Letters to the Editor
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Truly forward looking.
By having abstinence based sex education, proclaiming abortion as murder and now suggesting that we openly heap contempt on unwed mothers society can now move firmly on into the nineteenth century.
One reason why low income women in the 25-29 age range are having children out of wedlock on purpose that they can't support could simply be a mix of despair and practicality. They want to have children and realize that their lives are never going to get better. They're never going to have a decent job or find a guy with one who'll marry them and provide for a traditional nuclear family. Might as well have the kids now then. This has less to do with feckless stupidity and everything to do with the increasingly brutal economic divide.
About the only thing I can agree with the Ms Yoffe on is that if you think this is the right person for you and a child is on the way then making it legal is the smart thing to do. You're past the something better might come along stage.
I would like to finish by saying that I'm pro-abortion. If you're not sure you want a child, don't have one.
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Maybe not ruining society...
For our family, the most unsettling thing about sending our preschooler to day care has been the number of kids (seriously, in the range of about 5-10) who either develop an attachment to my husband, or openly say they don't have a father, or talk about how they are getting "two mommies and two daddies."
As a couple who waited until we were well into our careers and our thirties to marry and have kids, we care a lot about the environment our kids are in each day, and we do notice the extra stress that these kids from single parent homes are under.
Truthfully, raising a child, even one, is tough and it does take two grown-ups to even begin to do this well. Like it or not, this rise in single parenthood has changed the timber of our classrooms and of childhood itself.
One difference I've noticed since living outside the U.S., is the use of "sensitivity training." Infants are routinely brought into classrooms in elementary schools, and students talk about child development and point out differences in how an infant communicates (or moves, or eats, etc.) versus themselves. This program was initiated as an effort to prevent bullying, but it also provides an early awareness for boys and girls of what goes into raising a child.
I've often also thought that boys could benefit a great deal from more artistic and nurturing play in the preschool years, if it weren't from the rampant homophobia in North America. It's fathers themselves, either through their absence or in their fear of seeing their sons with a doll, who are teaching the next generation of men how to walk away from their children.
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Data free analysis
Haven't heard that one about unwed mothers' motivations, rhubarb.
Anything having to do with legal, moral or ethical limitations on women's actions tends to be a minefield.
If women can murder their children and husbands or sleep with young boys with impunity and no accountability from our legal system, why shouldn't they have children out of wedlock.
After all, it's not about the children. It's about what women want.
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Nice launchpad for the kid
The Dreaded Rhubarb wrote:
"They want to have children and realize that their lives are never going to get better. They're never going to have a decent job"
I feel sorry for these kids, though, just as I would feel sorry for a kid that was born unwanted because of some restrictive abortion law. I think wanting a child is a necessary, but not sufficient, part of the equation.
While you certainly can't stop a woman from having her baby, that doesn't mean that she isn't being reckless and ultimately selfish by having a child she can't provide for.
I think my views are shaped by the fact that my own childhood was impacted by some questionable decisions made by my own very young parents who spit before I was talking.
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@suzvet
Given the repeated, strident legal activities of several feminist groups to block joint custody legislation throughout the years, and men's groups' attempts to secure such legislation, your comment about "teaching the next generation of men how to walk away from their children" should refer to those children's mothers, not their fathers.
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Moral judgments
I didn't read the Slate article, but I would disagree with you about the type of moral judgment that the article is talking about. I assume she is talking about a generation or two ago when getting knocked up before marriage was about the worst thing that a teenage girl could do.
According to my mother, who grew up in a working class community, there were always girls who were sent off to live with Aunt Bertha in upstate New York for about 4 or 5 months (roughly from when they started showing until after the baby could be properly adopted out). But of course everyone knew what had really happened, and when she came back (if she had no other relations in a different school district where she could "start over") the girl was left back a year after missing so much school and basically ostracized.
Nowadays we're not allowed to pass judgment on individual cases. Of course we pooh-pooh teenage mothers in theory, but when it comes down to it we talk about cycles of poverty and other sort of arbitrary and rather condescending theories which basically let these young women off the hook. There's no community or moral outrage against these girls, just lots of upper middle class intellectuals, who are pretty secure in the knowledge that our daughters will never be teen mothers, with our theories of poverty.
I'm not saying we should go back to the olden days, of course, particularly considering how cruelly the forced adoption was rammed through with absolutely no consideration to the mother. I'm just offering up what I assume the author of the article was talking about.
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The Best They Can Do?
I agree Tracy, I was kinda creeped out by the whole article too. But then Emily Yoffe has been a pretty poor advice columnist since she filled in as "Dear Prudence" what two years ago now? Rather into the moralizing and keep the marriage together school.
But then, with Cary Tennis' utterly boring advice column, I'm not sure Salon is in a position to brag. Both zines should probably give up and just carry Savage Love, if that is the best they can do.