Letters to the Editor
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I see the article making some good points
I didn't see Yoffe's point as being to shame young women - though the last paragraph of the article expressing sympathy for the ultrasound technician's vile moralizing in "Juno" was off-putting. But the rest of the article was focused on pointing out the consequences to children born to single mothers - most of whom, as she stresses, are not TEENS, but women in their mid-to-late 20s.
And the consequences to children are dire - they are far more likely to grow up in poverty, wich puts them at physical, psychological, emotional and socio-cultrual advantages. Sure, they can overcome them - but who wants to start life out behind someone else's 8 ball? Wouldn't it be better for men AND women to consider more carefully the consequences of a) casual sex with people they are uninterested in partnering with, and b) unprotected sex, since both of these can lead to pregnancy and the possibility of single motherhood - in which case the person who suffers the most is the child?
Her message is to take responsibility for your choices by considering all the potential consequences before procreative sex, not to shame - that's how I read it, and it's a good point.
But sympathizing with the character in "Juno" with her sniffing, judgemental bitchiness - that was beyond the pale. Once the mistake happens, it serves no one to dish out judgement and shame - that simply puts the child in an even worse situation, to be born to a mother everyone agrees should be ostracized while the guy walks merrily off, reputaton and life intact.
The problems created by unplanned single parenthood are real, and affect all of us, not just the mothers and their children. Sex ed that goes beyond contraception and the act itself to inlcude a full understanding of all the consequences - not just STIs - and attendant responsibilities is needed. And until we hold the procreating men as responsible as we hold the women, nothing is likely to change.
Currently, all the onus is on women - not only after the pregnancy, but before as well, since we focus prevention on the girl saying no, never on the boy for developing self-control. Yet no one is surprised or perturbed by this - in the movie "Juno" the ultrasound technician wasn't saying "Whose the father, why isn't he here?" No one even though to involve the father and his family in a discussion of their role should the adoption thing not work out, or if Juno changed her mind. We accept as a matter of course that it's the girl's problem, not to mention her fault.
But the situation could easily be reversed and society could easily place full responsibility on men. If a man's wages were automatically attached for 17 years upon DNA-based proof of fatherhood, and if in the absence of any wages, the wages of his familly - parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents - were attached, you bet people would take a motivated interest in who their son was sleeping with, and whether he was protecting himself.
Obviously such draconian measures would neve come about, nor should they - but even considering it reveals how unbalanced the responsibilities of unplanned pregnancies are, and who gets the blame and shame (women) and the consequences (children). We should be raising not just our daughters but our sons to really understand the long-term consequences of short-term sex, and to act responsibly on those realities. Not for moral reasons, but becaue the product of unplanned pregnancies is an individual who is demonstrably disadvantaged starting life in a single-parent household. We should want to prevent that.
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DurianJoe
I've seen some of what your wife has seen, and it doesn't get much more depressing than 10 children taken away from one mother (and in all likelihood not doing much better elsewhere). And the mother still thinking she's going to get it right one of these days. (I know men who have fathered 10 children, too--this is very much a dual-gendered problem.) But I can't support your solution of mandatory birth control or sterilization. Imagine policies like this in the real world, in the hands of real people--like the Bush administration, for instance. Why stop at sterilization after one baby? Why not sterilize children of undesirable parents, say drug addicts, while they're still children? No, aside from thinking that forced anything is a more serious wrong than what it's meant to correct, I suspect that ideas such as yours would hit the ground with malevolent unintended consequences.
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Shunning is an excellent idea.
Selfishness & stupidity SHOULD be a cause of shame. It is easy to feel some admiration that abortion wasn't opted for, but that admiration dissipates quickly when adoption isn't chosen either. While no scenario plays out a certain way 100% of the time, the single parent scenario has pretty lousy odds. Virtually all results are bad - poverty, lack of male role model, angst & anger in the child's future, large financial burdens to society, and negative implications in school and society for those who must contend with the lowering of standards. If you want love get a dog. A child is not a pet.
Shame & Shun? You bet.
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And when you're single but didn't mean to be?
This kind of thing always makes me want to run screaming. My husband died when our son was three years old. Cancer. Neglectful of me, I guess, to let him get sick and die. And what was I, a single mother aged 40, supposed to do then? Rush out and find a substitute father? (as if good men grow on trees). Widowed fathers have a great chance of remarrying; widowed mothers not so hot, especially if they're no longer svelte and seventeen. Not to mention that both I and my late husband's family thought he was the right father for that boy, and substitutes were not especially desired. Certainly I never met anyone who would have filled the bill.
There were plenty of times when I wished things were different -- like every day from then (nearly thirty years ago) until now -- but I played the cards I was dealt. My son is now a licensed architect, ten years married and the father of two, never been in jail or in the legislature, as we used to say in Texas. So shame on me, huh?