No Wedding, No Womb
Out-of-wedlock birthrates are rising nationwide, with some four in 10 births nationwide. Some 70 percent of black children born this year will be born to unmarried parents. I'm sure we all know single parents who are doing amazing jobs raising their children. Statistically, children of single parents fare worse than children in two-parent homes.
They are significantly more likely to be physically abused and suffer physical or emotional neglect. They are less likely to have good grades, aspirations toward college, good attendance records or graduation from high school. And this doesn't even get into the emotional or behavioral problems.
Forty-five years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan released a controversial report on the black family that concluded that poverty and social ills disproportionately facing blacks were caused by a horrific breakdown of the family. When that report was released, the out-of-wedlock birth rate was "only" 26 percent, or roughly equivalent to the rate for whites today.
So along comes this "no wedding, no womb" movement to encourage black people in sexual relationships to get married before they conceive children. Now, I could imagine people protesting that the movement doesn't go far enough -- that it should encourage people to get married before they have sex, not just before they have children. But I didn't imagine people arguing that the movement is simple "slut shaming."
Ta-Nehisi Coates at the once respectable Atlantic called it "moist, vague moral populism." He went on to say that life for a single black woman is most likely not hard and "never as hard, as enduring the self-appointed analysts." One of the first things I read from him was his reasoning for not marrying the mother of his children, with whom he lives. It had something to do with the fact that his Black Panther father had many children by multiple women but was one of the most superficial and poorly reasoned pieces about marriage out there. (I should admit that I didn't have a clue about marriage -- or its burdens and benefits -- until I got married, either.)
Monica Potts at The American Prospect writes that the campaign "makes a classic mistake: shaming women for their sexuality instead of asking how to improve outcomes for children of single-parent households." She thinks that stability is the key. Single moms should stay single, married folks should stay happily married. And single parents should be subsidized more. Since, you know, subsidizing fatherless families has worked out so well thus far.
What strikes me about all this isn't the flawed policy arguments so much as the lack of confidence the sexual revolution soldiers have. I mean, it's not like they didn't win. All the elites embrace the idea that sex is about making yourself happy. Apparently everyone has sex outside of marriage. And yet a moral stand of any kind -- even a compromise moral stand such as this one -- must be attacked. It's just odd.
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Jul '10
Re: No Wedding, No Womb
I remember how shocked I was, not so long ago, when the women in our office threw a baby shower for one of their white, middle-class co-workers, who was unmarried and had no plans to marry.
I thought, "In the space of a generation, we've come from a place where birth out of wedlock was a shame to a place where it's cause for celebration."
Turn out the lights...turn out the lights...
Jun '10
Re: No Wedding, No Womb
To me, not allowing a boy to have a father, that he can at least talk to everyday, amounts to child abuse. Boys are wired differently, and when they're teenagers, they're programmed to reject their mothers, they just are. And it's no reflection on the mother's parenting skills. Boys want to imitate someone like themselves, from up close--it's wired in--and it can't be a female. They learn a lot from Mom, and their sisters, but not how to be a man. Not how to be a good secure man anyway.
Re: No Wedding, No Womb
The lack of shame has been around for awhile. I'm from a predominately black community where the single parent birth rate for blacks is over 90%.
When I graduated high school 28 years ago, we had a section roped off up front for the children of students who were graduating.
The point the author makes about life being no harder in a single parent household is ignorant. Have a parent teacher night in 2 different schools and tell me it's not harder being a one parent home. Have one child who needs to be at football practice and another at soccer somewhere else and tell me it's not harder being a one parent home. Ditto for doctor appointments, parties, etc.
Or when you don't feel good and your spouse takes over making 4 school lunches at 6 am.
Not to mention two incomes versus one - much more important today than the generation older than me.
There are no instruction books with right answers for raising kids. It helps to have someone to help you make and support your decisions.
I'm not saying single parent homes can't be good. I am saying they are difficult.
May '10
Re: No Wedding, No Womb
I've got a lot of friends that are confident of themselves as spouses, but not parents, so they don't have kids and just get a Boston terrier. But the other situation is the parents that are confident of themselves as parents but not yet as spouses. The latter situation is more likely to lead to problems, but they both stem from the separation of marriage and raising a family (not always a bad thing in my mind). I don't know which would be a bigger commitment: marriage or a child. Marriage is supposed to be forever, but can be terminated on call. Kids are usually only there for 18 years, pretty much regardless.
I still have no idea what people mean by "sexuality." It's like R&B music: everyone has a different idea of what it is, yet we're all treated as if we're supposed to like and treasure it. I could name my lost dog "Sexuality", discuss how I found him/it, and the average person wouldn't know I'm talking about an animal.
May '10
Re: No Wedding, No Womb
Mollie Hemingway:
So along comes this "no wedding, no womb" movement to encourage black people in sexual relationships to get married before they conceive children.... I didn't imagine people arguing that the movement is simple "slut shaming."
Hmm. Here is the definition of "slut-shaming": Slut-shaming, also known as slut-bashing, is the idea of shaming and/or attacking a woman or a girl for 1) being sexual, 2) having one or more sexual partners, 3) acknowledging sexual feelings, 4) and/or acting on sexual feelings.
Um, no. Isn't "sluttiness" numbers 2 and 4 above, effected in an irresponsible manner such that you become pregnant? Is there seriously any non-nutty conservative who objects to the existence of #1 and #3? The issue is the forum and manner of expression, not this attempt at defining non-deviancy down (since Moynihan is invoked here....) as a PR attempt to criticize all critics of true sluttiness and thereby remove all vestige of shame.
May '10
Re: No Wedding, No Womb
It requires a lot of arrogance to deny the sad effects of the Sexual Revolution.
And that damage ripples far outside the home. Family is the fundamental social unit on which all else is built. Destroy family and you destroy society. We cannot repair America without repairing our cultural attitudes regarding family.