This of course is the end result and the goal of feminist thinking and the fault of the girls involved; who more often then not refuse to marry the father because if she did the welfare benefits would stop.

The promotion of single motherhood was intended to restructure the family, to 'break the cycle' of Patriarchal socialization by disrupting it at the root. Fatherless families would allow a flowering of the Matriarchy. The children of single mothers would go forth with a new consciousness and change the world.

Well that was the intention at least.

The two girls I know that made the decision to become single parents came from two-parent homes. There parents weren't very involved parents and these girls had babies to have someone to love and for the attention it garnered. The shame of course is for the kids they had. The fantasy these girls had didn't match the reality and now they dump their kids off on whoever will take them and yes, often it is the very same parents that neglected them.

While its frustrating to see what the state offers as far as benefits go, to deny those benefits only leads to starving, abused, and neglected kids. I wish I knew how to reach these young girls before they have kids just as I wish I knew how to reach these boys who buy into the fantasy right up until they walk out. The father of both of the kids I know took off shortly after birth. There are a lot of excuse as to why they don't come around or pay support but really the bottom line is that they don't come around or pay support. I guess you could say the love is gone.

So what's the answer? Stigma? Denial of services? Education? I'm became a single mother after leaving an abusive marriage and I know the hardships a kid faces when they don't have two loving and supportive parents. Its very hard. My heart breaks looking at these kids having kids and for the kids they have. Its such a bad cycle. But how do you break it?

@captain dapoet: "who more often then not refuse to marry the father because if she did the welfare benefits would stop."
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We've all heard the phrase "why marry the cow when you can get the milk for free?"

There is a flip side: why take on the responsibilities of being a wife if the state will guarantee you the financial benefits of a husband?

When single parenthood and divorce become cash cows for women, why would anyone be surprised women don't bother with a relationship with the father or divorce their husbands so often?

I think people underestimate the damage state meddling has done to the family.

So what's the answer? Stigma? Denial of services? Education?

The children can be made wards of the state and placed in orphanages. That's how this used to be dealt with. The practice provided the necessary disincentives while giving the children the proper care and a shot at making something of themselves.

It's immoral to sacrifice millions of children to satisfy the narcissistic fantasies of adolescent girls.

I caught that article a few weeks ago, and it was simply amazing. My sister is a teacher at an inner-city high school in AL, and it matched up completely with what she's told me about it.

I agree with Kristen, though, I'm simply not sure what the answer is. A cultural shift needs to happen, but I don't know how to make it so. I guess removing the services (in some controled way) would help, ultimately, but it would be a hard road. From what my sister's told me, I expect that there would be a number of parents who would think nothing of letting their children starve if the state weren't buying the food. Less welfare and more CPS? (Not that CPS doesn't come with its own problems.) I just don't know.

If I could wave a magic wand and change people's thinking, I'd change the culture so that the first, presumed choice for a woman who found herself pregnant out of wedlock was adoption. But for some reason, it's resisted, despite the enormous number of couples who would love to provide for the child.

@Lyssa: "presumed choice for a woman who found herself pregnant out of wedlock was adoption. But for some reason, it's resisted, despite the enormous number of couples who would love to provide for the child."
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My twin children are adopted, it's a wonderful thing.

The birth mother is visiting them next weekend... not particularly important, but adoption doesn't have to be "the end" for biological mothers.

One thing that is so simple, yet so hard for people to grasp, is that incentives begets outcomes. Pay people not to work, and more people don't work. Pay people to have children, and more people have children. Pay women to divorce their husbands, and more women tear their families apart.

It was famously written a couple hundred years ago, free societies collapse when growing segments the population are able to vote themselves money. The result is fiscal collapse followed by socialism. It may be too late to stop it, sadly.

Ya trust - 100 years ago everything was just a fucking utopia. There were no out of wedlock births, there was no unemployment, no divorce, no corruption, no stupid laws to protect the public. I wish I was a woman living a few hundred years ago. Life would have been so much better for me!!

It seems its all to easy to blame feminism for single motherhood. I went to an urban school with plenty of teenaged mothers, and even have some in my family. From what I've seen it has nothing to do with feminism and everything to do with being naive and/or selfish.

Like other posters mentioned, a lot of these girls want to feel loved and think having a baby is good way to do that. Either, by pressuring the fathers to stay with them, or having a little thing that loves you back because it depends on you. None of the fathers who left were chased off by the the girls. In fact it was always the opposite in that the girls thought having a baby would magically make their boyfriend want to marry them. The fathers seemed to realize what the teenaged girls didn't; that raising a baby is a lot of work/responsibility, and costs a lot of money. These girls live in a fantasy land where the child is like a toy or pet and they think it's going to be easy.

@Kay, LL

Gender Feminism (so-called Third Wave) is what led to this sense of entitlement in women. Even 40 years ago there was a stigma associated with single motherhood and male abandonment. There was a "solution" if you can call it one too: the shotgun wedding.

Modern feminism has taught girls that men are nothing more than penises with wallets, and can be discarded in favor of the state. Boys have received this message loud and clear - and have no incentive to try to be responsible with their dicks.

So between the state telling boys they don't need to be responsible, and telling girls that they don't need a man to care for them and their offspring, we get women bearing the children of multiple boys and living off the productivity of others while their "baby-daddies" go off making more children and never being held to account for it.

So yes, feminism bears responsibility for the epidemic of intentional unwed motherhood. Progressivism bears the rest, and since the progressive movement is what birthed modern feminism...

Apparently studies show that:

a) education reduces birth rate
b) father at home increases age of pregnancy of daughters (worded terribly, but I'm still waking up.)

I'm not sure that giving the babies up to adoption is not an incentive in its own right....

And I don't think you should stop the health services that go to help the babies or even the pregnant mom or new mom.

But you do stop the disincentives to break up the father from the family, and that includes anything from welfare policies, to drug war prohibitions.

I could have sworn that the goal of feminism was to empower women. Yes, there are extremes when it comes to feminists just as there are extremes with any cause, but does anybody really believe that the goal of feminism was for a majority of underage minority girls to become pregnant and raise babies on welfare? I certainly don't want to go back to a time where wives were considered the property of their husbands and I'm really confused as to how evolving from that makes the rampant teenage pregnancies the fault of feminism. Reading some of the earlier comments I wonder if feminists are to blame for global warming as well.

You could have sword Kristen?

Go ahead and look up the statements of feminist leaders of organizations such as NOW, or articles in Ms. Magazine.

Arguing that those are not representative of the goals of feminism is like arguing that George Washington is not representative of the goals of the Revolutionary War.

@kay: "Ya trust - 100 years ago everything was just a fucking utopia. There were no out of wedlock births, there was no unemployment, no divorce, no corruption, no stupid laws to protect the public. I wish I was a woman living a few hundred years ago. Life would have been so much better for me!! "
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I never said anything was a "fucking utopia." Nor did I say everything was always perfect for women.

Unbelievable. Can anything be said about misandry and feminism without some feminist with a chip on her shoulder misrepresenting it as men wanting to take women back 100 years?

Get your facts straight.

Robert, I acknowledge completely that there are extremists when it comes to any cause and I certainly do not agree with everything that every leader of the feminist movement says and does. Saying though that feminism is the reason for all of these problems with teenage pregnancies misses the whole problem, maybe even purposely.
These kids having kids are doing it to fill a void not because they are thinking, "I am woman, hear me roar." There is a pattern involved that needs to be broken. The girls I know that had babies in their teens had two parent homes but as I said earlier, those parents weren't very involved or attentive. Those girls were desperate for someone to love and hold onto. Both hid their pregnancies from their parents until it was too late to have an abortion, and both picked men who thought nothing of taking off. I don't think that those 2 girls are the exception. Those two girls had fathers present in their lives so I'm sure for the ones that don't, its just that much worse. Neither one of those girls could even tell you what a feminist is let alone who Gloria Steinem is so I'm sorry to disagree with those who think these girls are doing it for some sort of girl power. Maybe the girl power bullshit comes after their poor choices as a way of making excuses for what they chose but I don't really think that feminism is to blame for this.
Drugs and crime are big problems in the black community. Are we going to blame Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement for that?

*****So what's the answer? Stigma? Denial of services? Education?

The children can be made wards of the state and placed in orphanages. That's how this used to be dealt with. The practice provided the necessary disincentives while giving the children the proper care and a shot at making something of themselves.

It's immoral to sacrifice millions of children to satisfy the narcissistic fantasies of adolescent girls.*****

EXACTLY. Besides, in the grand scheme of things, shouldn't the child's right to grow up in a good home trump the unwed teen mother's right to keep it? If her parents don't want to take her in, or her boyfriend's parents don't, then she's on her own. We need to stop rewarding stupidity or all we're going to get is a hell of a lot more stupid.

The two girls I know that made the decision to become single parents came from two-parent homes. There parents weren't very involved parents and these girls had babies to have someone to love and for the attention it garnered

I knew a girl like that, I asked her how she planed to spend any less time working the her single mother did, and what made her think that her child would love her any more than she loved her mother

@Kristin - is your lack of reading comprehension deliberate?

There were three distinct "feminist" movements. The first was the drive for women's suffrage. The second was for broad social and work rights. The third was a false-front for socialists.

The way it worked was simple - the socialists simply stepped in and took over after the goals of social and work equality were largely won. They did this by persistently repeating the lie that women earn 70 cents on the dollar compared to men.

And you and other enablers fell for it. You think Steinem gives a fuck about women? Or Dworkin, or Clinton? Fuck no! Their goal was always to replace the father with government and make all children de facto wards of the state.

When you look at it from that perspective, their crafty manipulation of gun and drug laws to criminalize men, the use of welfare to destroy the black family unit, and the continued harping on about inequality are all about giving control of women's lives to the government.

But you can't understand what the big deal is.

Drugs and crime are big problems in the black community. Are we going to blame Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement for that?

How do you think they got to be problems for the black community? They weren't problems in the 40s, when black families were mostly intact. But when the civil rights movement was hijacked by communists in the late 60s, and the Democratic party was effectively seized by the communists in 1968, life for blacks was a downhill slide.

Sure, blacks are supposedly "equal" now that Jim Crow and Segregation are gone. But the powers that be who need a designated victim class to maintain their power have effectively enslaved the blacks all over again.

"But how do you break it?"

The same way the families on "Intervention" do with addicts: you cut off the cash. It's going to hurt, and some might not make it, but enabling them is not the answer. The babies can find good homes immediately if CPS wouldn't dick around for years before removing parental rights.

Tens of thousands or more couples want a baby to love. Fewer want a primary or jr high kid who has been utterly ruined by years of crappy parents in and out.

@Amy: "It's when it started to be financially beneficial to have children out of wedlock that large numbers of women started doing it."
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Definitely. Of course, when I said something similar, kay accused me of wanting to set women back 100 years.

The babies can find good homes immediately if CPS wouldn't dick around for years before removing parental rights.

I don't disagree with you, Momof4, but CPS does a lousy job removing kids from homes that are abusive so I don't hold out great hope that they'd solve the problems that come from the teen moms. Also, its not illegal to have a child underage or out of wedlock so would we be setting up a dangerous precedent taking kids away from kids? And the resources are just not there anyway. Want to talk about a drain on the taxpayers. Just try taking kids away from their mothers and see all the lawsuits that start and the kids who hang in the balance while their fates are decided.
I left an abusive marriage and have done everything possible to surround my kids with positive role models from both sexes. I want my daughter to understand that there are good men out there who will treat her with respect just as I want my sons to know that they should always treat women with respect. Its not easy but it took me as a mother being able to be honest with my mistakes as a person and seeing why I made such poor choices. No, his abuse wasn't my fault, but I certainly chose him. I want my kids to make different choices but again, it is learned. These teen moms aren't teaching their kids that their choices were bad so is it surprising when their kids have babies in their teens?

Other girls in school want to pat their stomachs. Their friends throw baby showers at which meager little gifts are given. After delivery, the girls return to school with baby pictures on their cell phones or slipped into their binders, which they eagerly share with me. Often they sit together in my classes, sharing insights into parenting, discussing the taste of Pedialite or the exhaustion that goes with the job.

***

Erm, the above sounds like pretty normal behavior. Of course if you have a kid you're going to show your friends pictures. And of course you're going to welcome your friends' baby into the world with a shower.

I think the answer is neither applause nor shame. I think the answer is pity.

No one wants to be pitied. OK, some people do maybe, but most people don't want to be pitied. I know that when I was a slutty teenager, I used birth control because the thought of peoples' pity was a strong motivator to not get pregnant. I knew my family would help me support the kid, I knew I'd probably still go to college, but I also knew it would suck, I wouldn't be able to be wild and free, and all my friends would pity me.

They'd be nice of course, they'd throw me a shower... but they'd PITY me.

Come to think of it, maybe it falls in the "shame" camp... pity is a form of shame. A form of shame that still lets you help the kid.

As for girls without fathers, they are often among my most disruptive students. You walk on eggshells with them.

I'll remember this next time Amy quotes a study that shows it is just fine if Heather has two mommies.

Check out the 1980s book "When Children Want Children" by former Washington Post reporter, Leon Dash.

I don't know if anything it will surprise anyone today, but it certainly surprised a lot of readers at a time.

One thing I remember from it: Many, possibly most, poor teen mothers just want to get pregnant. They don't necessarily need "someone to love." What they need is a sense of adulthood and status.

"This of course is the end result and the goal of feminist thinking and the fault of the girls involved; who more often then not refuse to marry the father because if she did the welfare benefits would stop."

I seriously doubt most 16 year old girls are thinking this way. If anything it's the opposite--they're getting pregnant specifically so the boyfriend will stick around. If he proposed the girls would probably be ecstatic, and start showing around pictures of wedding dresses and inviting their friends to the bridal shower. You're attributing the motives of thirty year old academic feminists to naive 16 year olds, and it just doesn't make sense.

One thing you can say about Amy's readers is that they never disappoint with bland posts. There are some real doozies here. Teen pregnancy the result of feminism or a socialist conspiracy? Yeah, right. A shame shortage? Shame based on what, exactly? Premarital sex? Irresponsibility in not using birth control? Creating an additional burden on the taxpayer? Good luck trying to convey that to the average ghetto teen.

And that is the crux of the problem, in my opinion.

I lived in a neighborhood like this for ten years when I was first starting my adult life and from what I observed, these girls (and boys, too) have never seen anything we would remotely consider "success" modeled, and the neighbors who could model it for them are too busy trying to get their kids clothed, housed, fed, educated and doctored properly to model anything but hurry.

So, for starters, Amy is to be commended for taking the time and the energy to pay attention to these kids and to model an alternative vision of what life can be. I would bet she's probably done more to encourage girls who were already at least somewhat wary of what they see around them, and somewhat aware of life outside the hood, but that in no way diminishes the importance of her effort.

As for the other girls (and boys) what I noticed was that despite the fact that they lived in our largest city and arguably, one of the most exciting cities in the world, their universe was tiny. In the same way that many affluent people move only between islands of affluence when they leave their home base, these kids traveled only between islands of deprivation. It was as if the museums, parks and cultural institutions of Manhattan didn't exist.

The kids I knew couldn't imagine themselves doing anything different than what they already knew and even when they could, it was all surface: fancy clothes, shiny cars, big houses, bling, etc. with no knowledge of the hard work, achievement and luck which should accompany those things. And that mirage lasted for a minute. As a junior editor at a magazine, I couldn't even explain what I did for work - it was that foreign to them.

My point is this: having a baby (or fathering one) was the quickest way to an identity these kids knew. In fact, it was the only way to an identity a lot of them knew. They had no direction at home, no achievements to be proud of, and most importantly, no real idea of a future that was any different from the life they were leading at the time. There was very little in the way of decision making. Life was something that happened to them. Kids were something that happened to everybody, and what better way to be somebody than to go through the motions of parenthood and, by extension, adulthood? Something really quite sad becomes something good in their minds - at least until it gets complicated, as it does.

Keep cutting education and we'll see more and more of this, and we'll see it happening to people who were formerly from the strata of society that frowns on teen pregnancy. When I say education, I'm not talking about the 3 R's here. I'm talking about cracking open these kid's heads with Arts Education, Auto Shop, Woodshop, Ag, Music, all the programs that teach kids about imagination and the process by which imagination becomes reality, which have been thrown out the window in the past twenty years. You can throw all the shame you want at this problem, you can cut public assistance, whatever, but until we figure out how to give kids the assurance that there is an alternative to what they see around them every day and that they can actually chart a different course for themselves, and how that is done, nothing is going to change.

"I can tell you I would have gotten my ass handed to me every day for 20 years had I become an unwed teen mother. I can guess that it would be similarly unacceptable in momof4's family. Kids are like dogs -- they are very good at sensing who they can put crap over on."

The problem Amy is that its a cycle and how do you break the cycle? These girls have little or no support themselves and are having babies for the wrong reasons. It is acceptable in their world because they were most likely the kids of kids. Its hard to compare that to what you or I grew up with. So again, what's the answer?

When a 3 year old is disruptive in public, you don't blame the child, you blame the parent. Same with an 8 year old, and so on. So what about a 14 year old that gets pregnant? I would say blame the parent here too, but what if the parent was also a child at the time of pregnancy? It's a vicious cycle with no easy answers. Granted if someone makes the decision to create another human being then we can and should hold them to higher standards than their childless peers, but that doesn't automatically mean that they're going to be mentally and emotionally capable of rising to those standards.

On a side note, I'd be interested to see if the rate of getting pregnant is higher in impoverished communities or it's just the rate of KEEPING the baby that's higher. Upper middle class kids are probably screwing around at the same rate as poor kids, but they have much more to lose from having a child (college, relationships, reputation), so they have the abortion. Look at college students for instance-I'm willing to bet your average college student is WAY more sexually active than any high school student, yet I cannot think of a single person who has been pregnant on my college campus or at any school that I know of. Plus, while an abortion is MUCH much cheaper in the long run, at the time an urban teen might literally have no means to pay for it at all, whereas an upper-middle class girl can probably find a way to get the money together.

McQuaidLA, I"m with you on needing shop and various other technical skills classes in school.

"I guess the real question is why do these girls do this?...for love?...for a sense of accomplishment?...to become "grown up"?"

My guess is all of the above. I went to Jr High in Edmond OK and gravitated to the slummy kids despite living in the rich neighborhood. A friend of mine got married and pregnant at 15. I had a boyfriend say-well within my hearing-that he wanted to have a baby because that's the only thing that would make him grow up. He was 16. Egads, thank god I was smart enough to get out of that relationship pronto!

I got married at 18 in large part to be "grown up" and out from the parents house. Fortunately, that was a mistake comparatively easy to correct, and I spent my early and mid twenties being a teenager (who could drink legally). Babies can't be given back when you realize you aren't ready. A fact I'll be driving home to my kiddos repeatedly.

"I can tell you I would have gotten my ass handed to me every day for 20 years had I become an unwed teen mother"

The welfare state & the number of fatherless children really started exploding around 1965 or so, with the War on Poverty, etc. That's 46 years ago - enough time for 3 consecutive generations of unwed teen mothers to set an example for their daughters to follow.

And further to McQuaidLA's point about how tiny the universe of these kids can be, never mind museums or cultural institutions. How many kids in East LA have never dipped a toe in the Pacific Ocean? Have never even seen the Pacific Ocean?

http://scaq.blogspot.com/2008/07/surf-bus-takes-inner-city-kids-from-los.html

If you ask the next time you meet your What It Takes kids, I think you'll be amazed.

@mcQuaidLA: here are some real doozies here. Teen pregnancy the result of feminism or a socialist conspiracy? Yeah, right.
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Of course feminism has contributed to teen pregnancy. Certainly, not all of feminism, but the twin pillars of the modern incarnation of feminism is that women should have options and men should have obligations. All the welfare, WIC (notice, it is not PIC or even IC), child support (even if the man isn't the father), alimony regardless of behavior, etc... do you not think modern feminists groups lobby for such pro-woman anti-male laws?

The current incarnation is not the "equal pay" and "right to vote" crowd of generations past.

What a great opportunity to finally read something worth reading. thanks a lot and keep posting articles like this for us to read.

yeah. 14 year olds who cannot even identify their own state on a map are certainly having children because the feminist manifesto told them to. yup. good god. do you all remember how hopelessly and ridiculously romantic teenage girls are? i don't know about teenage boys, i never was one. but teenage girls are ridiculous about this. and absolutely they're trying to get the father to stick around - but what are they supposed to do when he doesn't, cry? no, like most teenagers, they act like they don't care, like they did it on purpose....my cousin - idiot - got pregnant on purpose when she was 14. because she was hopelessly in love with her 19 year old boyfriend - who, by the way, was not tricked but in on the plan - and thought she could create the perfect little family. didn't so much work. but she certainly wasn't thinking "girl power". i hate to say it, but she's not that bright. and i don't think she's so unusual in that either.

I remember years ago watching a documentary on monkeys that stuck in my brain. For many years, zoos (out of ignorance) automatically removed newborn babies from their mothers to ensure "proper care" (probably viewing these babies as assets to be protected). As these babies matured, and had babies of their own, the zookeepers continued to intervene and remove the babies from their mothers for care. Over time, someone had a lightbulb moment and questioned why this was being done. They decided to allow the mothers to mother their own babies. What they found out was that those who had not been mothered had no idea what to do with their own babies. Not only did nursing their babies not come naturally to them, but some of them were violent with their babies.

I often think of this in terms of what is happening today. I hear commercials toward the end of the school year raising money for food programs for the kids for the summer months -- "What will these kids do without the school breakfast and lunches?". WHAT? Seriously? These mothers won't feed their kids until school comes back into session? Isn't that something that you would just do naturally? Isn't that something that they should remove a child from a home for? And then I remember that documentary, and realize that we have generations of children raised to believe that the school is the provider of food. I have heard rumblings of hot dinners being sent home with the kids "Because the two meals they get at school are often the only ones they'll get all day" and I just want to cry.

Children learn from their environment how to be parents. If they grow up in a place where it is normal to have children at 15, then they take that as their standard. If they grow up in a place where fathering is optional, they don't even know that they should step up and father their children.

It often seems that within this world, we live in tiny universes that often don't intersect. Give these children a sense of what is outside their own universe and the possibilities that are open to them, and maybe they would choose differently. Or maybe not.

"I guess the real question is why do these girls do this?...for love?...for a sense of accomplishment?...to become "grown up"?

McQuaidLA wrote the most eloquent answer to this. These kids can't dream or imagine the life for themselves that we assume they can. If you don't live in poverty, you can't understand why they don't see the career, marriage, suburban two-car garage that we all shoot for, but that's not their world, and they've never had anything like that modeled for them.

Plus, I think our educational system is way TOO LONG. There's simply no reason kids should have 12 years of high school then another 4 years of college before they can have a career. Tech schools, training and apprentice programs are a better answer than college for many of these kids, but our system is basically set up by the educational elitists to have them fail.

If we could at least credential them in some sort of work by age 16, then they could support a child themselves if they messed up and had one, which is better than living a lifetime on welfare.

McQuaidLA said it perfectly!

It's not just in inner-cities or urban schools. I saw the same things when I taught in semi-rural Pickens County SC. One of my students gave birth and was pregnant again in a two year period.

"Drugs and crime are big problems in the black community. Are we going to blame Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement for that?"

Absolutely. Not because it was intentional, but because charlatans (e.g. Jesse Jackson) hijacked what was a worthy cause, for personal wealth.

Whereas feminism has always been a nasty, ignorant, Marxist attempt to destroy families. Read anything that old battleaxe Betty Friedan wrote, she was a certified lunatic.