Jeb Bush: "Unwed mothers should be publicly shamed."

[Fuzzy Bear]

Jeb's not advocating implementing the Scarlet Letter treatment for single mothers.  But he's not wrong in pointing out that the stigma of single motherhood kept people from engaging in sex outside of marriage due to the consequences.  And the decision to have a child out of wedlock is, most of the time, a decision that is sentencing a child to a life of poverty.  Not always, but frequently.  And that's assuming that not having a father in the household is a good thing.  Yes, it's a good thing to get a father out of a house who's a violent bum who uses drugs, but it also begs the question of why a woman would not flee such a male, much less have a child with such a male.  Then, too, there's the issue of control of children.  We hear lots of stories about lion-hearted single moms raising their children alone, keeping them out of trouble, etc., and they are admirable people.  But we are dishonest with ourselves in not acknowledging that far more single parents have serious problems controlling their adolescent children, and that many single mothers are unable to control their adolescent children for one reason or another.

The proliferation of single parent families, many of which are headed by women who never intended to have a male partner in the home, is a destabilizing influence on our society.  Liberal democracy can only be built on a foundation of strong, viable families.  It cannot be built on a foundation of single-parent families unable to support themselves.  I'm not a Jeb partisan, but a safety net that encourages fatherlessness and a society that does not strongly discourage its young people from engaging in sex outside of marriage or produce children outside the concept of the nuclear family is a society whose foundation is built on a developing sinkhole.

[Fuzzy Bear]

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/04/dan-quayle-was-right/307015/

There are ALTERNATIVES to the traditional nuclear family, but there is no SUBSTITUTE for the traditional nuclear family  The traditional nuclear family produces IN THE AGGREGATE better outcomes in all key areas of development than do other family arrangements.  There are certainly situations in which it is best for a parent to leave the other parent and make a go of it as a single parent, but that's not the RULE.

It is not bigoted to assert that the traditional nuclear family produces better outcomes in the aggregate than other forms of societal organization.  It is not a mere "wedge issue" for a politician to advocate public policy that encourages formation and maintenance of the traditional nuclear biological family.  I say this as a man who married his spouse at age 37 and adopted her children, and who, with the same spouse, adopted a grandchild (out of need) at ages 53 and 55.  (My spouse, for years, was a single parent not by choice; she was deserted by a husband.)   I'm not judging anyone's personal situation, but it's irresponsible to create public policy on families that treat each type of family organization as the equal of the other when the traditional family produces better outcomes to the point where it's amazing that the issue of outcomes is even debated.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Unwed motherhood is usually a mistake. But it happens. Should we make it more hurtful to the mother and children? The shame ends up hurting the child, too, which is even more unjust. 

Second chances are essential to a decent social order. Can we really afford to cast people off for an irreversible but not criminal mistake? 

I certainly agree with the sentiment above, and I don't want to kick people when they're down to where they can't get back up.  I also realize that there are some single parent situations that, in and of itself, is better than the mother staying with an abusive/addicted/criminal/otherwise seriously dysfunctional father.  I realize that rape victims did not ask for their situation and deserve, IMO, special treatment when they bring a child into the world (including all the mental health counseling they will ever need to overcome their trauma).  Indeed, I have the highest regard for women who, having gone through the horrible trauma of sexual assault, choose to bring the resultant child into the world.  These women deserve special honor for what they have done in acknowledging the humanity of their unborn child, and deserve TANGIBLE support in meeting both her needs and the needs of her child.  (Barney Frank was very correct when he called out pro-lifers for acting as if life begins at conception and ends at birth.)

But the idea that it makes no difference, in terms of AGGREGATE outcomes, as to whether or not children are reared in a traditional nuclear family, a stepfamily, a single-parent situation, or something else, is just plain denial.  The traditional nuclear family, IN THE AGGREGATE, produces better outcomes for kids in terms of a wide variety of measures of happiness and functionality; this was asserted in a 1993 ATLANTIC MONTHLY article entitled "Dan Quayle Was Right" by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, and it has never been refuted credibly, nor have the trends documented in that article been reversed.  Child outcomes can be measured and documented by longitudinal studies.  If anyone can document that divorced families, stepfamilies, single parent situations, or any other alternative family organization produces IN THE AGGREGATE better outcomes for children than the traditional two-parent nuclear family, I'm willing to listen.

And, no, I'm not for shaming and stigmatization, because kids pay the price for that more than adults do.  But not stigmatizing a single mother doesn't mean not submitting to scrutiny the resulting consequences of a woman choosing to bear children not just outside of marriage, but without the child's father in the home functioning as a father.  And I don't think it's judgmental or stigmatizing to examine our present safety-net system to determine if it's present way of functioning creates (however subconsciously) incentives for women to have children out of wedlock, with no real plans for a father in the child's life. 

[Fuzzy Bear]

Unwed motherhood is usually a mistake. But it happens. Should we make it more hurtful to the mother and children? The shame ends up hurting the child, too, which is even more unjust. 

Second chances are essential to a decent social order. Can we really afford to cast people off for an irreversible but not criminal mistake? 

I certainly agree with the sentiment above, and I don't want to kick people when they're down to where they can't get back up.  I also realize that there are some single parent situations that, in and of itself, is better than the mother staying with an abusive/addicted/criminal/otherwise seriously dysfunctional father.  I realize that rape victims did not ask for their situation and deserve, IMO, special treatment when they bring a child into the world (including all the mental health counseling they will ever need to overcome their trauma).  Indeed, I have the highest regard for women who, having gone through the horrible trauma of sexual assault, choose to bring the resultant child into the world.  These women deserve special honor for what they have done in acknowledging the humanity of their unborn child, and deserve TANGIBLE support in meeting both her needs and the needs of her child.  (Barney Frank was very correct when he called out pro-lifers for acting as if life begins at conception and ends at birth.)

But the idea that it makes no difference, in terms of AGGREGATE outcomes, as to whether or not children are reared in a traditional nuclear family, a stepfamily, a single-parent situation, or something else, is just plain denial.  The traditional nuclear family, IN THE AGGREGATE, produces better outcomes for kids in terms of a wide variety of measures of happiness and functionality; this was asserted in a 1993 ATLANTIC MONTHLY article entitled "Dan Quayle Was Right" by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, and it has never been refuted credibly, nor have the trends documented in that article been reversed.  Child outcomes can be measured and documented by longitudinal studies.  If anyone can document that divorced families, stepfamilies, single parent situations, or any other alternative family organization produces IN THE AGGREGATE better outcomes for children than the traditional two-parent nuclear family, I'm willing to listen.

I would not come up with any statement to the contrary of what you say. Of course girls and women are wise to keep their clothing intact in the presence of men until they have a wedding ring on a finger. The temptation always remains, and where someone's weak will and suspect reasoning meets an overpowering desire, there will be reckless sex that can lead to a family that consists solely of a woman and a child. Scriptwriters can easily create interesting female characters who have great lives into which they can introduce a child who has excellent support. Most unwed mothers have dreadful lives, and their children pay for that.

I can defend same-sex couples far more than I can defend behaviors that lead to single mothers with no means of support, other than ill-paid toil that ensures poverty,  for children that result from premarital sex. Nobody chooses to be a homosexual; a loving gay or lesbian couple with some overall competence can be good parents.   

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The woman would endure the stigmatization because the 'men' or 'boys' are harder to find.

The burden single fathers and divorced fathers bear is a different one; it is the burden of the child support system, which in enforced through interstate compact.  The best thing I can say about the system of Interstate Compacts on child support is that it's probably the "least worst way" to set up a system of enforceable child support.  The worst thing I can say is that it has the unintended consequences of forcing a number of fathers "off the grid"

An anecdote:  I once rented a mobile home I owned to a guy who was a father who had 2 kids by an angry (for cause) estranged wife and a child support order from the girlfriend he cheated on (and was still involved with, though not living with).  He rented the mobile home because it had 2 bedrooms to where he could have all his kids come and visit (they were all young girls.  He worked full time as a municipal employee during the week.  To make his child support payment, he took an extra job delivering pizza, mon-fri.  So, in effect, this guy, to be able to afford what he had, worked 5 days a week from 8 am to around 11 pm to cover his court-ordered payments.

What happened next is that his estranged wife went back to court seeking additional child support, based on his total income from his part time job.  And she won.  At that point, he could no longer afford rent, and had to move back with his mother.  The Judge may have even been sympathetic with his plight, but child support is determined by mandatory, inflexible formulas, so the additional support was ordered.

Many guys bypass this.  They work off the books, which means they pay no taxes, but they also have no workers comp if they fall off a roof and break their backs on the "job". 

[Fuzzy Bear]

Let's look at what was actually written by Bush:

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The overwhelming majority of the comments in this thread (and the title too, of course) suggest that Bush is placing sole blame for out of wedlock births on women.

This is false.

I don't even see that Bush is placing most of the blame on women. He used the words shame and women together in a sentence and that seems enough to get out the tar and feathers.

But I do see Bush talking about men walking away from the women they impregnated and then using the word shame. And this is indeed a shame. Women are often left to raise children on their own and this is not only shameful, it is tragic.

I found out how much work raising a child was with two people, and I cannot imagine one person having to do it alone. And let's face it, how many one parent households are there where that one parent is the father? Not many.

Bush is right, this is something that needs to be shamed and claiming that he was shaming women only, or even mostly, is false.

There was certainly a stigma, once upon a time, when a woman who was unmarried and pregnant was, indeed, scorned.  I am old enough to remember "shotgun weddings" and homes (often sponsored by churches) where unwed mothers went away to give birth to their children prior to giving them up for adoption.  There's no doubt that the woman bore the brunt of the social stigma, and the trauma of giving away for adoption a child who was not hers to keep solely because of "What would people think?"

But the flipside of this is that the stigma of unwed motherhood was powerful enough to provide for a degree of responsibility in sexual choices made by a female.  It ensured a greater probability that a child born would be born into a two-parent household.  These were not always perfect circumstances, but it was also an era where divorce was looked upon as a failure on the part of parents to work things out for the sake of their children.

Was that entirely wrong?  No, absolutely not.  I get it that many women back in the day stayed married despite abusive situations, but I also note that much divorce and separation today are for reasons that involve issues of boredom, personal incompatibility, financial frustration, and much of this does NOT, IMO, justify separation or divorce when there are children involved.

One of the points of Barbara Dafoe Whitehead's 1993 article on single parenting and family breakup entitled "Dan Quayle Was Right" was that quite often in the lives of families, what contributes to an adult's happiness detracts from a child's happiness, and what is in the interest of adults is, quite often, not in the interest of children.  What's often best for Mom or Dad is often not best for their child(ren).  Whitehead correctly points out that the paradigm surrounding families has shifted, and the focus has moved from sacrifice on behalf of children to adult self-fulfillment.

As the article was written in 1993, I would not be surprised to learn that Jeb Bush read that article.  Some of his statements reflect much of what is in that article, though in a bit of a mangled way.  He wasn't wrong.  Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wasn't wrong.  The huge decline in the traditional family is something that, in the aggregate, is NOT good for America and is NOT good for America's children.  Perhaps the suggestion that folks have been selfish in the way they have conducted their family lives and made family choices is something that has pricked a few consciences.