It’s Time for Shame Again.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention released its 2007 report on birth data for the United States and the results are very ugly. Almsot 40 percent of all children born in this country are born out of wedlock. That number is a mind-boggling 71% for black children, 65% for American Indians/Alaska Natives, 51% for Hispanics, 28% for whites, and almost 17% for Asians/Pacific Islanders. Every one of those is an increase over the last survey.
I don’t know how we can ever hope to sustain our civilization when we force that many of our children to start their lives in the hole. Kiki Bradley puts much of the blame on the War on Poverty cash assistance programs that put a beneficial cash value on having bastard children and penalized poor mothers for marrying or getting jobs. I think she’s right that our government has only made the situation worse, but we share a heaping helping of the blame, too. We decided, somewhere along the line, that we would holster our most powerful weapon: shame. We no longer shame “baby mammas”. In fact, we celebrate them as if they were helplessly dropped into their situation and did not actually make the conscious and usually incredibly foolish decision to have sex.
I am not a screaming moralist. Anyone who knows me well would never describe me at Puritanical. I am not saying we should slap chastity belts on 12 year-old girls and banish pregnant single mothers to outer darkness forever and ever. What I am saying is that we have gone way overboard in normalizing single motherhood as just another life choice. We go out of our way to treat single mothers as heroes even though they put themselves and their children in a worse situation in life and have guaranteed that they will require some level of taxpayer assistance at some point in their lives. That’s backwards.
We can’t keep this up. We need to bring back social opprobrium. It is the best, and least damaging, weapon we have. If we don’t start using it again soon, we’re going to find ourselves on the wrong end of a societal collapse and it will be entirely our fault.
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Category: The Social Issues
Let me ask you, Jimmie, how many times did you mention unwed fathers in this post? How many times did you even think about them?
I realize the mothers are a handy target, especially since they are the ones most often receiving assistance but consider this. A welfare mother can't realistically produce more than one child each year. An irresponsible father, however, can produce many children per year. Why are those men conveniently removed from the public spotlight? Why is there no term that can be applied to males that corresponds to Welfare Queen?
I agree that a certain amount of opprobrium is warranted in the case of out of wedlock pregnancies, but as long as we're spreading the blame around, we need to spread the shame around as well. Unfortunately, I think that's unlikely to happen because, as with Welfare Queen, there are no terms that correspond to slut, whore and skank.
There were a couple reason I didn't mention them in this post though I did think about them.
First, no matter how men may believe otherwise, all the sexual control rests with woman. If a woman refuses to have sex then, barring rape, it's not going to happen. Men can be alley cats all they want but if they find no obliging women, then they won't be getting any. When we used shame more, there were such women around and we had names for them. Girls didn't want to be like them. Nowdays we have different names for them (celebrity, for one) and girls very much want to be like them.
Second, men are removed from the public spotlight because, societally and legally, a man is largely insignificant to the entire child creation process. They have been reduced to sperm donors and child support payments. A father has no right to the decision over his child's life before it is born nor does he have a significant say into whether the child is given up for adoption. Fathers are still as a serious disadvantage in custody hearings (even if, in some cases, the child isn't even theirs). How can you blame a man for even trying to "make things right" when once he involves himself in the situation, he's seen as little else but a funding mechanism for 18 years?
Now we can, and should, change that. But shame seems to be best applied to the female side of the equation because that's where all the control is. Let's shame young men into being gentlemen, by all means. But let's also not kid ourselves into believing that life is more fair than it really is.
I'd lay odds that Jimmie's thinking was extended from the Kiki Bradley article, within which unwed fathers don't appear–because the welfare programs don't reward unwed fathers. As a society, it's not so easy to shame unwed fathers, though, because their status isn't obvious. In other words, they haven't been 'conveniently removed from the public spotlight,' but they can hide from the spotlight pretty easily. Unless it's a single father raising his children–but in that case, we probably want to congratulate him for at least shouldering his responsibilities….
There was that consideration as well. Mostly, though, I was looking at where we could apply what little societal pressure we could bring to bear quickly to most effective use. In the end, if girls say "no", then guys can't do a whole lot.
But I don't think men are off the hook here. The work they have to do is a lot more subtle, as you point out.
My son married a woman with an illegitimate child. He is trying to adopt her child. The biological father – who has visited the child occasionally, and has sent birthday gifts, but otherwise has been absent, and has not paid child support in any amount – objected. They went to court to "terminate" the biological father's rights, which must be done in order for her to be adopted.
The case went to trial, and my son lost his case. In Texas, it's considered a very serious matter to terminate a father's rights, and will normally only be done in cases where there is physical or sexual abuse of the child by the father. Neglect is not considered a good reason, nor is the need for the child to have the father actually living in the same home. So, when things get tough – which they do with a teenager – my son has to cope with the "you can't tell me what to do…you're not my father" thing in addition to all the usual problems that arise. (they did get a judgment of some $68,000 of back child support against the biological father, so things may still get interesting*)
So…society does need to deal with irresponsible fathers. They never should have taken away the shotgun…!
*this man is apparently in line to get a job as an assistant to a lawmaker in his state – which is _not_ Texas. He also lied and cheated in his statements in the court, so this development really frosts me, though it's really sort of irrelevant. It does speak to the standards of our lawmakers, though.
"Let me ask you, Jimmie, how many times did you mention unwed fathers in this post?"
Women have covered that situation ad nauseum. It's time men speak on that horror that women have become. Women deflecting have been the problem. It should e noted that they rarely if ever have been so egalitarian in speaking about women and girls in less sympathetic terms as they have dished tons of misandry over the past 4 decades. Besides, unwed fathers don't qualify for the vast support network that these harpies have selfishly established for THEIR one-parent families.
"I realize the mothers are a handy target, especially since they are the ones most often receiving assistance"
As well as often receiving the vast majority of custody arrangements. Handy indeed.
"A welfare mother can’t realistically produce more than one child each year. An irresponsible father, however, can produce many children per year. "
"So…society does need to deal with irresponsible fathers. They never should have taken away the shotgun…!"
Yet they welfare and other mothers often do without any legal penalties on the act and on the publics dime. As opposed to men and fathers who can and often receive harsh punishment by way of prison/ asset relocation/ revocation of drivers license and even passports. Thus it's women again who are unshackled and shameless, regrettably so. There are legal restraints on men not women thus they should be the focused on meore intently now than ever before.
"Why are those men conveniently removed from the public spotlight? "
Women have kept these men exclusively in the spotlight while conveniently never discussing there fellow women/mothers unless it's in the most sympathetic terms. Thus your response itsonlywords. Convenient amnesia.
"Why is there no term that can be applied to males that corresponds to Welfare Queen?"
The term is Deadbeat Dads. It's been well propagated by women in mainstream culture though YOU plead cluelessness. Empty plea.
"but as long as we’re spreading the blame around, we need to spread the shame around as well"
Too late. An enormous amount of study and dialogue should be addressed now at the bulging single mom culture simply because it's been unexplored. Women such as Itsonlywords demonstrate the need for analysis. Where's theres smoke, there's fire…and often hypocrisy.
"but as long as we’re spreading the blame around, we need to spread the shame around as well.
Womens/mothers turn to feel the heat of observation. I agree. Men, again, have been well-covered. Single-mothers?, well-protected and disgustingly so.
"Unfortunately, I think that’s unlikely to happen because, as with Welfare Queen, there are no terms that correspond to slut, whore and skank."
Deadbeat Dads. As if you didn't know.
Scott, I’m Jimmie’s new guest blogger, Paula, also know at other points around the net as itsonlywords.
The topic of Jimmie’s original post was out-of-wedlock births so it probably would have been a good idea to read and respond to my comment in that context. Arguments about father’s rights or the poor treatment fathers often receive from the courts or society, however valid, are largely irrelevant. Your comment is a good illustration of why it’s foolish to assume you know someone’s position on a variety of topics after reading a few paragraphs on a loosely-related subject.
Keeping that in mind, here is my original point in a nutshell: I think it would very likely reduce the rate of out-of-wedlock births if there were, indeed, some amount of stigma attached to unwed pregnancies. I would just like to see that particular shame evenly distributed. I think, however, that’s unlikely to happen.
Why? As Jimmie pointed out in his comment, there are names for promiscuous women. There are no derogatory names for promiscuous men. No matter how many definitions you try to attach to “deadbeat dad,” it is not the equivalent of slut, whore or skank. The English language doesn’t have any male-specific equivalent terms because the stigma of sexual promiscuity has never been equally distributed between males and females.
Going back to Jimmie’s comment again, to say that women have “all the control” in sexual situations is overstating it. If I were a guy and I were serious about not wanting to father unwed children, I’d use condoms. Whether my partners claimed to be on birth control or not. But please be real; most of these guys don’t give a flying fig how many out-of-wedlock children they father.
So let me sum this up for you: a man bears 50% of the responsibility for each out-of-wedlock birth, period. Thus, to my way of thinking, if there’s shame to be had, please, spread it around.
It takes two. It's a complete cop-out for the woman alone to be shamed. Men that fail to take responsibility for the children they help create are nearly as guilty as the woman that seeks an abortion; both are putting their own convenience above a helpless person's needs.
Bill & Paula, Never at any time in history – long before the rise of the Welfare Queen – have men been regularly shamed for knocking a girl up. If he's out of the spotlight now, he was in military school then, or away traveling across Europe, or sent away to live with relatives.
I agree with Paula however that nowadays, they're free to keep catting around in a way that they weren't in the past.
RG
The underlying issue here is the lack of personal responsibility by both men and women. Without that, shame is impossible. Without negative consequences, there is no sense of responsibility. Thus, blame can be assessed at multiple levels.
At the individual level, although I tend to agree with Jimmie's point about women having the power when it comes to sex, both parties share the blame. Neither suffers any (or much) negative consequence for their actions (and may actually benefit), so they don't feel responsible. Why abstain or use contraception if the resulting pregnancy/child is considered no big deal?
This is where societal blame comes into play. Everyone who's ever served on a committee knows that when the committee is responsible for something, no one is responsible. So it is in the age of "it takes a village." Thomas Sowell has said that social policy over the past 50 years has consisted to a large degree of replacing what worked with what sounded good. Not shaming, not blaming, boosting self-esteem as a goal in and of itself: sounds good, but doesn't come close to the benefits of what worked before.
Bottom line is that the individual blame is shared by the parents; society is to blame for creating the culture of non-responsibility.