Quote of the Day 10-18-10
Let’s talk abortion. Let’s talk the feminisation of poverty and cycles of poverty. Let’s talk crime. Let’s talk dropping out of high school, not going to college, and drug use. Let’s talk depression. Let’s talk STDs and cervical cancer.
It’s all related to people who have sex when they are too da*n young to be having it. Being all traditional and waiting is best for you and best for the kids you want to have. It does more to help you, your children, and your ability to get ahead in life than does any amount of welfare, affirmative action, Section 8 housing, and ObamaCare.
Chastity: the free way to end poverty.
~Roxeanne de Luca, Haemet, October 14
[HT: carder]
Oct.18, 2010 9:06 am |
Quote of the Day |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Right on, Roxeanne!
One of the best quotes I’ve heard in ages. AMEN!
Smart! 10 points!!!!!
Amen to that, Roxeanne!
Phyllis Schlafly is a relic from the dark ages, and anybody who takes her seriously needs to have their head examined. Same lady who doesn’t consider marital rape to be “rape”–heard it from the old bat firsthand when she came to speak at my university.
Megan,
So you don’t like P. Schlafly. Don’t you agree that single motherhood contributes to poverty and that postponing sexual activity can help women keep themselves out of a life of poverty?
“is a relic from the dark ages”
“the old bat”
Megan continues her rants of hate. It’s not only young humans and Christian humans she hates, she hates older humans too.
Stay tuned to see who Megan targets next . . . . . .
Oh Praxedes, clever! I am such a bigot. I hate (I’ll contest that Phyllis Schlafly is really too ridiculous to spend time hating) all these people because of who they are intrinsically–has nothing to do with the rhetoric they spew. Oh well, at least I don’t align myself with a woman who turns a blind eye to domestic violence and marital rape.
And Janet:
I do think kids should wait to have sex until they’ve learned how to protect themselvse and can demonstrate responsibility. This shouldn’t take on a moral force, though. Also, pathologizing “single motherhood” isn’t productive. It displaces blame for a lot of poor health/financial outcomes on women themselves. The issue isn’t as complicated as “wait until you’re married to have sex.” The book “Promises I Can Keep” is one of many analyses that sheds some light on single motherhood. The premise: girls in poor Philly neighborhoods have few life prospects and value motherhood. They therefore don’t take precautions against getting pregnant, but when they do, they don’t marry. Why? Because they know the men in the community are financially unstable and face high drug use and incarceration rates. They’d rather wait for a reliable partner. The baby comes first, marriage second.
In this instance, better sex education programs, school systems AND social support systems are necessary to improve life outcomes for these women and their babies.
Roxeanne,
Amen to that!! Keep speaking the truth!!
Thanks, all!
<blockquote>
In this instance, better sex education programs, school systems AND social support systems are necessary to improve life outcomes for these women and their babies.</blockquote>
Megan: Single motherhood is not a constant force; in fact, it has gone up about seven-fold in the past few decades. Nothing – repeat, nothing – that you say or would teach children would encourage women to wait for marriage before having babies. For example: sex ed does not help those who want to get pregnant not get pregnant. Welfare doesn’t encourage women to wait until marriage; it just enables them to produce more illegitimate babies with no repercussions.
You say that we are being mean to single mothers and scapegoating them, but you forget that single mothers harm their children. You say that women in Philly know that men have high incarceration rates, so they don’t bother getting married, but you are ignoring the reality that the children of single, never-wed mothers are five times as likely to do prison time as the children of married parents.
Every single social problem you complain about can be traced back to unwed motherhood. Jail, drugs, dropping out of school, wanting babies in high school – it’s all related, but you ignore the connections and then pretend that conservatives aren’t having a productive discussion. Gee, Megan, sweetie, why do you think that girls would want babies in high school? Might it not have something to do with wanting to love someone because their fathers were never in the picture, because their mothers were too selfish to get married before having babies?
Your “solutions” do nothing but exacerbate the problem, since those “solutions” subsidise the root cause of the problem, in complete contradistinction to our drive to directly address the underlying issues.
Trying to use sexual technique education (which is what it really is) to curb teen pregnancy is like using food to curb obesity.
The sex ed that school kids really need is the kind that informs them of the facts of conception and fetal development. They need to know the heart is beating by week 4 after conception, not which flavor of condom is available at the nurse’s office.
Absolutely Roxeanne!
“I am such a bigot.”
Admitting it is half the battle Megan!
It’s such a treat when conservatives play sociologist. Women are selfish, women should practice self-restraint, single moms invariably hurt their children by being too selfish to find a man. Welfare produces illegitimate babies. All the fault of women.
What else happened in the US between the time women were submissive helpmeets to their husbands and when they became pathological, immoral hussies?
The decline of the living wage, particularly in men’s salaries. Big factories packing up and moving oversees, contributing to job loss and crumbling inner-city economies. Red lining. Crappy schools. You know, structural changes that affect people’s lives in major ways. Also, in case you didn’t do your research, welfare benefits haven’t kept apace with inflation rates. Welfare benefits stagnated in the seventies and eighties, yet single motherhood became more and more common. Seems to invalidate the claim that welfare encourages women to have kids out of wedlock, no?
Oh, and how terrible for single moms to hold that *terrible feminist* belief that women don’t need to be dependent on husbands, that they can *shock!* have babies and get jobs and manage for themselves. Also, why do married couples get state benefits that single parents don’t? Could this institutional favoritism contribute at all to differences in outcomes of success for kids born into these different families??
Phyllis Schlafly seems to think women want to “leach” off their husbands, and if not, then “leach” off the state. But women will, indeed, protest that backwards thinking:
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/07/unmarried_women_voted_for_obam.html
Also Roxy,
“For example: sex ed does not help those who want to get pregnant not get pregnant.”
Can you support that claim with evidence? Also, could you comment on the recent Mathematica Institute report that found abstinence-only-until-marriage programs to be highly ineffective in preventing teen pregnancy and the spread of STI’s?
Megan, Megan, Megan.
First, if women were actually self-sufficient and didn’t need men around, then we wouldn’t be paying them $400 billion a year to raise their babies out of wedlock, no? So I have nothing against the feminist idea that women can be successful, but when they aren’t, and when actual facts prove that they aren’t succeeding, then it’s time to re-examine our ideals and reconcile them with reality.
Second, you said that a lot of women in Philly want to get pregnant. Sex ed isn’t going to stop that from happening, since they will still have the same desire to have babies. Sex ed only helps those who don’t want to get pregnant.
Third, please present evidence that sex ed works better than abstinence-only education. Last I checked, the biggest factor in delaying sex and preventing STDs are having an intact family. Girls who have good relationships with their fathers delay sex, are more likely to go to college, and are less likely to get pregnant. They are also more likely to play sports and go into the sciences, which my feminist heart loves. :)
Same lady who doesn’t consider marital rape to be “rape”–heard it from the old bat firsthand when she came to speak at my university.
Wait, WHAT?? Is this true??? :(
There’s no need to be condescending, Roxeanne, unless you know you don’t have any substantive evidence to back up your claims.
“But when they aren’t, and when actual facts prove that they aren’t succeeding, then it’s time to re-examine our ideals and reconcile them with reality.”
Sure, and that’s what I’ve been doing. Look at the wider socipolitical changes that have contributed to the rise of single motherhood. Why is marriage not an attractive option for these women, or why are its ideals unattainable? I think I’ve offered a decent, though cursory, analysis, but you continue to slut-shame single moms. Also, you imply that single moms don’t do anything to help themselves. Did you watch the video in the link I posted? Single moms contesting Schlafly’s claim that they’re useless. Nobody can raise kids all on their own, it’s true. Two adults in the house make childrearing less difficult, but beyond that, the government confers married people with benefits that single moms have difficulty attaining. This contributes to the gap in outcomes between the two family types. Curious you’ve ignored that fact.
And yes, sex ed needs to be part of a broader effort to prevent kids from getting pregnant until they can reasonably handle the challenges. But youth do not respond well to judgmental and moralizing abstinence-only curricula vs. value neutral comprehensive sex ed. Here’s your evidence:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pam.20324/abstract
http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/News2?abbr=daily2_&page=NewsArticle&id=26175&security=1201&news_iv_ctrl=-1
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ocga/testimon/Abstinence_Only_Sex_Ed_Programs_and_HIV_Infection.asp
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9964
And Len, yes, Schlafly doesn’t think marital rape is equivalent to other types of rape. She made this claim at Bates College in 2007, and when she came to speak at my school two years later, had the same thing to say. When someone in the audience jokingly asked if men were allowed to hit their wives she said, “Only if they deserve it,” and laughed.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/2007/03/schlafly_marrie.html
“By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape,”
“When someone in the audience jokingly asked if men were allowed to hit their wives she said, “Only if they deserve it,” and laughed.”
Megan,
Although I strongly disagree with you at times, I want you to know that as a domestic violence and a rape survivor, I agree with you 110% that the above comments are severely detrimental to women. Domestic violence influences many other negative issues in society.
Both genders need to step up to the plate and be responsible for raising and supporting their children. Both genders need to hold each other accountable. Doing a great job raising a child is just as important as any paid position.
It is hard to respect someone who is telling you by their actions that ”your good enough to have sex with but not good enough to spend the rest of my life with or have a family with.” A good sex education class should always stress the importance of marriage and commitment.
Praxedes,
I definitely agree. But we need to take into consideration the structural factors that create unhealthy relationships. People point to the sexualization of the media. To a certain extent I think the media is a detriment to young people’s understandings of sex, sexuality and love. But there are other factors at work. What would lead a young girl to get pregnant in the first place and then say, “I don’t really want to be in a relationship with this guy?” This is anecdotal but speaks to some of the current sociology of single motherhood: many girls from my old high school are poor. They can’t afford to go to college or “strike out on their own.” So yes, they date other guys from my community and it isn’t a “huge problem” if they get pregnant, because that’s their ultimate goal in the long run. The guys can’t find decent work, are involved in drugs, and generally feel negative towards women–feelings compounded by the fact that they can’t fulfill “masculine” roles of provider/breadwinner. In short, these men do not make suitable longterm partners.
These men and women should hold each other to higher standards, for the sake of themselves and their children. But it’s kind of ineffective to say, “Hey, get responsible!” if there are so little jobs available, and drugs are an easy way to mask the pain of “failing” as an adult. It needs to be a multi-level effort.
Megan, dear, let’s return to the FACTS.
Let’s stop with the “slut shaming” and “demonizing single mothers” rhetoric, shall we? You claim that I’m condescending to you, but you offer nothing in return but feelings and videos. Let’s examine the facts, Megan.
Fact: 6% of married parents live in poverty, compared to 36% of single moms.
Fact: 15% of adults have parents who were not married at their birth; 70% of adult prisoners are from never-married homes.
Fact: having a father around decreases a girl’s likelihood of being a teenage mother, increases her interest in science and sports, decreases her likelihood of dropping out of high school.
Fact: married parents are the equivalent of adding 5 to 6 years onto education (all other things being equal). So married 17-year-old high school dropouts, statistically, do about the same as a single mom with a master’s degree.
Fact: that Phyllis Schlafly was wrong about marital rape does not make her wrong about everything else; it makes her a fallible human.
Now, pray tell, how is it that I’m not arguing the facts? How is it that you can get away with saying that I’m shortchanging women or saying that they are not capable when the FACTS demonstrate, over and over again, that single mothers cannot do alone what they could do if married? Why are you getting away with that outrageous man-hate? For if a single mother could do exactly what a married couple does every time, it says that fathers have no role in their children’s lives. No additional benefit is conferred even from having a second person; in fact, you are saying that fathers are detrimental, since their being compensates, in a negative way, for their presence.
That’s atrocious, sickening, and a peversion of feminism. Feminism says that women can do things as well as men, not that men are useless clods who contribute nothing, zip, nada to their children’s lives. (That is, of course, the logical conclusion of your thought process.)
Furthermore, Megan, what really rankles me is the modern liberal idea that reality ought to bow to your FEELINGS. That if you feel something and it’s really, really strong, and makes you feel really, really good, then it must be real. Yes, we, as empathetic individuals, acknowledge the strength of ones’ feelings and that they are there, and that they are a part of reality for whomever has them, but we do not pretend that they overcome reality. We save that for children’s bed-time stories, not the most important public policy discussions of our time. And all I hear from your arguemnts, Megan, is that you don’t like the way that these plain, harsh facts make you feel. You feel that telling women to wait for babies until marriage is slut-shaming. You feel that it undermines women to point to the basic reality that parenthood is not a one-person proposition. (Paging Mother Nature! Does k-selected carrying capacity and evolution not show you that fallacy for what it is?) That doesn’t make it so, Megan. Sorry.
Of course, none of this will fall on your pretty head. You aren’t going to suffer from a society that tells your dad to not marry your pregnant mon; you’er already an adult, and, from what you’re saying, almost certainly one with married parents. It’s other people, other babies, other children in the ghetto who will suffer for your misplaced idealism.
Single moms contesting Schlafly’s claim that they’re useless. Nobody can raise kids all on their own, it’s true. Two adults in the house make childrearing less difficult, but beyond that, the government confers married people with benefits that single moms have difficulty attaining. This contributes to the gap in outcomes between the two family types. Curious you’ve ignored that fact.
If by “ignored”, you mean “already addressed”, then yes, Megan, that’s true. First, I’ve alredy mentioned that it’s ridiculous for government to put marriage and single parenthood on equal footing, since the latter is so clearly undesirable and money doesn’t change that. (While one of the many problems of single parenthood is lack of money, that problem is a symptom of a larger problem, so throwing money at single moms is like giving aspirin to a person with brain cancer to alleviate the headache.)
Also, let’s get real: women are not so helpless that they cannot decide for themselves to get married before procreating. Women, last I checked (being one and all) are capable of forethought and rational decision-making. Having babies out of wedlock is a CHOICE. It is not like catching the flu, for heaven’s sake; it’s a choice that a woman deliberately makes. Why on earth we should pretend, as you do (consciously or not, but the non-choice of single motherhood is the underlying assumption in all of your arguments) that this is not a choice is beyond me.
“First, I’ve alredy mentioned that it’s ridiculous for government to put marriage and single parenthood on equal footing, since the latter is so clearly undesirable and money doesn’t change that.”
Really? Talk about spouting off “feelings,” as well as useless tautologies. You’re getting your causes and consequences mixed up. Society frowns upon single motherhood not because it’s inherently bad for people, but because our society has a priori assumptions about sexual morality, and we have created policies that tip the scales in favor of marriage. So again, yes, it pays to have more than one adult in a house because there is more sharing of household labor and childrearing responsibilities. But then our government sutures a whole package of benefits to the marriage deal: access to health insurance for spouses and children, joint insurance policies for home or car owners, tax benefits, paid sick leave…the list goes on and on. So you’ve got one group of people getting these benefits, another group of people not receiving them. This will widen the gap in outcomes between the two groups. Obviously, controlling for these factors would still reveal a gap, but it would be narrower.
“Having babies out of wedlock is a CHOICE.”
Ultimately, yes, it is. But there you go again, directing blame and rage solely at women for something we’ve diagnosed as a societal ill. It’s like saying poor people are poor because they’re stupid or lazy. Get your head out of the Charles Murray. Social conditions structure experience and shape decision-making, or the scope of decisions available. In public health this idea is known as the “ecological model of health.” You’ve ignored this one: if a poor community doesn’t offer many eligible bachelors–drug-addicted, jobless, incarcerated men are the rule, not the exception–then what incentive does a young girl in this community have to settle down with one of them long-term? And what could a community do to make this partnership possible–maybe stimulate the economy and create jobs for these young men? Hmm.
You also seem to think that marriage is a panacea for the world’s ills. It’s well known that poor women face higher rates of domestic violence than their counterparts in higher socioeconomic strata–even in marriage. Poverty is the root of the problem here–material deprivation is a huge stressor. Would you encourage women to stay with their abusers for the sake of her kids? Recent public policy (TANF) tried that whole marriage promotion thing, and it didn’t exactly work: http://www.researchforum.org/media/DomVio.pdf
”It’s other people, other babies, other children in the ghetto who will suffer for your misplaced idealism.”
Right. So right here you confer me with a lot of power to shape public policy and, ultimately, people’s lives. So you admit there’s a sociopolitical context influencing our decision-making, right? And that by emphasizing “individual choice” you obscure the socio-cultural-political dimensions in which we are all exist as subjects?
And Roxeanne, I hate to point this out, but I’ve offered sources for my claims, in the form of direct links to policy documents, commentary, and evaluation of policy programs. Your statistics and claims are coming from—where, might I ask, besides your soul’s wellspring of hostility?
Maybe you could read over my previous postings and get my arguments correct. Where do you see evidence of my apparent vitriol hatred of men? By saying that women can raise children alone, albeit with some difficulty, doesn’t imply misandry at all. I would say the same for single dads, too.
“Having a father around decreases a girl’s likelihood of being a teenage mother, increases her interest in science and sports, decreases her likelihood of dropping out of high school…”
Also–and I’m being facetious, disclaimer–an old athletic rival of mine was raised by two lesbians, and she was a college track sar. Can she attribute her success in athletics to her moms???