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Single Mothers and Conservatism
I would like to pose two questions to my follow Ricochet members: What should be the conservative answer be to unwed single mothers? How should the GOP/Conservatives support existing single mothers (to include widows, separated, divorced, unwed)?
I think we have a tendency to focus on the origins of the issue of single mothers — such as the rise of the welfare state and the sexual revolution — without addressing how we would support those single mothers that need help today. Social Conservatives are pro-life, pro-motherhood, and pro-marriage. However, the Left perpetuates the stereotype that Conservatives are not supportive of single mothers, and it works for them politically. In the 2012 presidential election 75% of single mothers voted for the Democratic ticket.
So what say you, Ricochet? Should we cede that portion of the electorate to the Democrats and to likely dependence on the state? I believe we can do better than that.
Published in Culture, Marriage, Politics
Any person who actually cares about human happiness is this world should be ranting with flecks of spittle flinging from their mouths and everything. Pounding tables like Kruschev. The whole 9.
No, what he means is that in a legal sense (and a moral sense too for a large portion of the population), a man’s wishes don’t mean anything unless the woman wants those wishes to mean something. If a man wants the baby but the woman doesn’t – the man cannot force her to have the baby. If the man doesn’t want the baby but the woman does – the man cannot force her to have an abortion. It is entirely the choice of the woman. The man has no rights unless granted to him by the woman. Yes, it’s a bad situation, but it opens a new moral dimension especially for conservatives: how can we hold someone responsible for someone else’s choice? Sure, they both had a choice before having sex. Yes, I believe that’s the natural decision point and the point at which we avoid many of these followon problems altogether. However, the reality is that women then get an additional opportunity to make a choice which supersedes the first one.
Yes, seriously, nobody is responsible for things over which they have no control. This is a universal axiom. Women can in fact choose to get an abortion if she so chooses. She is the sole decider. Men cannot compel her to not get an abortion. Nor can they compel her to get one. You may not like that it exists, but it does.
Contraception and abortion have changed the game. She has a child because she so chose. His paternity is entirely incidental and utterly inconsequential. Should it be this way, probably not, but it is.
The problem of purchased sperm and IVF also has problems for conservatives because it also helps rupture the link between paternity and parenthood.
Supersedes is a good way of describing it. Thank you.
I’m not sure what you’re looking for then. First and foremost, this is a problem best addressed in the form of prevention by the individuals involved – there’s no getting around that; mostly that means a pedestrian taking extra care. Second, it’s been argued that help is already available for women and kids in this situation; not just government help but that too. Third, I don’t think anyone is brushing this off. Last, political success with this group will be difficult when our policy proposals, while solid and sustainable, are competing with direct aid and forcing others to change their lives in accommodation.
I basically agree with you, Guru, on the solution, even though we apparently come from different planets otherwise.
The child support system we have now is just evil. The fathers are harassed and humiliated, have to pay and don’t even get the pride in supporting their family they have earned. It’s ugly and awful, and leads to men really hating the mother of their child and resenting the child.
If we stopped mandatory child support, and welfare, three things would happen. Women would be more careful with whom they made babies. Men would be freely taking care of their responsibilities and be credited and appreciated for it. Relatives, neighbors and churches would step up to help women and children who were truly abandoned. All of these would be infinitely better for the children involved. They would involve some reduction in autonomy for the women.
My fear is that there would be too many that would fall between the cracks of those healthy supports, especially in poor neighborhoods where relatives, neighbors, and churches don’t have much to spare.
Agreed. I suppose it’s not surprising, though, considering that civil marriage is a shell now. It’s no longer about sex and babies and enforceable expectations, so what’s the point to getting married? Even more so for those without religious ties; if there’s no practical point and no spiritual point then it only sets up road blocks.
But then I’m a socon; we and our way of thinking are apparently on our way off the stage hot on the heels of paleocons and the dodo bird.
What am I looking for… I wanted to see what fellow Conservatives thought about the issue, as well as to see proposed solutions. There are those who would prefer to do nothing about the issue, as people are responsible for the consequences of their own actions.
The issue is not prevention – the issue is that sex has lost its meaning and true purpose (babies!), and people are no longer getting married before they start having children. People are not thinking through the consequences of their actions, and live as if life has no consequences. That is a failure on the part of parents, schools, pop culture etc. Even then, mistakes happen, and people should be given the opportunity to recover.
Political success would be difficult, but I think it is a messaging problem. I linked to a Paul Ryan op-ed in a previous post that touched on this. Conservatives need to broadcast the positive idea that welfare reform will give people agency in their own lives. Not all people will be willing to make the change, but some might.
We also can look to other policies, such as school choice, to reach the mothers.
But a man does have control over part of the process. His participation is necessary, if not sufficient, to make a baby. I feel we’ve said that before.
You are saying abortion rights supersede the man’s parental responsibility? That only makes sense if abortion is acceptable to the man. If he would not choose it, given the choice, he is not being forced into parenthood by the mother’s failure to choose it.
I agree with Jennifer that the reaction to this diminishment of marriage can only be the rise of family court.
Either that or society comes to the conclusion that these decisions do and should rest entirely with the woman, and then we won’t have to worry about what the man does. We’ll simply give mothers a stipend. Or, we could encourage people to have sex all they want, then all children (those from unlicensed parents anyway) going to Spartan colonies to be brought up by the state because people can’t be trusted with such a weighty responsibility, and besides that the state has all the best experts..
Whatever the case, it doesn’t just go away. This is one of those fundamental issues with huge impact (good or ill) on society as a whole. It’s why societies across cultures and throughout history have instituted civil marriage in some form or other. The need for an institution which addresses this dynamic and which sets and enforces expectations will reassert itself eventually. God help those injured during the long transition.
For the most part I am sympathetic to the idea that men have less power when it comes to these kinds of decisions, but I’m not willing to say they have zero power. There is such a thing as coerced abortions and coerced sex.
Well, yes but only if the people believe that contraception works 100% of the time. Which many people do believe. So in that sense, they have not given consent to being a parent. But they have been misinformed about the nature of contraception, and so this does not negate their responsibility (I’m not saying that you believe it does).
I’m stuck in deep blue California, but from where I sit, shame has been resoundingly rejected. One risks being deemed judgmental. And by the way, when did “judgement” become a bad thing?
True. One doesn’t even need to speak in terms of sin, though. Isn’t utilitarian calculation enough to shame when it’s this obvious?
But the woman almost always does want the man’s wishes to mean something. I doubt the case is common where a man wants the baby and can’t talk the woman into having it. And the case is common where the man does not want the baby and talks her into an abortion she would rather not have- again, a side effect of legal abortion not much touted by feminists. The man’s wishes mean a great deal in most cases. If abortion is legal, one or the other has to make the final decision, there is no other way to structure it. Should it be the man?
Don’t even get me started on the even more unholy evil that is imputed income. I know people who were never able to work over the counter again in their lives because the state demanded more money than he ever had a prayer of making again.
I know people my age who can’t keep work because we literally make it impossible to work if you can’t afford child support.
Most people even poor men with few socially desirable options want to do the honorable thing by their children, and want to be fathers, but largely aren’t allowed to be.
Your pop culture moment:
In here is everything you ever wanted.
But its all just a racket for money. I have more than 1 cousin who exists because they were a means to get cash out of either the government or some dumb schlub. We have created an incredibly vicious system to make sure that she gets paid. We give moral license to people to be malicious and evil, and use our better nature’s as ungodly weapons to do harm, and it breaks everything.
I have known men who could never work an honest job again (and haven’t for my entire life), or start a new life because the child support payments were more than he ever had a prayer of earning again in his life. He couldn’t even marry his new girlfriend (whom stayed with him and is still with him 30 or more years later), because the state would have gone after her income and stuff.
Someone I grew up with, yeah he is doesn’t have his life together and slips in and out of alcoholism, but taking away his driver’s license for being a “Deadbeat dad” is somehow going to help. He wants to pay for his child as much as he is able, but its impossible, so living in a flophouse and trying and failing to keep work he can’t reliably get to and slipping in and out alcoholism.
My life experience is not atypical. I just thank god all the time that my parents kept their act together.
How much faith do you think men my age and younger have in the future? Based upon the data – not much.
No, I’d prefer that there be a marriage and abortion weren’t an option. However, that most of the time the couple reaches agreement only masks the fact that it is entirely the woman’s decision if she wants it to be. The man has no corresponding right to exercise his will in the event of disagreement.
I hear ya. Still, life is about choices and consequences; before he “piped” her was the better time to realize what all of it meant and what impact it could all have.If he had turned it around and found someone he liked first, made it stable, and then shared sex with her then things would be different (better) for that guy in the video along with his son and spouse.
On the one hand, society has an interest in parents being responsible for their offspring before the society steps in with assistance. On the other hand, it’s not a crazy proposition for a mother (or father) to want to completely cut out a non-spouse parent (one without much prospect for being a positive influence on anyone) so that life can move on for all involved without the constant see-saw, emotional reminders, and antipathy. Start fresh.
Hey I agree the world would be a better place if people exercised more muzzle control with their genitals.
So. Anything on the point I raised?
Marriage does not entirely solve the problem of who decides whether to have an abortion. It does mean it’s likely to be more of a joint decision, but still, only one can make the decision in event of a disagreement. I get your point and Guru’s that abortion is ultimately the woman’s decision, not the man’s. I’m just saying if abortion is legal it has to come down to one person’s decision, and there’s even less reason for it to be the man. But men are rarely without influence.
It did occur to me that another approach would be to give either party a veto on abortion (Woman needs man’s permission to get one) or either party may require an abortion (Woman needs man’s permission to have the baby.) Either one puts a thumb on the scale one way or the other and neither would be easy to implement. First one does not sound too awful, I think it would be rarely used to force a woman to bear a child she did not want. Second one sounds pretty awful but I guess it’s the one Guru would favor?
Or abortion could be illegal, that evens out that issue.
Certainly. A person who is at fault for causing another’s injury bears culpability for it, which is a form of responsibility. And it’s rightful for the injured party to demand that the one at fault admit the fault and offer compensation.
Because of the moral drama that plays out while assigning fault, it can look to bystanders like the one at fault bears the primary responsibility for the injured party’s injury. But in reality, the person bearing the injury, assuming he’s capable of self-care, still bears the primary responsibility for caring for himself, injury and all.
Suppose a drunk driver runs you down in a crosswalk, crushing your legs, so that you face possible amputation and months if not years of excruciating rehabilitation in order to regain any semblance of functionality. Is the driver at fault? Certainly. Does he owe you? You bet he does! But who is the person most responsible for ensuring that you recover from your injury, and learn to cope with whatever cannot be recovered from?
You.
It isn’t fair. It’s just life. When others injure us, they may owe us, but foremost we owe a duty to ourselves to heal up as much as we can, even if we never get what we’re owed from others.
Right there with you and we surely get told that often enough on Ricochet.
When the social meaning of civil marriage dissolves, leaving only its legal benefits and responsibilities, it’s a hard sell. People have families without marriage! People have marriage without families! So clearly they have nothing to do with each other.
That is emblematic of society’s denial about sex. There is no such thing as sex without the risk of a baby ensuing in people who are fertile, and if you’re having sex with a woman, you had better be aware of that. There is no such thing as 100% effective birth control.
If you’re saying that the woman has 100% of the choice in whether the baby is born, because of the availability of abortion, you are of course wrong; she can’t choose to bring a baby to term who dies in utero. My point is that just because abortion has increased a woman’s amount of control over whether she has a baby, it doesn’t give her complete control; in most people’s eyes, once she is pregnant with an unwanted child, the option of abortion gives the woman two undesirable choices.
And, going back to the original point, a man can get a woman pregnant by raping her (this is why rape has always been a weapon of war). There is no way a woman can make a man a father without his free choice in the matter.
Stipulating that anecdote is not data, I know plenty of secular folks who pursue marriage and who get married. Statistically, I think income is a much better predictor than religious belief, but I could be wrong on that.
Thank you for this thought. As individuals we are responsible for our own success and happiness. What government can do is create circumstances that enable the opportunity for people to better themselves on their own. What community can do is help people on a more personal level. In the end though, it is all up to oneself as to how we react to the setbacks we encounter in life.
In a wholly deterministic world, where all necessary information is known, I would completely agree with this axiom.
But that is not the world we live in, and in our world of incomplete information, this axiom is less useful – and in some practical sense less true – than it first appears.
I’m not talking about sex here, but problem-solving in general. One of the things that can characterize a really vexing problem is that we don’t know whether we have any control over it, or, if we do have any control, how much control we actually have.
In a world of finite resources, it’s quite possible to go an entire lifetime without finding the “silver bullet” that grants you control over a problem you’ve been having.
Supposing such a silver bullet exists, then yes, in the abstract, you do have control over the problem. If, however, this silver bullet is very hard to find, and not something reasonable people know to look for, then how much control, in practice, can you really be said to have?
If you were God, you’d know about the silver bullet and be able to control the problem. But you’re not God, you don’t know, you have little reasonable hope of knowing, and you’ve still got to deal with this problem, even though you have no apparent control over it.
The stoics thought the answer was to passively accept all problems, reasoning that the one thing we’re always guaranteed control over is our attitude toward the problem (which is itself semi-debatable in practice). A certain amount of stoicism (acknowledging that sometimes the only thing you can change is your attitude) is helpful. But too much stoicism is counterproductive, since it keeps you from solving problems that could actually be solved. I don’t know the optimum amount of stoicism to have. Do you?
Sure. Receding culture leaves pools and puddles behind. The fumes can still fire the engine for awhile. And those secular people who were raised to do so will continue to say “Bless You” when someone sneezes.
Aside from that, civil marriage once had a purpose aside from assigning inheritance and power of attorney rights. Heck, the SSM proponents were correct that these benefits we’ve associated with marriage should be accessible to all, but these things are only tangentially related to the fundamental purpose of civil marriage and certainly not exclusive to it. Sooner or later we’ll collectively remember that other purpose out of necessity.
I should add that acknowledging that the primary responsibility for coping with life’s setbacks lies with the individual bearing the setbacks doesn’t mean we have to find fault with those who struggle to cope with those setbacks.
Outstanding setbacks take outstanding heroism to overcome, and while people who suffer those setbacks should strive, for their own happiness, to cultivate that heroism, it makes little sense to blame them for failing to surpass ordinary levels of human heroism (especially when they’ve already attained a level of heroism beyond our own, inadequate as their heroism may be for the situation they face).
The opinion, “I would cope better if I were in their shoes,” is easy to have – and easy to be wrong about. You might think that, because of ideology, conservatives would be more prone to this opinion than liberals. While there could be an ideological component to this opinion, I suspect the life-experience component is even bigger. People can be pretty clueless about intractable (or near-intractable) problems if they’ve been lucky enough never to face one.
Just got around to watching the video Guru embedded. It was kinda heart=tugging till he got around to the F** b*** talk . F*** b**** got all mad because he told her he didn’t love her. So, he’s the one not willing to make a life together with their child. It seems too obvious to have to say, but it’s not a good idea to have sex with someone you’re not willing to live with and raise a child with. As others have said, we need to teach young people that because clearly lots of them don’t know.
Maybe not for long in Oklahoma…..