The Washington Times has an article sounding the alarm that while teenage pregnancies are down, out of wedlock pregnancies are up:
Last year the birth rate for teenagers fell 2 percent, declining to 40.4 births per 1,000 women 15 to 19 years old. The 2005 rate represents a 35 percent drop from the 61.8 rate that applied in 1991, the most recent cyclical peak. Over that 14-year period, the teen birth rate plunged from 118.1 to 60.9 (or 48 percent) for non-Hispanic blacks and from 43.4 to 26 (or 40 percent) for non-Hispanic whites. The teen birth rate fell from 104.6 to 81.5 (or 22 percent) for Hispanics, whose teen birth rate is now more than double the overall rate, more than three times the rate for non-Hispanic whites and more than a third higher than the rate for non-Hispanic blacks.
Among 2005’s total births of 4.14 million were 1.53 million babies born to unmarried women. How large a number is 1.53 million? It is the equivalent of each year adding more people than are now living in Philadelphia, the nation’s fifth-largest city. It is nearly three times the population of Washington, D.C. Over a 10-year period, it is equivalent to adding nearly two cities the size of New York City to the nation’s population.
For decades the "illegitimacy rate," (a term which has now entered the realm of the politically incorrect), was colloquially understood to represent the percent of total births that were born to unmarried women. Thus defined, the illegitimacy rate increased a full percentage point in 2005, rising to 36.8 percent.
Now, I’m not going to get into the whole racial breakdown of this, as I don’t think it matters whether illegitimate parents are black, white, or Hispanic. The situation is not good for children as the Times notes:
Decades of social-science research have confirmed that there is a direct correlation between the incidence of illegitimacy, on the one hand, and the incidence of poverty, educational problems, prison confinement and innumerable other social problems and pathologies, on the other hand.
So, the question of what to do about it becomes really relevent here. As was noted teenage pregnancy is down, so I don’t think the issue is so much what’s being taught in the school, but what goes on afterwards.
I think what’s happening is that people are rolling the dice and coming up losers. Consider this fact, the average woman gets married at age 27 and have their first sexual activity at age 17. Now, birth control has an annual failure rate of 8%. Over a year or two, if you take the pill consistently, you’ve got good odds of not getting pregnant. However, taken over a ten year premarital sexual career, the odds of not getting pregnant drop. The way I figure it to average the long-term risk you take .92 and multiply .92 by the .92, so that we’re multiplying your 92% chance of not getting pregnant with the pill for one year by your chance of not getting pregnant the second year The percentage drops and you see the odds of not getting pregnant fall as well. So the way I chart this.
Year Effectiveness
1 92%
2 84%
3 78%
4 72%
5 66%
6 61%
7 56%
8 51%
9 47%
10 43%
It’s not precise, but it’ll do. What I would suggest is that based on this extrapolation that a woman on the pill has asbout a 57% chance of getting pregnant in a 10 year period. So, if you have women waiting that long, the birth control has a significant chance of failing.
Really, there’s one solutions to this type of problem and that is to encourage earlier marriage and also to instill once again the importance of raising kids with both a mother and a father. One of our greatest challenges is that we’ve made having a child outside of wedlock socially acceptable. We don’t need to back to the 1950s, but we don’t need to celebrate it either.
whereIstand Tags
The problem with this is the statistics:
But that’s OKAY becuase you "Know some people." The fact is that we’re not great at judging people we know. We’ll more often than not turn a blind eye. to their misconduct, or in the case of a non-parent, we often don’t know what to look for. The fact is that single motherhood produces, as a general rule, crime and poverty.
So, even though I’m going to pay the bill for the prisons. Even though I’m going to pay even more when their kids grow up and just like mom, get on welfare, it’s none of my concern.
I don’t even have a right to suggest that illegitimacy is even a problem because Terp knows some people. That’s not going to wash.
I would suggest that we encourage them in the direction of marriage and re-establish the idea that marriage is an essential before a baby, not merely an optional accessory. I know feminism things men are utterly unessential, but we’ve got to get away from that because it’s killing kids.
I would also say that we propogate the idea of responsibility. The fact is that it’s not responsible to have sex (even with birth control) for 10 years without commitment, because the odds favor you ending up with a child even with birth control.
I think we also need to be realistic with people. The most dangerous myth is that you can have everything. You can’t. You may choose not to have sex, so you can climb the corporate ladder and have great success in corporate life. You can choose to have sex and get married to a man and make a lot of sacrifices in your career.
By the way if a man doesn’t have good character, you shouldn’t have sex with him, shouldn’ t have a relationship with him.
If a mother is unable or unwilling to get married, in many cases, it would be much better for the child to give it up for adoption. In doing so, the child is saved from a life of poverty. Yes, it’s hard. But it’s even harder for these kids who spend their whole lives in poverty, in prison without a father.
I’m sorry but women have to make tough choices to take care of their children and not just their own desires. Men have to do the same thing and think of others before themselves.
It is not something government can impose, but it’s time for the culture to change. We can’t afford what we’ve got currently. Without sacrifices and the willingness to do what’s right for someone else, we’ll continue to have a culture where kids aren’t taken care of, they end up in poverty, and productive citizens end up paying the cost of prison, medicaid, etc.
Russian Roulette is exactly right. Thanks, I was thinking of an analogy and you saved me the trouble of thinking of one.
Wow, never said that. The choice is rarely between death and sex, though. If it is, I understand. Unless you have the study that single moms are single moms because they needed to avoid dead, this is an irrelevant emotional argument.
These statistics aren’t cherry picked. They’re reality. Because you think it worked out great for you doesn’t mean it’s good for society.
Because the thing is that whenever you’re going by anecdotal evidence to make a case on public policy, you’re always going to come up with things favor people’s biases.
Argument:
1) I knew this Homeschooler who was really creepy
Therefore, Homeschoolers are really creepy.
2) I knew this Homeschool who was very charming and brilliant:
Therefore, Homeschoolers are charming and brilliant.
Why do we need statistics? Why do we need studies? Why do we need research, because our own experience isn’t enough.
Terp may think her friend is doing a great job, but the worst evaluators of parenting skills are often non-parents.
Certainly, you can argue studies and statistics, but you can do just that, you can argue them. You can point out flaws in their methodology.
If all we do is have anecdotes and say there are numbers showing illegitimacy is a wonderful thing (without ever citing the numbers) than we’ve abandonned reason and gone to saying nothing can be determined.
Certainly an anecdote can help, but there’s always the exception to the rule.
Let’s give some examples:
"Bill Gates is a billionaire, and Rush Limbaugh is a multi-millionaire. Neither finished college, so therefore dropping out of college is a wise thing to do."
Certainly in some industries, this is true. You don’t need a degree of any sort. But then there’s statistical fact that people with degrees earn more over a lifetime than those without. With should believe, the anecdotes or the statistics.
It’s like a poll. If I said, "I’ll never vote to Hillary to be president," that’s my anecdote of how I’ll vote, but do this thing called a poll to find out how a broad section of people will vote. That’s why, good statistics and studies beat anecdotes, though they do have their place.
Let’s answer the question. I think we can know to a degree. Let’s be clear that single parent households and poverty have a strong corrolation:
So the question of which causes it, "Single parenting or poverty?" is at one point moot. The two go together.
Why would a single mother be more likely to be in poverty? First, is that there’s a limit on job opportunities for people who are serious about mothering. Oftentimes, it’s hard to always be at work on time, kids don’t exist on time. I’ve worked in some very low paying tedious work and in each job there’ve been single mothers nearby.
Many end up on probation for attendance, and even sometimes dismissed when absences become too much. As it is, employers are impressed by people who are dependable and they can count on to be there. Too many single mothers by necessity aren’t.
This discussion leaves aside the importance of fathers (who feminists believe to be all but irrelevant) or the importance of involvement in a child’s life. Single parents are often stretched to the limits for time.
Certaintly those who work hard and manage to get in life and beat the odds while still having kids turn out right should be applauded-but they’re doing that, beating the odds.
Never should we encourage people to enter into a situation whether the odds are against them and never should good public policy be on the side of something that hurts kids. Nor, should we be encourage illegitimacy so that having chosen to have children out of wedlock, irresponsible people can saddle taxpayers with their expenses.