Alas 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.
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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
“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.)
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.
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.
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.
Laylalola: Abortion is legal in NZ under most circumstances:
http://www.abortion.gen.nz/legal/index.html
“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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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?
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.
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).
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.
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?
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.
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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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
It’s “retaliation” to pay society back for investments it makes on your behalf?
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.
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 @#$*! is La Lubu when I need her ? >:
I’ve always thought teen boys and young men would get serious about birth control when the teen or young mother legally can leave the baby in the man’s care and take off, never to be seen or heard from again, never make a child support payment, and the boy/young man has to be with the baby 24-7 or be charged with neglegect or worse, and must raise the child on his own, period.
Until then, better birth control options are one of the few solutions. I don’t mean abortion — so few women of a certain class will have abortion once pregnant, the statistics show that of the women who do have unplanned pregnancies exactly half will carry to term, which means abortion cannot be and is not the only or even the best answer, as better birth control options would help address more unplanned pregnancies, whether carried to term or not. I mean birth control that doesn’t make your breasts sore, doesn’t give you cancer if you use more than a few years, doesn’t cost too damn much, is easy to use, and is effective. Even the much-touted “morning-after pill” cocktail of birth control is only equally as effective as the much-maligned (by feminists) all-time most popular U.S. birth control among women, the sponge.
I mean legally having the choice to leave the baby utterly in the man’s care with no help or no sign of the woman ever again, period, would be real choice, and would dramatically shake things up fast regarding birth control, among other things.
Furthermore, where the @#$*! 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*
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?
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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. :(
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So have I.
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.
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.
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?
…go back to work?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…”
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
What part of this:
Precautions such as birth control or fertility methods diminish, but do not abrogate, the immorality;
did I not understand?
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.
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.