Bring Back the Stigma Against Unwed Mothers
By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog.
New government figures on births to unwed mothers show that the genie is not only out of the bottle: she has nuked it. One in four American children is born to an unwed mother. The New York Times reports many times couples are living together, but that is still a much less-stable environment for a child than to be born to a married couple:
Before 1970, most unmarried mothers were teenagers. But in recent years the birthrate among unmarried women in their 20s and 30s has soared — rising 34 percent since 2002, for example, in women ages 30 to 34. In 2007, women in their 20s had 60 percent of all babies born out of wedlock, teenagers had 23 percent and women 30 and older had 17 percent.
Much of the increase in unmarried births has occurred among parents who are living together but are not married, cohabitation arrangements that tend to be less stable than marriages, studies show.
There's no stigma to unwed parenthood anymore, but there should be. Debate rages on about whether children born to unwed mothers fare worse than children born to married couples. But those data have been around for at least 15 years now, and all the while the unwed motherhood rate has risen steadily.
Maybe we should start circulating a different data set. A study by an Ohio State University researcher found in 2005 that:
Women who have children outside of marriage are less likely than other single women to marry, and when they do marry, their husbands tend to be less well-matched, according to a new study.
That won't deter most single women from having children. But it will deter some. Many young Americans have given up entirely on the institution of marriage. I once asked a young woman why she planned never to marry. She said something to the effect that marriage hadn't worked for her parents, so why bother? I replied, "Marriage is far from perfect, but does that mean the alternative is better?"
I bet many young, independent women who bear children outside of marriage will find later in life that marriage is the lesser of two evils.
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Tags: parenting | teen pregnancy
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Reader Comments
babiy not wanted
Right on to encouraging stigma encourages hate. I have met a lot of girls that get pregnant, were only seeking the love and attention they never received as a child. So they turned to someone else that actually only preyed on thier loneliness... I know how that feels. It happened to me... I adopted the child out because my parents said I could not come home if I keep her.They never would have been kind to her...She got a lovely family that made her the center of life,she made good grades went to college, married and had a family of her own.. We talked about her meeting her real grandparents..But they would not have been kind to her. I discouraged the encounter...I was very young when I had her,but they wanted no part of her, and was forbidden to keep her.. I know how rejection can hurt ones self esteem and also my parents are very judgemental people.Having a good loving family would help stop some of these pregencies.
Are you people serious?
Kudos to the person who rightfully commented on the absence of accountability for the fathers involved.
Women do not get themselves pregnant. But these men walk away, scot-free, leaving their former partners destitute, alone, and with a new life on the way. Instead of bringing back the stigma for unwed mothers, why don't we start a new trend? How about a stigma for fathers who abandon their children and partners? Because if they were made to feel even an ounce of the pain, the shame, the guilt, and the loneliness that an unwed mother who has been abandoned has to go through, things could start to turn around. And it might even take some of the burden off of the welfare system.
I was an unwed mother at 22, and, armed with the desire to prove people like some of the posters here wrong, and without applying for or accepting a single penny from any social agency, without every applying for a subsidy of any kind, have completed university, single-handedly cared for my child for over a decade, and am raising a decent, compassionate human being. I was fortunate that I was working and going to school during my pregnancy - I was entitled to six months of maternity benefits (This was the Canadian standard at the time. Now it is one year. Before anyone gets their knickers in a knot, I paid into these benefits out of every paycheque, and every working Canadian woman is entitled to them. Canadian men are also entitled to paid parental leave.)
I don't know what church some of the posters go to, if any, but I am Catholic, as is my child, and we were welcomed with open arms. My inherent value, the inherent value of my child, was enough in the eyes of God, even though his father walked away when I was six months pregnant.
If anyone believes that forcing a woman to surrender her child for adoption will teach her responsibility, they obviously haven't raised a child on their own. There is no greater responsibility.
Now what can we do to teach the men some responsibility????
Thanks to Crystal for her comment
Thanks to Crystal, for her comment warning about the dangers of posting pictures of children and personal information online. God bless and protect the children.
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