about after 9:00PM?
2. A person who is mugged at gunpoint. What percentage of blame should be assigned to the mugged person, as opposed to the mugger? What if the mugged person was wearing expensive clothing? Visible jewelry? Does the percentage of blame for the mugged person go down if he or she was wearing old, worn blue jeans and cruddy sneakers?
3. A shopowner who has his or her shop robbed. What percentage of blame should the shopowner carry for displaying goods in public, knowing full well this is a temptation to thieves?
4. An interracial couple who move into a “white” neighborhood and have their house vandalized by racist thugs. What percentage of blame should the interracial couple own up to, considering that moving into a “white” neighborhood could be viewed as a provocative act?
5. A person who throws a well-attended party, who later discovers that some personal belongings are missing after the party is over. Is this person partially to blame for not locking up all of his or her belongings that require only one person to conceal and carry? Or is it more a matter of not keeping a watchful eye on all of the guests at all times, such as following them to the bathroom door, etc.?
My take? All scenarios, all circumstances—100% the fault of the person who did the wrongdoing.
I’m not interested in perpetuating a “victim” mentality at all—that’s not where I’m coming from. I’m coming from a “shit happens” mentality—when things don’t go according to plan, perform the immediate damage control necessary and move on from there—don’t dwell on it, but don’t repeat it. See, if a man knowingly fathers a child, and he’s a stand-up guy, he doesn’t have to be hounded, cajoled, pestered, or lectured about being a father to that child. He’ll just do it, because it’s the right thing to do. Personal integrity is something a person can only decide to have for themselves. I don’t want to give a break to deadbeats (of either sex) any more than you do, Ron F, but this notion of giving folks multiple chances, over years to be responsible for their child is not doing anything positive. In most cases, the “parents” aren’t contributing anything but an on-again, off-again “parenting” style that encourages the children involved to become emotionally attached to persons that are theoretically supposed to care about them, but don’t. This isn’t good from a mental health or developmental perspective. The intent was to shame these people into parenthood. It didn’t work.
Yes, there are women who have made poor choices. But see, those poor choices weren’t and aren’t made in a vacuum. There is a prevailing sexist backdrop to these poor choices. Very few single mothers have multiple children by different fathers. Some do. Why? Because they are trying to follow the “traditional” path! They are trying to “fix” their single mother status by hooking up with another man. And the vicious circle turns. I advocate breaking the sexist pattern—realizing that singleness isn’t the trait that needs fixing, that the material vulnerability that the lack of education and options engenders, and the emotional vulnerability that can come from continuing to believe in sexist myths is what needs fixing.
‘Nother words, the very women you have the least respect for, the very women who you regard as being the most to blame, are (not so) paradoxically the women most likely to consider themselves as “traditional” women, and the most desirous of the “traditional” (translation: traditional white middle class) female path. Neat, huh?
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
November 21st, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Getting married puts men on the forefront of opportunities for career advancement? How so?
Like this. You’ve probably noticed a similar dynamic throughout the course of your career—I certainly have. Married men tend to be viewed more positively by employers than single men, but the same does not hold true for women (all the more reason to encourage young single mothers to postpone marriage until after getting an education and a career. Employers tend to have a more positive view of single mothers than married mothers. If you’re a married mother, you have to fight the assumption that you’re not serious about your work. If you’re a single mother, your employer is more likely to believe you intend to stay employed).
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
November 21st, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Interesting article. Perhaps I missed it in my skim, but it seemed that they didn’t consider the possibility of changed behavior on the part of the married men.
I started working a lot harder when I got married, and a lot more than that when our baby was born.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:15 am
Robert, that is one possible explanation. Another is prevailing cultural attitudes about married men—in other words, the “halo effect”. If it was all about “working harder” once a person was married or had a family, the same dynamic would be true for women. The prevailing attitude would be that once a woman gets married and starts a family, that she is more likely to work harder in order to support that family. That dynamic doesn’t exist because of sexism.
There haven’t been a lot of studies conducted on the topic, because it isn’t deemed important. Again, we have the “Avis approach” handed out to women—y’know, just try harder. Work within the template of the preexisting sexism, and show that you’re the “exception to the rule”. So, what we end up with is a vast majority of women who are “exceptions to the rule” rather than being the rule!! Can’t you see how frustrating that can be to someone who gets to spend a lifetime dealing with it?
For how this dynamic works in the trades, I highly recommend Susan Eisenberg’s book, “We’ll Call You If We Need You”, a comprehensive tome on women in the trades. The trades aren’t really an exception to the rule on how men are assumed to be more interested and able in advancement; if anything, I would argue that a woman who completed her apprenticeship ought to be assumed to have the same staying power on the job as the men. It could be argued “more so”, because often she has done so without the social network and mentoring that the men received. It ought to be enough to prove that she doesn’t intend to leave work.
Well hell. I don’t want to get too far off topic. Suffice it to say that women still have strikes against us in the workplace. As long as folks still encourage women to hitch their star to the backside of a man (as evidenced in this thread), this attitude will prevail.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
November 22nd, 2006 at 4:26 pm
And that’s just bullshit. Look. Single parenting isn’t “hard”—it’s busy.
Busy is hard. It’s a lot harder to help your kid with his homework or spend a 1/2 hour arguing with them about how late they get to stay out when you’ve got all the housework to do yet and you’re tired. There’s only so many hours in the day, and if there’s someone around you can share the mundane and the parenting (or split it anyway you want). Plus, two heads are better than one when you have to figure out a problem. There’s also the resource problem. Your kid has a math quiz. If there’s only one of you, and your math is no good, the kid’s stuck. But if you have a spouse, maybe they are good at math, but suck at English where you’re good.
You seem to think that programs that encourage and assist teen mothers at staying in school and furthering their education is somehow encouraging young women to get pregnant.
Are you talking to me? Where did I say this?
Yes, marriage increases the odds of having a stable family income—but not as much as having your own education, and your own career.
Absolutely. I’m not recommending women marry on the basis of “you need a man to support you.” Also, that way you don’t end up having to stay in an abusive marriage, or end up having insufficient resources if something should happen to your husband’s earning ability (injury, death, disease, economic downturn, drugs).
Very few single mothers have multiple children by different fathers. Some do. Why? Because they are trying to follow the “traditional” path! They are trying to “fix” their single mother status by hooking up with another man.
The documentation I’ve seen has said that many single mothers have children because they want someone that will unconditionally love them and because their peers are doing it. Not a lot of mention about them wanting to try to tie the father into a relationship.
My take? All scenarios, all circumstances—100% the fault of the person who did the wrongdoing.
Quite true. Now, let’s take a look at this scenario:
A woman has sex with a man soon after meeting him in a casual fashion, knowing little about him. Neither one uses birth control. She gets pregnant. Who’s guilty of wrongdoing?
My answer; both of them. And the fact that the guy was dead wrong for what he did doesn’t change the fact that so was she. Both made poor choices. Both are responsible for the consequences. The fact is that she’s more likely to have to deal with the consequences than he is if he’s an asshole and wants to duck out of his side of the deal.
If a fully loaded semi and a Toyota Corolla both blow through a 4-way stop and collide in an intersection, both are equally responsible. Who’s going to suffer the worse consequences?
La Lubu said:
You’ve probably noticed a similar dynamic throughout the course of your career—I certainly have.
Interesting that you’re making an assumption about me here that’s in fact not valid; that I started my career before I got married. In fact, I got married between my junior and senior years of undergraduate study (we are still married for what will soon be 33 years). I have never had a full-time or “career” type job while unmarried. So I’ve not noted any such thing, since my marital status has never changed from unmarried to married while employed. And I got paid the same as the women and the gay guys working there.
Poor bastard. “I had such a good time last night I can’t sit down” sounded funny back then. He died of AIDS. I counted him a friend.
The proposition in that identical twin study that marriage is a causal effect for higher wages is, as the study itself says, still merely suggestive not conclusive. After all, there must be some difference between the twins, or they’d both be married. That difference could be what is causing the salary difference. I note that there’s no discussion of differences in what kind of jobs the twins had in such cases. Perhaps the personality traits that caused the non-married twin to either not wish to get married or to not attract a woman to not marry them is also expressed in their attitudes towards employment and attainment.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
November 23rd, 2006 at 11:00 am
Lubu :You seem to think that programs that encourage and assist teen mothers at staying in school and furthering their education is somehow encouraging young women to get pregnant.
Your message to teenage girls seems to be: Don’t get pregnant, because if you do you’ll get financial aid, free day care, and a guarantee that society will make any sacrifice necessary to ensure it doesn’t interfere with your career plans.
If I were a teenager who wanted a a child right away that would encourage me, not put me off. Where is the “bad” that future young women can be educated to recognize and avoid?
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
November 23rd, 2006 at 12:53 pm
Lubu: The prevailing attitude would be that once a woman gets married and starts a family, that she is more likely to work harder in order to support that family. That dynamic doesn’t exist because of sexism.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
November 23rd, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Lubu, the attributes that employers value should not be our yardstick for social development. Employers value those they can get the most labor out of for the longest time for the least money. Married men were once the best possible (legal)choice because they had no choice. Provide for your family or your family starves.
No one expects women to be sole providors, no one expects women to stay in jobs that make them unhappy, and social assistance for the unemployed is better than ever. Married women will never be ‘valued’ if you can call it that, like married men once were. Married men aren’t valued that way anymore either. It’s a bygone age, or almost bygone.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
November 23rd, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Your message to teenage girls seems to be
Just stop right there. If you’ve been reading my posts, you would know that my message to teenage women is “if you choose to have sex, use birth control, so you can focus on yourself and your future before having children, and thus be in a better position from which to raise those children—financially, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, socially, in every way.” Realistically, considering our sexist society, considering that so many young women are still raised to belief their only path to success lies with finding the right young man, considering that many of our young women still don’t feel they have the personal authority to insist on condom usage, or feel that using birth control is “proof” that they’re sluts (because “good girls” may fuck in the “heat of passion”, but only if they haven’t planned to first), because so many young women are still raised to believe that college (or tech school, or apprenticeship, or owning their own business, etc.) is an unrealistic option for them, because so many young women grow up in completely dysfunctional homes (many of which, may I remind you, consist of two married parents), because birth control has been known to fail—-
YES, I think that programs that encourage and give these young women the tools to succeed in life WORK. First off, teens who are not parents don’t need the “free day care”, as you put it. Second, I know of no program for teen mothers that guarantees any kind of college scholarship. What these programs do is give the young women the assistance they need to continue their high school education, introduce them to older women (some of whom were teen mothers themselves) who have achieved some degree of success in their lives—to be role models, advocates, and (sometimes) confidantes to these young women, and they give the (here’s a concept for you) cultural capital to these young women that they need to negotiate the (for the most part) foreign path of college—from “how to apply” to “what do I expect when I get there” to “how do I organize my time for classes, work-study, and mothering” to……you name it.
See, teenage mothers come from all walks of life. But middle-class teen mothers have a distinct advantage not only in financial resources or social-network resources, but cultural capital as well. They frankly do just as well as any other mother, when all is said and done. It’s different for working class and poor young women. They need that extra boost, that extra “oomph!” of someone believing in them, to get them over that admittedly harder path of providing for their own future while also being a mother to their child.
You ask me where is the “bad”, where is the discouragement for these young women to avoid pregnancy in the first place. For most of them, that discouragement is already there—they don’t want to get pregnant to begin with. Let’s look at history, shall we? How well did the old system of kicking them out of high school work, huh? (Remember, the young men who got them pregnant were not kicked out of school.) It didn’t work at all. It didn’t discourage anyone from having sex (remember, teens tend to think that “shit happens” means “to everyone else”, not to them), so all it basically did was prevent that young women from rebuilding her life. Which is great if your only intention is to slut-bash, but not so great if you actually give a damn about other human beings.
Ahem.
It’s not that young women don’t know the pitfalls of early parenthood, particularly when the young man who swore he’d love her forever flies the coop. It’s just that they believe (you know, like adults do) that it isn’t going to happen to them.
Lubu, the attributes that employers value should not be our yardstick for social development.
Care to develop this statement? I have no idea where you’re coming from with this, and since I come from the practical standpoint of thinking that for most of us, for at least a damn good part of our lives, our being able to provide for ourselves and our family is contigent upon our working for other people—-our “yardstick for social development” is inherently enmeshed with what employers value!
No one expects women to be sole providors
Huh? I was raised just the opposite—-that if you were a single woman, it was your responsibility to provide for yourself, and that if you were married, it was profoundly stupid, if not financial suicide, not to continue to hold down your job. And I’m an old broad—so if anything, I think that message is amplified today.
no one expects women to stay in jobs that make them unhappy,
WTF? Where did you hear this one?! Shee-it, where I come from, your job is practically supposed to make you unhappy!! And to quit a job before having another one lined up to take its place is dumb, dumb, dumb. Yeah, ’round here, everyone expects women to keep shitty jobs, just like the men do. Go tell ‘em that at the unemployment office sometime—”But…..I’m a woman! The job made me unhappy, so I quit!” Maaaaan, they’ll be rolling on the floor. They’ll be tellin’ that story for twenty years!
social assistance for the unemployed is better than ever
No, it isn’t (’least, not in Illinois). Unemployment checks haven’t been given a raise in years, but the cost of living has continued to climb. Also, unemployment only lasts six months. *sigh* Folks don’t want unemployment checks; they want jobs. Besides, did you even follow that link up above? Married men may be taking some hits now too, in the overall shitty economy, but they still have a strong advantage over women in that employers still think we’re just in it for “the pin money” or “until we can find a husband.”
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
November 23rd, 2006 at 7:41 pm
I give an enormous damn about human beings, but society does not exist just to serve our needs; any structure composed of human beings, a family, a team, a workforce, a nation, is only stable when the giving and taking adds up to a net positive. Single parenting is always a loss, and must be discouraged as much as possible. Insofar as the loss must be made up by the sacrifices of others, I think it’s appropriate that they get flak for it.
You ask me where is the “bad”, where is the discouragement for these young women to avoid pregnancy in the first place. For most of them, that discouragement is already there—they don’t want to get pregnant to begin with.
Were you talking about girls who didn’t want to get pregnant? Well, then I agree with you, overall. Save that discussion for the ‘Premarital sex, good or bad?’ debate.
I was referring to teenagers who want to get pregnant young and who may choose to view these programs and the lack of stigmatization as incentives. I don’t see any mechanism in your POV that serves to actually prevent such a girl from going ahead with the idea, apart from telling her you really think she shouldn’t, and even if they do wait, you clearly aren’t encouraging her to create a mutually supporting family through marriage. “Hitch your star to a man’s butt”, “employers tend to favor single mothers over married women” Yeah, you’re really selling it there.
Lubu, the attributes that employers value should not be our yardstick for social development.
Care to develop this statement? I have no idea where you’re coming from with this
Employers want high productivity and low maintenance in every aspect of their business, including their employees. Even the most sympathetic of feminist employers may find it impossible to afford to provide flexible hours, free weekends, and indefinite periods of absenteeism on short-notice so a single parent can remain attentive to their children’s needs. To be attractive to employers, to be considered promotion material, particularly for the ‘power’ jobs above the glass ceiling, your obligations as a parent must take the back seat to your career.
No one expects women to be sole providors
Huh? I was raised just the opposite—-
I was referring to married women. Husbands are assumed to be gainfully employed (or at least employable).
no one expects women to stay in jobs that make them unhappy,
WTF? Where did you hear this one?!
Right here. An employer is required to respect the mental health of their employees, are they not? In the old days it was “Don’t like it? GTFO.”
social assistance for the unemployed is better than ever
No, it isn’t.
It’s not unlimited naturally, but as a percentage of our GNP it pushes the envelope.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
November 24th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Unemployment insurance “pushes the envelope” as a percentage of our GNP? You do know that unemployment benefits represent less than 0.0026 percent of the GNP, right? Pushing the envelope? Please. Frankly, if so many family-wage jobs weren’t being outsourced, it wouldn’t need to be this high.
Single parenting is always a loss
And if people really, truly believed this, children would be removed from the homes of widows and widowers. After all, widows and widowers are every bit as single as divorced or never married folks.
I don’t see any mechanism in your POV that serves to actually prevent such a girl from going ahead with the idea, apart from telling her you really think she shouldn’t,
Again, you haven’t been reading. The discouragement is inherent in the fact that once you have a child, your time is not your own anymore. You have added responsibilities. If you do not already have a career, there will be an even greater demand on your time as even more of your hours are spoken for—you have to work towards your career goal (usually by some combination of work and study—how the balance works out depends on which career you choose) in addition to the demands already placed on your time by parenthood.
In the grand scheme of things, there are few teen women who specifically seek to be parents. Of those that do, they tend to have an unrealistic picture of parenthood, and an even more unrealistic picture of relationships. For one thing, they tend to believe that having a child will solidify a relationship—when that simply isn’t the case. This flawed thinking is not limited to teens; plenty of adults share it.
And again, I am not hostile towards marriage, or towards men. I merely think that young women should take the same steps toward self-sufficiency that young men are trained to do; to wit: having their own (decently paid) full-time job! Why is that viewed as a negative, or incompatible with a healthy marriage? If anything, it contributes to the health of a marriage.
As for your line on employers and what they want, let me remind you again that it is distinctly gendered. It isn’t just an issue for single mothers, but all mothers. Let’s not kid ourselves about those “high powered” or “promotion” jobs, ok? From the standard way the argument is presented (”if you have kids but don’t have a stay-at-home spouse, how could you possibly commit to a career with responsibilities”), you’d think that no one ever went on vacation, for crying out loud. Especially in this day and age of wireless laptops, Blackberries, and cell phones. Yes, occasionally I have to leave work to take care of my sick child. It tends to happen twice a year. That still makes me hover around the bottom of the “absentee” list, as I’m not taking time off for hunting, fishing, gun shows, golf games, brown-bottle-flu, Sturgis, Daytona, Indy, etc.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
November 25th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Lubu: And if people really, truly believed this, children would be removed from the homes of widows and widowers. After all, widows and widowers are every bit as single as divorced or never married folks.
And it is every bit as hard on them as divorced or never-married folks. The difference is they got into their situation by accident, not by choice. They at least have life insurance income, one would hope. And I would encourage them to re-marry if they have small children, and I don’t object to financial aid if necessary.
On the subject of parental death, exactly how many parents would the child of a single parent have had left, if one had died?
Again, you haven’t been reading. The discouragement is inherent in the fact that once you have a child, your time is not your own anymore.
I understand you, but we’re talking about fifteen and sixteen year olds. Suppose they don’t give a damn how hard it is? How would you STOP them?
Lubu:And again, I am not hostile towards marriage, or towards men.
“forced to hitch your star to a man’s butt” was good camo for your true feelings.
I merely think that young women should take the same steps toward self-sufficiency that young men are trained to do; to wit: having their own (decently paid) full-time job! Why is that viewed as a negative, or incompatible with a healthy marriage? If anything, it contributes to the health of a marriage.
I never said women’s careers were incompatible with marriage, you did with “employers tend to favor single mothers over married women.”
What I said is a full-time job is incompatible with being a single parent, but that’s because I think there’s more to being a parent than earning a good wage. To respect a parent’s wisdom and share their confidences with them requires trust, and trust requires a bond, and bond requires time. A lot of time. Everyday or nearly every day kind of time, enough time that they know they can reach you and you won’t put them off because you’re busy, the acknowledged state of a single parent, in your own words. I have every confidence that a hard working single father or mother can put food on the table and clothes on his children’s backs. Not so sure he would know if his children were using drugs or considering suicide, or planning to go bowling for columbine.
As for your line on employers and what they want, let me remind you again that it is distinctly gendered. It isn’t just an issue for single mothers, but all mothers.
Whatever your solution to that is, don’t forget where we start in life. You needed parents before you needed a career.
Let’s not kid ourselves about those “high powered” or “promotion” jobs, ok? From the standard way the argument is presented (”if you have kids but don’t have a stay-at-home spouse, how could you possibly commit to a career with responsibilities”), you’d think that no one ever went on vacation, for crying out loud. Especially in this day and age of wireless laptops, Blackberries, and cell phones.
Technology does not give you more time off work. Laptops and blackberry’s allow work to intrude into home and vacation time. In the employer mindset this is a good thing. It takes enormous confidence to be able to shut the job out completely, and it’s a risk to do so very often.
Single parenting is always a loss. The absense of en entire parent’s potential contribution through the adolescence of a child and the additional burden on the remaining parent cannot be made up for with an alimony check or a government subsidy towards furthering your education, neither of which is a guarantee in any case. It is a loss we must sometimes tolerate, as in the case of a death, or parents who are incarcerated, or mentaly ill, or disabled, but not by choice.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
November 26th, 2006 at 10:17 am
CJ, you are saying that single parents are inherently incapable of raising children. If that were actually the case, then as a matter of social policy we would be removing the children of widows and widowers from them and placing those children in foster care with married parents. Your claim that there should be an exception if it wasn’t “by choice”, is immaterial if real damage is being done. I’m merely pointing out the hypocrisy of such a charge. Fact is, since no one is advocating removal of children from widowed or divorced homes, I’m partial to calling bullshit on the idea that growing up in a single parent home is only damaging if it’s the home of an unmarried mother.
Why on earth would a full-time job be incompatible with being a single parent? You do realize that most married parents have a full-time two-income household, don’t you? See, again, there’s no difference in the time-frame involved. As for Columbine, weren’t the parents of those kids married?
Single parenting is not always a loss. Sometimes it is a gain. Not having an alcoholic, drug addict, or violent person around is a very good thing. That is a gain to family safety and security. It is a gain for the mental health and social development of the children.
And yes, I firmly believe that young women should be raised to be just as independent and self-sufficient as young men. Why that should be regarded as threatening or hostile, I have no idea. It’s only sensible.
As to your question of what would happen to the children of a single parent if that parent died, I’m astonished that you would even have to ask. Perhaps I’m just not aware of how deeply the notion of extended family has been eradicated by the “nuclear family” (the original “broken home”). Do they not have grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. where you live?
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
November 26th, 2006 at 10:54 am
“As to your question of what would happen to the children of a single parent if that parent died, I’m astonished that you would even have to ask. Perhaps I’m just not aware of how deeply the notion of extended family has been eradicated by the “nuclear family” (the original “broken home”). Do they not have grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. where you live? ”
But what would happen to a child if both parents died? Or perhaps if their whole extended family was wiped out by a series of freak tornadoes?
Clearly, no child should be raised in a family of less than one thousand healthy individuals, medically tested for vigor, possessed of a lineage guaranteeing a minimal survival rate of at least 105, and scientifically certified in risk avoidance.
Families of less than one thousand are always a loss.
This comment was written by mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2006 at 7:43 am
You do realize that most married parents have a full-time two-income household, don’t you?
Yes, but with two people you have a much better opportunity for flexibility. It’s more likely that with two people, one of them will be able to negotiate with an employer to get some time off to take care of a specific committment. With only one parent, that’s harder.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
November 27th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
I’m coming to this late, but with a certain horrified fascination. Maia, good post; La Lubu, I commend you for a well-reasoned and rational discussion in the face of some rather bizarre statements.
I have a couple of facts I’d like to point out, that seem to have been unnoticed. Your adolescent child currently has full legal rights to medical privacy from you at 13, and can undertake treatment for STDs, prescriptions for birth control, mental health services, treatment for chemical dependencies, prenatal care, labor and delivery. Parental-notification laws, in fact, are often in direct opposition to other statutes regarding the medical rights to privacy of teens. So if you want to get all in your teen’s sexual business, you’re going to have to do it like any other citizen. Unless you live in one of the states that permits a very low age of marriage with parental approval (in NC there is no age of consent for marriage if one is pregnant or has given birth, but there must be parental consent).
>It is simply creating a new life without being ready or capable of (or possibly even interested in) caring for it. I would not choose to be born into such a situation, and I’m sure if you had a voice in it, you would not either.
CJ, it might have escaped your notice, but no one chooses to be born into any situation. Although I would love to see a list some time of the checklist for readiness and capability of caring for new life.
>Given the value children have and the damage they can suffer if mishandled, parents unwilling to make family seem like bad risks. The spoken vows obligate them to care for each other. Allowing them to have children without vows obligates society to assume responsibility for their interests instead and that simply isn’t possible on a national scale. We need to able to have faith in family. You often make this kind of argument out to be a promotion of a religious belief but the virtues of family exist whether you believe in God or not. An atheist should be as capable of appreciating it as any minister or rabbi.
As an atheist, I would be happy to put my standards for the value of children up against anyone’s, and “faith in the family” is bullshit. Some will do just fine, but a hell of a lot will not. If our society really valued children it would make sure that everyone had prenatal care, and good follow-up, a good health care, and a safe place to exercise, and a grocery store nearby with healthy food, and paid parental leave, and sufficient licensed day care, and a minimum wage that would actually permit a working adult to support a child, and family housing on college campuses suitable for students (married or not)with children, and paid sick leave for parents looking after kids…my list is very long.
>Human nature being what it is, some men try to duck this responsibility. And human nature also leads some women to have children without either knowing who the father is, or to choose as a father of their children a man who is unfit to meet his responsibilities. Our society does what it can to discourage this by withholding support for the outcome of such a choice.
And look how well it works. Because nothing says “we care about all kids” like punishing the kids of women who’ve been raped, or abandoned, or believed a lying son of a bitch. Better to punish all those kids than risk missing some who’ve made choices you don’t like.
>What level of support does society generally give people who make irresponsible choices, and what level should it give?
It depends on who the people are. George W. Bush for example, has made seemingly nothing but irresponsible choices in his life, and society has stood by him pretty well.
>To be attractive to employers, to be considered promotion material, particularly for the ‘power’ jobs above the glass ceiling, your obligations as a parent must take the back seat to your career.
This would seem to suggest that having two parents really isn’t much help if the only way either of them is ever going to get a promotion is by failing as a parent.
>On the subject of parental death, exactly how many parents would the child of a single parent have had left, if one had died?
Exactly the same number that a child with two parents will have when both of them die in a car accident.
>Single parenting is always a loss. The absence of en entire parent’s potential contribution through the adolescence of a child and the additional burden on the remaining parent cannot be made up for with an alimony check or a government subsidy towards furthering your education, neither of which is a guarantee in any case. It is a loss we must sometimes tolerate, as in the case of a death, or parents who are incarcerated, or mentally ill, or disabled, but not by choice.
I wonder if the fact that my mother lives with me would make up for the tragic loss of a father to my kids? What if his parents came to live with me? Maybe I could just take in a gay couple?
>It’s more likely that with two people, one of them will be able to negotiate with an employer to get some time off to take care of a specific commitment. With only one parent, that’s harder.
Since employees have generally got no negotiating leverage with their employers, how about just making it at law that people get some paid time off?
This comment was written by Kaethe.Report this comment to the moderators
November 28th, 2006 at 7:22 am
findings of this study, that claim diversity is bad, could not be anymore shallow. It is about time that there are studies out there for hormonal male contraception. And the debate always…why teens should not opt for childbirth and parenting because all of them, you hear, ALL carry identical worldviews, share similar experiences, and their aspirations are uniform. Does the school of thought encompassing feminism and reproductive justice has room to accept the right of young pregnant teen
This comment was written by Fabulosa Mujer.Report this comment to the moderators
November 28th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Well reasoned, Kaethe? Choosing single parenting is reasonable because if you were to choose to marry, he might turn out to be a layabout, an abuser, or die?
You know that in any capacity one person cannot do as good a job as two. Corners will be cut, like non-essential medicines, healthy meals, and family time. If not in therse things, then in the taxation of the parent’s own physical and mental health.
This would seem to suggest that having two parents really isn’t much help if the only way either of them is ever going to get a promotion is by failing as a parent.
I gathered it was our opinion that a man who insisted it was his right to advance as far as he wanted in his career without being impeded by his family was wrong, and we were trying to evolve in a positive direction here. Is not a woman with the same ethic just as wrong? And single mothers even more wrong, if their absence is not even mitigated by a stay-at-home companion?
I wonder if the fact that my mother lives with me would make up for the tragic loss of a father to my kids? What if his parents came to live with me? Maybe I could just take in a gay couple?
If the father isn’t required to look after his children neither is any other relative, so please don’t casually promise women considering single parenting that they can draw on the extended family.
I am NOT saying we should leave children in poverty, and certainly not to punish anyone, but there are risks in single parenting. You recognize these risks; all of your suggestions are some variation of shifting resources from somewhere else to mitigate them. Then you call it a balanced equation and act like it’s perfectly okay, but it isn’t. If it were balanced, everyone could be a single parent, everyone should be a single parent.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
November 28th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Lubu: CJ, you are saying that single parents are inherently incapable of raising children.
No, only less able to meet all needs.
Lubu: Single parenting is not always a loss. Sometimes it is a gain. Not having an alcoholic, drug addict, or violent person around is a very good thing. That is a gain to family safety and security. It is a gain for the mental health and social development of the children.
Losing a liability isn’t a gain. What if your children become drug addicted, violent or alcoholic? The same arguments for cutting them loose could apply to them, and you would gain just as much by it.
The difference is that in this example you regard your children as family, and don’t regard their father as family. I would only want you to only have children with a man that you DO regard as family, one whom you would go the same distance to save as any other one of your relations, or how can you expect the same loyalty from him?
Kaethe: CJ, it might have escaped your notice, but no one chooses to be born into any situation. Although I would love to see a list some time of the checklist for readiness and capability of caring for new life.
I was speaking for future generations as well as I could. As far as a checklist goes, perhaps we could start with each parent promising to ‘love, honor and cherish each other, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health’. I feel that would give us as good an idea of their readiness and capability.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
November 28th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
I’m totally busted if my brother reads this but:
I for one, think the standard should be stable, relatively wealthy 4 parent families. That’s how I was raised, so naturally I think its best. More resources in case one parent dies (one of mine did) and every other weekend off neems to me necessary for development of a good marriage.
Of course, I recognize that the cookie doesnt always crumble that way. So I propose income support and paid vacation with child care for all those harried, overworked, double and single parent families.
CJ–yeah, I’m willing to take the risk on reducing the national security budget by a few percent. And rolling back the tax cuts.
This comment was written by curiousgyrl.Report this comment to the moderators