The report on 'non-marital births' from the Center for Disease Control has garnered a lot of headlines this morning, but the summary and report itself deserve a bit more thoughtful consideration.
The really good news is that the birth rate for unmarried teen mothers has dropped, actually halving since 1970. The somewhat less-than-good news is that the bearing of children outside of marriage has become much more casually accepted, with little social sanction attached.
If, as is to be hoped, fewer abortions are undertaken year-over-year, then children born out of wedlock will have to be welcomed, life being preferred over death.
The biggest 'bump' in the charts appears to be in women 30-35, if I read the summary correctly.
This is more than somewhat less-than-good news. It speaks to our cultural problem with the institution of marriage. If half the kids born in the 70's and 80's grew up in circumstances that included a failed marriage of their parents, we should not be surprised to find that, as young adults, these young people hold a jaundiced view of marriage.
Suspicion abounds: Women wonder if this guy, attractive as he appears, is stable enough and of sufficient character to mate for life. Many, many are not. And with the increased acceptance of homosexuality, the available pool of men shrinks. Add in the closeted homosexual men who emerge from the closet a decade and two children down the road, and marriage looks like a high-risk wager for women. I'm not making this stuff up--I've seen it happen several times in my polite little buttoned-down world.
Men wonder if they are walking into a lifetime trap, given the draconian nature of divorce and child support law, which incentivize the less-than-scrupulous wife to bear a couple of kids, thus having husband and his family on the fiduciary hook for a couple of decades at least. They find out too late that they were really just generic heterosexual males capable of donating sperm and generating cash. I've seen this happen several times as well, and it devastates lives. Why take this risk?
The term 'nonmarital' itself is indicative; a fabricated word, a product of our brave new bureaucracy. It is academically cold, exact, and studiously avoids any emotional baggage attached to the term 'out-of-wedlock'. It is a Latin-derived fabrication, less evocative than the old Anglo-Saxon sound of 'wedlock'.
If we're going to thrive as a culture, and eventually as an economy again, we'll have to find a way to make marriage safe again. We'll have to teach our children the art and craft of living together as trustworthy people.
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