A New York Times story during the weekend begins this way: “It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.”
The story goes on to point out that “motherhood without marriage has settled deeply into middle America.” The fastest growth in the last two decades has occurred among white women in their 20s who have some college education but no four-year degree, according to Child Trends, a Washington research group. The Times points out “the surge of births outside marriage among younger women — nearly two-thirds of children in the United States are born to mothers under 30 — is both a symbol of the transforming family and a hint of coming generational change.” Researchers have “consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problems.”
In all of this I’m reminded of the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who in 1995 was asked to identify the biggest change he had seen in his 40-year political career. To which Moynihan replied, “The biggest change, in my judgment, is that the family structure has come apart all over the North Atlantic world.” This tectonic shift has occurred, Moynihan said, “in an historical instant. Something that was not imaginable 40 years ago has happened.”
We have moved from a fracturing of the marital ideal toward what scholars call a “post-marriage” society. The causes for this are complicated, including shifts in moral and social attitudes, the after-effects of the sexual revolution, government policies on welfare, dramatic shifts in family law, the influence of popular culture, and modernity/post-modernity itself. Regardless of the root causes, the consequences of living in a society in which marriage is devalued and out-of-wedlock births are normative are not good, especially for the most vulnerable members of the human community. And so we have to recover our commitment to an institution that is, for much of American society, submerging like Atlantis.
In his 2001 book, The Broken Hearth, William Bennett put it this way:
The blessings that come to us through marriage and parenthood – I speak here of the deepest kind of human fulfillment – are immeasurable and irreplaceable and … incomparable. We live in an age in which we are continually being torn away from that which is priceless and enduring. This means that ours is the task of reminding ourselves, and each other, not only of what we have lost but of what, when it comes to marriage and the family, is still ours to regain.
Marriage and parenthood are not the sources of happiness and meaning for everyone, of course, and they can involve their own struggles and heartache. But for most people, marriage and parenthood are well-springs of great happiness. As for how to get to where we need to go, it does not require us “turning back the clock.” It requires us to renew the inward things of the heart, to take steps toward progress. To understand the distinction, listen to the words of C.S. Lewis:
I would rather get away from the whole idea of clocks. We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive … [and] going back is the quickest way on.
On matters of marriage and parenthood, then, we all need to begin to walk back to the right road, not in hopes of recapturing an Ozzie and Harriet world but for the sake of our society, human fulfillment, and the well-being of our children.
Since the 1960s it has been fashionable to question all things conventional with the premise that "change" equals progress. Much of the world of Ozzie and Harriet, when compared to the social and cultural realities of today, represent a better place. We have had the opportunity to see how the "change" we adopted in theory translates into a tragic and chaotic reality. Evaluating the results and making the choice to build our culture rather than continuing to watch it devolve cannot happen soon enough.
This is the logical consequence of falling for the Sexual Revolution hook, line, and sinker. Even a lot of self-described conservatives have bought into it and treat critiques of this "revolution" as a third rail in politics, hence the calumnies heaped upon Rick Santorum.
When conservatives stop insisting that government has a compelling interest in marriage, I may decide to get one. This is the most pathetic of all conservative arguments. If we are going back, why not go back to the days when a broken engagement could get a man ten years in prison? If you'd just stop assuming that marriage is a good thing you'd immediately see that numerous government policies (good intensions) make marriage contracts economically foolish.
Sorry, Scott, but if a woman's good enough to impregnate, she should be good enough to marry. If you're man enough to do it, that is. Anyone can just get women pregnant. It takes a man to make a commitment and stick to it.
Too bad Santorum's views on contraception are deflecting attention from the real social issue in America: the character of marriage and the family. If heterosexual monogamy is regarded as a mere sociological phenomenon and "one of the many options," then no wonder the whole idea of marriage is on the rocks in America. If there is no transcendant source of truth in this area, then all human behavior, including incest and bestiality, is in principle "acceptable."
Strong moral commitment and government sanctioned marriage are not the same things. In fact, the overlap is negligible. Why do so many conservatives tolerate 2+2=5 arguments on moral issues?
It is funny that conservatives, who are constantly (and often correctly) lecturing on how there is a “human nature” that social-engineering will not change, forget this when the subject of child-production comes up. n nMost women are biologically programmed to want children. Feminists may deny this. Individual women may resist this. But the need (for most, not all) is nearly overpowering. For some it is the #1 drive, the most important thing in their lives. n nWhen a society contains so few suitable male partners, the choice comes down to n(1)marry an unemployed/underemployed, video-game-playing, beer-swilling, beavis-n-butthead snickering male who will be a lousy husband, an irresponsible father, a financial drain on the family and have children with him, or n(2)bypass the available waste-of-a-life males and have a child without the drawback of a marriage to what amounts to a man-child, or n(3)deny a deep-seated need and forego having children. n
You seem happy if a woman makes choices 1 or 3. But many women are opting for choice #2. n ncontinued… n nIf you really care about children being raised without fathers, address the social & economic issues that have produced a generation of immature, minimally-educated, unemployable, commitment-phobic males. Because most women will not deny themselves the most fundamental biological and psychological need – to have children. And in the absence of cognitively-intact, productive males, these women will have them as single mothers. n