Most unwed mothers are teenaged girls that haven’t a clue about anything. They are children with parents that suck. They aren’t doing it because they will get welfare. They are doing it so the boy will like them. The attempt to recruit them as villains in your political drama is the usual, cynical right wing use of the unfortunate.

That said, it is you people that brought up single mothers, when it became obvious that condemning all single women was extreme. Like the right-wing in general, you are happy to use sad girls, trapped by their own ignorance, as a foil for you to support this awful Shafly woman.

Ah, “trapped by their own ignorance”. Get that everyone? Trapped. Victims. And where did that come from if not the breakdown of the family caused by the rejection of solid, traditional values? With all such breakdowns aided by social engineering per academic and government pressures.

You speak in great generalities…that depend on a very narrow field of view and hang on precisely one thin assertion to appear to be supported. That assertion – that parents suck so as to enable the State to replace them – is precisely the sort of emotional arbitrary goofiness that State uses to empower itself to make an industry out of inducing parents – typically moms – to hack dad out of the child’s life for money and personal advantage.

Ironically, it’s also what Schlafly claims is the root of the problem: The State as parent spawns State-parenting. Any lightbulbs going on yet, poster?

It’s taken decades for the religion of secular humanism to produce a state where traditional values and responsibilities are replaced by economic opportunity and the ways and means to glean and grow rich from that opportunity, as the child support industry’s powers naturally have and as they continually lobby the State to enrich. Ask me how I know.

The average child is worth somewhere north of five hundred dollars a month, plus other benefits – a family of five children can easily pay a mother to live scot-free, and when benefits accrue, they’ll all be handsomely covered, typically in what had been dad’s house.

This is the mechanism, poster. And all it takes is for one person, typically mom, to make the decision you just floated that, you know, dad just kinda sucks. From the custody industry swings into action.

Custody depends on two things: Gender and unilateralism. Being mom and being sick of a father “that sucks” is all it takes to throw the sorry bastard that used to be dad on the street, keep the house and car, and have him (or many hims) pay a whack of tax-free money to support the State’s control of his own children.

That State having, in effect, remarried the mother of his children. But somehow this incentive and pathway escapes you. Because parents suck…leaving the State in precisely the position to do what Schlafly says it has and will do countless times. Welcome to the family in 2010…and welcome to Schlafly’s assertion writ large.

I’ll take your slander as proof of your intellectual desperation, and that desperation as an admission that you really don’t have a leg to stand on.

Most unwed mothers are teenaged girls that haven’t a clue about anything. They are children with parents that suck. They aren’t doing it because they will get welfare. They are doing it so the boy will like them. The attempt to recruit them as villains in your political drama is the usual, cynical right wing use of the unfortunate.

That said, it is you people that brought up single mothers, when it became obvious that condemning all single women was extreme. Like the right-wing in general, you are happy to use sad girls, trapped by their own ignorance, as a foil for you to support this awful Shafly woman.

Ah, “trapped by their own ignorance”. Get that everyone? Trapped. Victims. And where did that come from if not the breakdown of the family caused by the rejection of solid, traditional values? With all such breakdowns aided by social engineering per academic and government pressures.

You speak in great generalities…that depend on a very narrow field of view and hang on precisely one thin assertion to appear to be supported. That assertion – that parents suck so as to enable the State to replace them – is precisely the sort of emotional arbitrary goofiness that State uses to empower itself to make an industry out of inducing parents – typically moms – to hack dad out of the child’s life for money and personal advantage.

Ironically, it’s also what Schlafly claims is the root of the problem: The State as parent spawns State-parenting. Any lightbulbs going on yet, poster?

It’s taken decades for the religion of secular humanism to produce a state where traditional values and responsibilities are replaced by economic opportunity and the ways and means to glean and grow rich from that opportunity, as the child support industry’s powers naturally have and as they continually lobby the State to enrich. Ask me how I know.

The average child is worth somewhere north of five hundred dollars a month, plus other benefits – a family of five children can easily pay a mother to live scot-free, and when benefits accrue, they’ll all be handsomely covered, typically in what had been dad’s house.

This is the mechanism, poster. And all it takes is for one person, typically mom, to make the decision you just floated that, you know, dad just kinda sucks. From the custody industry swings into action.

Custody depends on two things: Gender and unilateralism. Being mom and being sick of a father “that sucks” is all it takes to throw the sorry bastard that used to be dad on the street, keep the house and car, and have him (or many hims) pay a whack of tax-free money to support the State’s control of his own children.

That State having, in effect, remarried the mother of his children. But somehow this incentive and pathway escapes you. Because parents suck…leaving the State in precisely the position to do what Schlafly says it has and will do countless times. Welcome to the family in 2010…and welcome to Schlafly’s assertion writ large.

I’ll take your slander as proof of your intellectual desperation, and that desperation as an admission that you really don’t have a leg to stand on.

hilzoy, get a clue. This article, even though you are unmarried and barren, isn’t about you. It’s about a patterns of behavior. Of course there are always exceptions. Most divorces are initiated by the woman, about 70%. That does not mean All divorces, just most.

While President Obama may not have initiated this cycle, he and the liberal seem willing to continue, expand and nurture these trends. Where is the money going to come from?

Good morning,
While on the subject of statistics pop over to doj.gov and see who is most dangerous to kids, and it is not the biological fathers. I myself am 3rd generation single mom and I do agree with Ms. Schafly. My Grandma did it without gov help, my Mom did it without gov help, I too have done it without gov help. I have also argued for years that it would be easier for me to care for my own children if I didn’t have to pay for other womens kids. I’ve never expected anyone to pay for my poor choices. There is a large block that could be won by the GOP if they had the nads to take on this new feminism. It used to be I am woman hear me roar, now it is I am a helpless little girl help me big daddy gov. It infantilzes women and is repulsive. Single parenthood has always been with us, the gov paying for it for the last 50+ years is what has damaged society. It is not that the 16 year old gets an apartment, it is that to get help she has to leave the nest where her and her offspring would be safer. What sense does that make, it puts someone who already shows irresponsible behavior on her own. She goes looking for safety from the first man she perceives as strong and a vicious cycle is begun, with children standing in the middle. All the while the children watch and learn. I was not a teen mom, but even in as stable a home as I was able to provide, my sons show the lack of control that comes from not have Dad show how to control self. Thank God they are past that in HS with goals for the future but it was a battle that did not have to take place, had we been more important than him getting high, yes women walk away in higher numbers. But sometimes you think you know someone and find out they are not what they present, like Obama.
I have voted rep since 2000, but only because they are less evil than dems. Doesn’t seem like a real choice, the Tea party had me at Santellis rant. To sum up it is my opinion that kids do way better with 2 parents, and I hammer that home with mine and any others in my sphere. Wait, get an education, get married, plan for the babes. They act as if teens are animals with no self control. Give them the biological facts about std’s, failure rates of BC, and the emotional trauma associated with teen sex. Knowledge is power, they don’t get that in school. It has to come from us.

Studies I’ve read in the past indicated that a substantial majority of teen pregnancies were by men 4 or more years older than the woman. I think that is considered some level of rape in Wisconsin, but is almost never prosecuted. In the African-American community, about 68% of children are being raised in single parent households. Is that the accepted cultural norm? It would interesting to see the data above broken down by ethnic groups.

Debi&Ten: you both rule.

To my liberal friends who defend the sex-ed
equivalent of letting children play with firearms, I respond that violence and prejudice are as genetically hard-wired as
the reproductive urge, but we don’t encourage children to indulge those urges, do we?

There was an illustrative story in the Dallas
Morning News this week, about teens struggling
to pass Texas high-school proficiency tests. Several paragraphs in the reporter got around to how the young woman at issue was an unwed teenage mother (baby-daddy incarcerated) struggled with balancing studies (failed TAKS twice) with “clubbing and hanging with her homegirls”.

Uh, ya think?

Jeff G. responds to RSM…

http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=20137#comment-962162

Aberra: I mis-spoke a bit initially, but do not forget that since damn near all women have children, and married women often have more than unmarried women, that the 40% is not inaccurate, either way (i.e. the groups are functionally the same).

Oddly, about 35-45% of all women will have abortions, so I really have zero compunctions about throwing a substantial minority of women under the bus as far as motherhood goes, since they are all but eating their own young… then asking us to treat them as heroes for doing it.

Debi&Ten: you both rule.

To my liberal friends who defend the sex-ed
equivalent of letting children play with firearms, I respond that violence and prejudice are as genetically hard-wired as
the reproductive urge, but we don’t encourage children to indulge those urges, do we?

<3 it.

My ideal politician would say something like:

“Why is it that we praise single mothers more than the upstanding, hard-working husbands and wives whose taxes support them? The policies of today’s so-called liberals makes it harder for a working man to support a wife and kids. As Allan Carlson of profam.org has shown in ‘The Social Conservative Case for the New Deal’, the oldtime liberals would have been appalled…”

Roxanne:

“Damn near all women have children” ??

Oh really?

A 2003 U.S. Census study found that 19% of American women ages 40-44 had no children.

That’s nearly one in five. If I got an 81 on a test at school, I doubt if my parents would have considered that I got “damn near all” the questions.

Please cite the direct, actual statistic to back up your claim that 40% of women have babies out of wedlock. If you can do that, fine & kudos. But until you do, I will have to call BS on your claim.

As I stated before, you can’t just fudge an assocation from the percentage of babies born out of wedlock to the percentage of women having these babies.

Suppositions, correlations and generalizations are no substitute for hard numbers.

There are about 1.5 billion moslems in this world. The moslem countries that have bizarre laws about gay people represent a small minority of them and in those countries, the people themselves are living in functional dictatorships. I’d bet huge odds that a smaller proportion moslems than christians hate gay people – especially among American conservatives. I am 100% certain that the number of moslems that think gay people should be killed is a tiny percentage. It is extremism to imply that all moslems do.

Those of you that think that parents of a fourteen year old pregnant girl don’t suck or that the child is a rationale player in her economic future, choosing a fabulous life on $500/month are idiots, spewing irrational talking points to further more uncaring cruelty.

That said, I made no claim that there are no women that figure that welfare will take care of them, merely that it’s extremism to claim that all of them are. I made no claim the you, Roxeanne, are not an independent woman, I said that the characterization of any mother that doesn’t have a man as a parasite is extremism and, worse, a manipulative way of casting aspersions on independent women in general. (And, it’s worth noting, this started with Shafly talking, not about unwed mothers, but all divorced women, in this way.)

When you “slut-slammers” talk about young unwed mothers in terms of “just keep your legs shut” you reveal a stupid cruelty that is unbearable but indicative of the fantasy life of conservatives. Children do not cooperate. They do dumb, counterproductive things all the time. The idea that society has the ability to force them not to screw is just plain dumb. People have tried everything from literal chastity belts, to shotgun marriages, to putting girls in prison, to immeasurable cruelties of all sorts. It never works. I love the idea that preventing sex education, ie, attempting to conceal the reality of sex from children, will make them more responsible. Pure fantasy.

But the most stupid thing I read here is the ongoing assertion about liberal motivation. I have been a politically active, thoughtful liberal for decades. I have protested, run campaigns, written articles, read books, engaged in every way. I have never, ever known a liberal that has an affirmative motivation to replace the father, ruin families, encourage dependency, or any of the other dumb things you people have said.

Never. To the extent that you base your viewpoints on that notion, you are 100% wrong.

Of course, you’ll call me a liar but that’s because the conservative mindset operates on a fantasy that, “if it makes sense to me, it must be true.” Somehow you think that, given enough cruelty and intolerance, the things you dislike will magically go away. Think badly of me and fellow liberals and maybe that will be true, too.

Or not.

Aberra,

On 31 July, at 12:06 am EDT, I wrote:

The idea that I’m simply wrong to say that 40% of women who have children are choosing to have them out of wedlock? The CDC again supplies us with answers:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/unmarry.htm
38.5% of births are to unmarried women. Aside from the vanishingly small percent of whom are widows, the idea that 40% of women who have children are choosing to have them out of wedlock is rather well-supported by data.

Now, what is unclear about this or different from your initial comment? What is so wrong about “40% of women who have children”?

If I – heaven forbid! – made a typo on a BLOG, it was obviously clarified in that point. If you continue to pick away at me, POST-CLARIFICATION, then you’re being the asshole here.

(By the way, over 80% of babies that are aborted are to women who are unmarried at the time. Those represent about a quarter of all pregnancies. So, pray tell, how am I wrong to say that 40% of women who have children have them out of wedlock? They just kill them before they get out of the womb.)

TQ: um, dumbass? If a woman is independent, then she’s not looking to the government for a welfare check, nor to her baby daddy or ex-husband for alimony nor child support, nor to society to help her make ends meet.

We call those women “Republicans”.

Oh, debunking my favourite liberal talking point! Liberal morons say that it’s impossible to control human sexuality (which is a bit of a projection, IMHO…).

Problematically, T.Q., if it’s impossible to change human sexual behaviour, then we would expect human sexual behaviour to remain constant through time and across cultures, as cultural norms would have no effect on it. What sucks for you is that, as conservative values have declined, the number of sexual partners that people have has increased, the age of first intercourse has decreased, and the number of people who have slept with no one but their spouses has radically increased.

Now, imagine me saying this: controlling male sexuality is impossible. No matter what tortures we design, some men will always rape women. Therefore, the modern view of rape as a wrong thing should be abolished, and, in the name of acknowledging basic human nature, rape should be legal and uncensored by society, since neither societal condemnation nor illegality can succeed in eliminating it.

That, in your world, would be the “compassionate” response to a systemic problem of trying to control human sexuality.

Go ahead and defend it, based on your most recent standards for social norms. Have fun!

@Roxeanne: “What sucks for you is that, as conservative values have declined… the number of people who have slept with no one but their spouses has radically increased.”

Wow, I didn’t see THAT coming.

You might think it’s the decline of conservative values but I think it’s the increase in commercial values. The constant emphasis on desire, self-gratification, and the sexualization of everything by corporations (those capitalists that you no-doubt think should be completely unregulated) has, in my view, a much, much stronger influence on the behavior of people than your values ever did. Or mine, for that matter.

I don’t agree that rape is sexual behavior so your point is, well, pointless. They are not comparable in any way.

Teenagers that want to screw are immature people responding to normal urges that are especially intense at that age. Rapists are vicious sickos. Rapists are a small minority that we can afford to jail. Horny teenagers are a huge population that we can’t afford to jail.

You know Roxeanne, you seem to have a fixation on me. I love the flurry of “dumbass” and “sucks for me”. I don’t really suffer for any of this. I am 100% happy to contribute to the support of kids that have trouble. I am enthusiastic about paying for sex education and free condoms in schools to prevent bad consequences. Nothing about this sucks for me.

It’s you that is in a state of dissonance. You’re the one that thinks that it is possible to eliminate unwed pregnancy. You’re the one who lives in a world where you look at a divorced woman and think, there’s another parasite that has chosen the dole instead of respecting her man.

But, as this little party continues, I feel I must remind you that the topic at hand is this: The characterization of divorcing women as welfare parasites is not “truth”. It is the very epitome of “extremism.”

Nobody seems to be able to refute that.

FYI Schlafly thinks that it’s okay for husbands to rape their wives.

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2008/05/phylis-schlafly.html

“I think that when you get married you have consented to sex. That’s what marriage is all about, I don’t know if maybe these girls missed sex ed. That doesn’t mean the husband can beat you up, we have plenty of laws against assault and battery. If there is any violence or mistreatment that can be dealt with by criminal prosecution, by divorce or in various ways. When it gets down to calling it rape though, it isn’t rape, it’s a he said-she said where it’s just too easy to lie about it.”

No where in the Schlafly quotes, included in
#74 AJB comments, does Phyllis Schlafly think that it’s OK for husbands to rape their wives.

But Whoopie Goldberg still believes it isn’t
‘rape-rape’ for Roman Polanski to drug, rape/sodomize a 13 year old.

The answer is obvious. Forced abortions for unmarried pregnant women is the answer. That should please Democrats and Republicans.

Hi Stacy.

as conservative values have declined, the number of sexual partners that people have has increased, the age of first intercourse has decreased, and the number of people who have slept with no one but their spouses has radically increased.

I guess that would explain the radical decline in per capita rape statistics in America over the last 40 years.

Or maybe Internet pornography.

Um. Have we really decided that the winning strategy this fall and in 2012 is to be known as the party of sexism?

‘Cause here’s my thing: I would prefer that the independent voters who went for Obama (many of whom were single, and many of whom were female) actually start voting Republican.

So I fear that going out of our way to insult these people is tantamount to leading with the chin.

Some of the above arguments remind me of one I got into with a ‘nuanced’ liberal about a particular negative social phenomenon with a racial angle. She took the approach as seen in comments above of finding one nitpick as somehow disproving the larger argument (as if something that is 90% true is not proof of a trend because of 10% that don’t fit.)

These ‘nuanced’ thinker who accuse *us* of simplistic black and white thinking can’t seem to think statistically, understanding distributions or trends.

In my case my dissenter was coming up with all sorts of minor cases that were exceptions to a general social comment I’d made based on many years of first hand observation at a nearby WalMart.

I was the neanderthal ignorantly shooting from the hip. Turned out she made some uppity refernce to what she sees in “DuPage county”, and I googled. She’s from “one of the wealthiest counties in the nation” (Naperville & other rich suburbs of CHicago), which happens to be just 3% black. I’m in a decent sized city which is 33% black (in my county). I cited those stats and ripped her a new one — *she* was the provincial one who didn’t know what the hell she was talking about beyond her liberal CW spoonfed by NPR and the NYT.