Letters to the Editor
Leeandra Nolting
Published Letters: 177 Editor's Choice: 10
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Parson Jim...
[Read the article: Act like a man (who knows what that means)!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You said that 41% of births in the U.S. were to unmarried mothers. Last I checked, 59% is still "most."
And anyway, my statement was that MOST women would PREFER to have and raise their children with a husband, not that most women do (even though, as I just pointed out, statistics still show that most American babies ARE born to married couples). A fair percentage of the unmarried mothers would LIKE to be married, but for various good and bad reasons, are not.
Despite all your allusions to your ex-wife running off with the kids against your wishes, there are far more women in the opposite situation--women whose babydaddies won't pay child support, won't help raise the kids, are in prison, or simply disappeared. This isn't to make light of your situation, only to point out that it is rare in comparision to the situation of the deadbeat dad.
I agree with you that there are too many births to unmarried couples. Problem is, "to be a woman" in certain sociological circles in the U.S.--and I'm thinking of the poorest areas of Appalachian and inner-city New Orleans, both areas in which I've lived--means to prove yourself one by having children. I was a 22-year-old single childless woman when I was teaching preschool in Kentucky. On one occasion that sticks out in my mind, a little girl named Vanna asked me, in this order and with increasing worry in her voice, how old I was, if I had children, if I had a husband, if I had a boyfriend, and if I had a baby in my belly. When I answered no to the final question, she said, "Well, the bright side is it will be easier for you to find a boyfriend then." Vanna was three at the time.
If a man sticks by you and marries you, that's thought of as a lucky break, not as something that's par for the course. That doesn't mean that the young single mothers in the hollers and in the ghetto don't dream that someday their prince will come, it's that they think of the two-parent family as a largely unattainable dream.
And then, when "to be a man" in these same circles is defined as "to get as much pussy as possible" instead of "to take responsibility for your actions and your offspring," it's not surprising that out-of-wedlock births are through the roof.
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statuatory rape in texas...
[Read the article: Polygamists' progeny]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The age of consent in Texas is 17, and the statuatory rapist must be at least three years older than the victim, but these laws don't apply if the two involved are married to each other, and as a previous poster pointed out, you can get married at 13 in Texas with parental permission.
HOWEVER, bigamy is still illegal. The preteen 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. "wives" in this group were never considered legally married by the state of Texas, and therefore could be counted as victims of statuatory rape.
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on the 70% number...
[Read the article: Act like a man (who knows what that means)!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Initiating a divorce is a legal action, often taken only after the marriage is de facto dead. It is not the same as initiating the end of a marriage, be it through abandonment, adultery, abuse, etc. I don't mean to imply that the husband was in the wrong in all of the divorces initiated by the wife, but that beginning divorce proceedings is a pretty drastic step and rarely comes out of nowhere, especially when children are involved and especially given the greater economic dependence wives tend to have on husbands than vice versa.
I said that most women with children would prefer to be raising those children with a husband. I did not say they would prefer to be doing that at any cost.
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I stand corrected on the legal age of marriage in texas...
[Read the article: Polygamists' progeny]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I (and a previous poster) apparently both looked at outdated information that gave the legal age as 13, not 16.
I'm gonna take a wild-ass guess that the 911 call that prompted the removal of 416 children was NOT the first piece of evidence CPS had against the FLDS compound, but that most of the information is being witheld from the press so as to not compromise an ongoing investigation.
None of the 416 children have birth certificates? That's against the law right there--even if you give birth at home, all by your lonesome, you have to register the baby's birth. I'd have to look it up, but most states require you to do it within 30 days.
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Somehow, when I was teaching preschool,
[Read the article: The birds, the bees, the sperm donors...]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I got asked "Where do babies come from?" more often than all the other teachers combined. (Which was ironic, because all the other teachers had children of their own and I didn't have so much as a boyfriend.)
Anyway, my favorite was from a very bright five-year-old boy who spent most of his time being baby-sat by his grandpa, who watched a lot of old detective movies on AMC and Turner Classic Movies. As a result, the kid talked like Joe Friday.
One day on the school bus, this little boy said to me, "Miss Leeandra, I got a question. Yeah, it's about babies. See, I know how they get OUT, but I can't figure out how they get IN. Now, I think all you ladies know, I think there's something you're not telling me, and I think YOU had best come clean."
It was all I could do to keep a straight face.