The basic family values endorsed by conservatives begin with waiting until marriage to have children. Today...giving birth marks the different between classes, between the well off and the poor.
Care to see a Liberal view of the situation?
1. "....The New York Times ran a story under the provocative headline, For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside of Marriage. The article suggested childbearing outside of marriage was the new normal
[ According to the U.S. Census, the poverty rate for single parents with children in the United States in 2009 was 37.1 percent. The rate for married couples with children was 6.8 percent. Being raised in a married family reduced a childs probability of living in poverty by about 82 percent. ]American FactFinder - Results *
2. .... but sociologist Kathryn Edin ... professor of public policy and management at Harvard Kennedy School and a prominent scholar of the American family.... points out that 94 percent of births to college-educated women today occur within marriage (a rate virtually unchanged from a generation ago), whereas the real change has taken place at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
3. In 1960 it didnt matter whether you were rich or poor, college-educated or a high-school dropoutalmost all American women waited until they were married to have kids. Now 57 percent of women with high-school degrees or less education are unmarried when they bear their first child.
[ June of 1962 Port Huron was an early convention of SDS, a small group of alienated, left-wing college students, 59 from 11 campuses. Its offshoot and legitimate heir, the Weathermen, organized the Days of Rage riots in Chicago. Seems a lot of the 'rage' was against values.]
4. ... conservative political scientist Charles Murray 65 advances in his recent book 'Coming Apart' that poor Americans value marriage less than the middle class does.
[Seems obvious, no?]
5. Edin argues that the poor place tremendous value on marriagebut often see it as unobtainable. The poor all say they want marriages like middle-class people have, marriages that will last, Edin says. Middle-class people are searching longer for their partners, theyre marrying people more like themselves, and as a result marriages have gotten happier and more stable.
[Really? Lower economic classes place tremendous value on marriage? Really?]
6. [Edin] cites a range of obstacles that prevent the poor from realizing their marital aspirations, including the low quality of many of their existing relationships; norms they hold about the standard of living necessary to support a marriage; the challenges of integrating kids from past relationships into new ones; and an aversion to divorce.
[Does this seem to be a series of excuses? What standard of living is necessary to marry?]
7. But ... they continue to see bearing and raising children as the most meaningful activity in their lives. ... given their bleak economic prospects and minimal hope of upward mobility, being a parent is one of the few positive identities available to them. Middle-class women have substantial economic incentives to delay childbearing (a woman who gives birth right after college earns half as much in her lifetime as the classmate who waits until her mid thirties), but those incentives dont exist for poor women.
[But their 'bleak economic prospects begin with having children out of wedlock. And those 'middle-class women....somehow they have incentives??]
8. Early childbearing is highly selective of girls whose characteristicsfamily background, cognitive ability, school performance, mental-health status, and so onhave already diminished their life chances so much that an early birth does little to reduce them further.
[So, what the heck, continue down the path of poverty...no responsibility, no recriminations....]
9. .... 15-year-old André, who rejoiced to learn his ex-girlfriend was pregnant.... He was embracing life and rejecting death, she explains. He could have been out there dealing drugs but instead hes diapering his baby and learning how to twist her hair.
[Heart-warming tale....I wonder if the child will see it that way.]
10. The only way disadvantaged Americans will delay childbearing, she argues, is if they see other, equally positive, paths available. Theres either guns or babies, and if people have to make that choice, theyre going to choose babies, she says. As long as we sustain such high rates of inequality, its going to be really hard to get youth at the bottom to buy into a system thats unavailable to them. "
[Liberalism's answer: No darn way out in America: it's either 'guns or babies.']
Kathryn Edin explains the increase in births out of wedlock | Harvard Magazine Jul-Aug 2012
Gee...I don't know....how about if Liberal elites stopped finding excuses for why bad choices are their 'only' choices.
Sound like a plan?
" I tell you what affirmative action is, soft bigotry, low expectations. Affirmative action is a racist insult disguised as social justice by the Democrats." The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations - The Rush Limbaugh Show
Care to see a Liberal view of the situation?
1. "....The New York Times ran a story under the provocative headline, For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside of Marriage. The article suggested childbearing outside of marriage was the new normal
[ According to the U.S. Census, the poverty rate for single parents with children in the United States in 2009 was 37.1 percent. The rate for married couples with children was 6.8 percent. Being raised in a married family reduced a childs probability of living in poverty by about 82 percent. ]American FactFinder - Results *
2. .... but sociologist Kathryn Edin ... professor of public policy and management at Harvard Kennedy School and a prominent scholar of the American family.... points out that 94 percent of births to college-educated women today occur within marriage (a rate virtually unchanged from a generation ago), whereas the real change has taken place at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
3. In 1960 it didnt matter whether you were rich or poor, college-educated or a high-school dropoutalmost all American women waited until they were married to have kids. Now 57 percent of women with high-school degrees or less education are unmarried when they bear their first child.
[ June of 1962 Port Huron was an early convention of SDS, a small group of alienated, left-wing college students, 59 from 11 campuses. Its offshoot and legitimate heir, the Weathermen, organized the Days of Rage riots in Chicago. Seems a lot of the 'rage' was against values.]
4. ... conservative political scientist Charles Murray 65 advances in his recent book 'Coming Apart' that poor Americans value marriage less than the middle class does.
[Seems obvious, no?]
5. Edin argues that the poor place tremendous value on marriagebut often see it as unobtainable. The poor all say they want marriages like middle-class people have, marriages that will last, Edin says. Middle-class people are searching longer for their partners, theyre marrying people more like themselves, and as a result marriages have gotten happier and more stable.
[Really? Lower economic classes place tremendous value on marriage? Really?]
6. [Edin] cites a range of obstacles that prevent the poor from realizing their marital aspirations, including the low quality of many of their existing relationships; norms they hold about the standard of living necessary to support a marriage; the challenges of integrating kids from past relationships into new ones; and an aversion to divorce.
[Does this seem to be a series of excuses? What standard of living is necessary to marry?]
7. But ... they continue to see bearing and raising children as the most meaningful activity in their lives. ... given their bleak economic prospects and minimal hope of upward mobility, being a parent is one of the few positive identities available to them. Middle-class women have substantial economic incentives to delay childbearing (a woman who gives birth right after college earns half as much in her lifetime as the classmate who waits until her mid thirties), but those incentives dont exist for poor women.
[But their 'bleak economic prospects begin with having children out of wedlock. And those 'middle-class women....somehow they have incentives??]
8. Early childbearing is highly selective of girls whose characteristicsfamily background, cognitive ability, school performance, mental-health status, and so onhave already diminished their life chances so much that an early birth does little to reduce them further.
[So, what the heck, continue down the path of poverty...no responsibility, no recriminations....]
9. .... 15-year-old André, who rejoiced to learn his ex-girlfriend was pregnant.... He was embracing life and rejecting death, she explains. He could have been out there dealing drugs but instead hes diapering his baby and learning how to twist her hair.
[Heart-warming tale....I wonder if the child will see it that way.]
10. The only way disadvantaged Americans will delay childbearing, she argues, is if they see other, equally positive, paths available. Theres either guns or babies, and if people have to make that choice, theyre going to choose babies, she says. As long as we sustain such high rates of inequality, its going to be really hard to get youth at the bottom to buy into a system thats unavailable to them. "
[Liberalism's answer: No darn way out in America: it's either 'guns or babies.']
Kathryn Edin explains the increase in births out of wedlock | Harvard Magazine Jul-Aug 2012
Gee...I don't know....how about if Liberal elites stopped finding excuses for why bad choices are their 'only' choices.
Sound like a plan?
" I tell you what affirmative action is, soft bigotry, low expectations. Affirmative action is a racist insult disguised as social justice by the Democrats." The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations - The Rush Limbaugh Show
