On-the-ground researchers find that this either/or thinking fails to capture the experience of a lot of single mothers. Edin and Kefalas, for instance, say their subjects view babies as bringing meaning to their lives.

And this differs from married couples how?

Heh. We must know some different married couples.

Not saying that the average married couple might not be better able to provide, but I've known a hell of a lot whose desire for a baby was based on bringing meaning to their lives.

As for the statement "It seems that some women can sorta, kinda want to get pregnant without knowingly intending to get pregnant" -- they really don't know any married women, do they? It sounds like the reasons, rationales and rationalizations for reproduction are exactly the same.

Y'know what every child deserves?

1. _ ______ ______

2. _ ______ ______

(There may be other things, but....)

"their subjects view babies as bringing meaning to their lives."

What sort of brain-dead lives do people live, when they need babies to bring them meaning?
What sort of brain-dead lives will they return to when their babies grow up and escape?

"Teen pregnancy has plummeted over the past twenty years..."

Search this story "Children of the Corn-- GMOs don't qualify as food", from Salem News, May 28 2011. The article describes GMO corn that includes a human gene causing immune infertility in women. Mitch Hein, president of Epysis Corp showed off his product in 2001, saying "We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that kill sperm."
Who's to say where this GMO has gone since then? GMO corn is used as livestock feed, where it causes serious reproductive disruption. Corn products are in practically everything we eat nowadays. Has anyone else noticed, teen pregnancy has plummted in the past twenty years? What coulda caused that?

Tin foil hats, always in style
http://rense.com/general90/BILL.HTM

"What coulda caused that?"

IT'S FRITO-LAY! FRITO-LAY, I TELL YOU!

Well, my #4 tecnically qualifies under their assumptions. We didn't have a condom with us. But we also knew we at some point wanted #4, so if it happened then no biggie. It did.

Unintended pregnancies happen due to laziness. Period. Not lack of money, not lack of intelligence. People just don't worry about it. Jane magazine has done a lot of articles about this in 20-somethings. It's a choice they make. Short of rolling the condom on for them, I don't know what to do about it.

If Star Trek were real, Kirk would have had a Sterilize setting for his phaser in addition to Vaporize, Kill, and the popular Stun. This would be for the main weapons units on the saucer section of the ship, as well as the sidearms for "away" teams.

'Photon torpedos' would be bursts of anti-erectile dysfunction, fired from an undetectable position beyond geosynchronous orbit, which would stabilize population numbers in the villages of politically & morally erratic planets, giving everyone time to get their shit together before that whole 'prime directive' thing happened and everything got procedurally clumsy.

> I've known a hell of a lot whose desire for
> a baby was based on bringing meaning to
> their lives.

When they do what's best for the kid, they're welcome to whatever meaning they can harvest from the process.

> It sounds like the reasons, rationales and
> rationalizations for reproduction are exactly
> the same.

Women... Devious, right? Conniving. Because, rationales AND
rationalizations... Nuance.

Yeah... You'd better remain vigilant, jefe. Also, there might be something going on with the food...

I had a contraception failure once. I ran, didn't walk, to get a morning after pill because I knew that I did not want another kid.

Pregnancies can be the result of laziness, ignorance, or the desire to bring meaning to life. The meaning to life pregnancies are the hardest because usually they are the least emotionally or financially equipped to be parents whether they are married or not.

My cousin's daughter is in her 20s. She has had 2 marriages and 3 kids just since I've been on Facebook. She announced her 4th pregnancy on there by saying. "OK, fine. Yes, I am pregnant again. Keep your comments to yourself."
She has been studying to be a nurse. I just keep shaking my head every time she posts her status.

Gaaaahhhhh! The stupid! It burns!

But Crid, thanks for the laugh with my morning coffee. Phasers with a Sterilize setting. If only!

Peej, imagine that your Saturday morning was interrupt just now with a FedEx delivery of a phaser with a full battery pack. To where would you first go in your town?

☐ Shopping center

☐ Government office

☐ Church / Synagogue

☐ Sports / entertainment venue

☑ Fast Food Restaurant

☐ Museum

☐ Park / Lake

Republican wives often look like fun, but I can take or leave the kids.

Barbie says math is hard, single mothers say marriage is complicated.

Oh Government, pleeeeeeeese make these problems go away!

So, let's talk turkey and call things by their true names. Point 1: Single women, single mothers in particular, are by far the biggest audience for socialism in the U.S. There's a lot of talk about the "gender gap" between Democrats and Republicans, but it's really a marriage gap: the voting patterns of married women are pretty similar to the voting patterns of men. It's the single women and particular the single mothers who are the outlier group.

Point 2: I read the whole Hymowitz article that Amy links to. To my mind, the real kicker is the information reported under Myth #2, about how the single moms and their baby-daddies are totally down with traditional values, except of course when said values get in the way of their boinking. Pay close attention here: I'm not talking about extra-marital sex per se. What I'm talking about is the attitude that one can do whatever, whenever, with whomever, and the future will take care of itself. You know what this category of people really are? They're hypocrites. They've carved out moral exceptions for themselves, because in some fashion or another, they're Special.

This group consistently fails to see the probable consequences of their behavior. So, when said consequences occur, they look for a bailout. Hence they vote for socialism, because socialism promises them a responsibility-free and consequences-free life. Of course, socialism never really delivers on that promise, but given that the target audience already tends to blame their failures on external circumstances, the failures of socialism are easily swept under the rug with them.

The remaining question is: why does the female cohort of this group show up in the data, but the male cohort doesn't? Two possible reasons: (1) The female cohort is very visible; they collect welfare and a high percentage of them vote. The male cohort is largely transient; they tend to be invisible to government and they don't vote, so demographers have not had either the data or the motivation to study them. (2) The male cohort is a lot smaller than the female cohort. There's an "alpha male" thing going on where you have a relatively small number of men impregnating a large number of women. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this may be the case, but I don't know if it has been really studied.

Crid,

Fast food restaurant, yes. Also Wal-Mart on welfare day.

Short of rolling the condom on for them, I don't know what to do about it.

Restore the risk.

People don't worry about the condom (or any other level of responsibility) because risky behavior has no consequences in modern American life.

Had a baby without the ability to support it? No problem. The government will pay you.

Got heavily into debt getting a stupid degree? No problem. The government will forgive your student loans (no word yet on how they're going to restore the money lent to you).

Racked up too much charge card debt? No problem. Just declare bankruptcy and get out of it. Plus, you get to keep all the stuff you "bought."

Bought more house than you could afford? No problem. The government will prevent the bank from foreclosing on you. You can live there rent-free. Some other guy will pick up the check.

Dropped out of high school and didn't bother to get any job skills? No problem. Just go around getting your girlfriends pregnant. The government will pay them and you can mooch off of them.

Isn't life in risk-free modern America wonderful?

Two very good books on this subject:

"When Children Want Children" by Washington Post journalist Leon Dash (1989)
(Dash mentions that teenage boys want babies as well, if only because "with her on the Pill, I couldn't feel like a man")

"Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage" by Kathryn Edin and Maria J. Kefalas (2005)
(the authors claim, IIRC, that many poor women simply feel that it's better to be a single mother on welfare than never to be a mother at all, and given the lack of job opportunities and shortage of men with non-criminal records, they don't feel they have a choice)

And, from the introduction to Katha Pollitt's "Reasonable Creatures":

"What none of (those) who have dominated the welfare discussion betray any sign of understanding is that babies are a centuries-old way that women have put meaning, love, pleasure, hope and self-respect into their lives. If society is serious about cutting down on teenage
motherhood, it will have to offer girls another way of obtaining these things. I'm not saying teenage motherhood is a great idea. It isn't, either for women or for children, and whether or not marriage is involved. But if impoverishing women were a deterrent, it surely would have worked by now....."

> If society is serious about cutting down on
> teenage motherhood, it will have to offer
> girls another way of obtaining these things.

I've heard the name Pollitt for 20+ years without knowing who she is, but feeling certain I wouldn't like her if I did.

So: We have a social problem. A segment of our population is misbehaving and causing suffering and poverty and dislocation for huge numbers of defenseless children. Pollitt doesn't think they should cut it out; rather, it's incumbent on the rest of us to "offer[…] meaning, love, pleasure, hope and self-respect" when they don't misbehave.

I forgot to mention that Pollitt's introduction seemed to agree with Kearney and Levine that "young single motherhood is not a cause, but a consequence, of poverty and inequality."

Except that Pollitt didn't suggest that single motherhood couldn't possibly AGGRAVATE poverty and inequality. If poverty is a big cause of single motherhood, that would certainly include the "third category" of "some women (who) sorta, kinda want to get pregnant without knowingly intending to get pregnant."

And I will agree that if Pollitt meant to include "opportunities for jobs and education," she should have made that a little more clear.

Unintended pregnancies happen due to laziness. Period. Not lack of money, not lack of intelligence. People just don't worry about it.

Posted by: momof4 at August 11, 2012 6:23 AM
_____________________________

And what many don't quite understand, IMO, is that using a single contraceptive that is only 95% effective in real life (such as the Pill) DOES count as laziness.

I.e., sex ed programs need to emphasize more strongly that if you're serious about contraception, you have to use TWO methods EVERY time and not assume that you won't make mistakes or that you didn't make any mistakes - such as forgetting to leave space but no air at the end of the condom.

*I've heard the name Pollitt for 20+ years without knowing who she is, but feeling certain I wouldn't like her if I did.*

She's a 60ish feminist formerly married to the NY Time's former "ethicist" if that's any enlightenment (on either Pollitt, the ethicist, or the NY Times).

My aunt did a study as a college project back in the 70's. She surveyed teen mothers in Texas. The biggest reason for having kids given was the change in perceived status. They were viewed as a mom and not a teenager.

I'm not certain I agree with the laziness argument. Frankly I think its the corrupting desire to breed interfering with their judgement. Heck, I think that's the real reason that men who don't want kids still don't get vasectomies.

> I think its the corrupting desire to breed
> interfering with their judgement.

I think ZAK's right about this, M4. If it was really just laziness, these women wouldn't so often fall only into this particular 20-year life project.

I see what you're getting at by calling it lazy, though. It's detached and oblivious, but it's worse than a late oil change.

> She's a 60ish feminist formerly married

Yeah?

Imagine.

Also, what Conan, CD, PJ, None and Kristen said. And probably others.

Also, while I'm going to vote for him anyway, I don't like seeing 17 photographs in a row with no black people, including crowd shots, from a guy beloved by pro-lifers.

All the women I know who have accidentally gotten pregnant secretly wanted to bring a kid into this world because their lives were just so meaningless and now they have meaning.

"But Purp I sooo didnt have meaning before I'm soo glad I have a baby now"

YUCK!

Can't claim to have read all the comments but didn't see the most obvious of all- FREE MONEY! 20% 0f daddie's income- TAX FREE! Welfare, food stamps, WIC, etc etc etc. Next timeI hear how "hard" single mome's have it, I'm going to projectile vomit on someone's shoes!
And before you all you feminazis' heads begin to spin, don't waste your time about how hard it is to be a "good" mom- you all get rich, good or not, makes NO difference.

Wait, all women arent evil? That was nearly half of their allure!!

Can't speak for every married woman who seeks to reproduce, but one of my primary motivating factors was to create a special connection to the super-cool guy I married. That connection didn't absolutely have to be biological -- we would have adopted if the bio route didn't work out -- but the idea of having some little people who reflected both of us but were nevertheless their own distinct individuals was irresistible. You obviously don't have to have kids to have a great marriage -- we were quite happy before our rugrats came along. But having kids adds a new element to a marriage that both my husband and I wanted to add.

I'm effectively the opposite of Amy as far as kids are concerned -- I've always known that I wanted them. While I would never seek to create a child from scratch with only one parent around, I did think for quite some time that I would adopt if I hit my late 40s with no marriage prospects around. We'll never know now, but I'm increasingly inclined to think that wouldn't have happened, even if I had been financially comfortable enough to make it work. I didn't want to be a mom separate from everything else -- I wanted to be part of a parenting partnership. (And all that stuff they say about kids being a lot of work? OH MAH GAWD, YES.)

Never even slightly interested in deliberately reproducing with someone to whom I wasn't married. If I wasn't ready to marry the person, I certainly wouldn't be ready to create an unbreakable biological connection with the person. (And yes, accidents happen...but not as often to careful people.)

Did becoming a parent add a new element of meaning to my life? Yes. Did it transform my life from one of no meaning to one with meaning? No. My life had meaning before. I had a husband, family, friends, a career, a home, cats, volunteer work, etc. etc. Being a parent is distinctive from all that, and special, and wonderful...but it's not the only meaningful thing I've ever done. My kids aren't vehicles for life enrichment -- they're the means by which my husband and I transformed ourselves into a new family.

Kids know when their parents are using them as surrogates to bring "meaning" into meaningless lives.
It's why so many kids hate their parents.

She's a 60ish feminist formerly married to the NY Time's former "ethicist" if that's any enlightenment (on either Pollitt, the ethicist, or the NY Times).

Posted by: jerry at August 11, 2012 1:58 PM
__________________________________

Pollitt's also anti-censorship and was even before Internet porn became common, IIRC. So I'd say she has guts when it comes to some opinions that are unpopular with the left.

And, for what it's worth, libertarian ACLU former board member Wendy Kaminer has yet to say anything negative about her that I know of.

Check out Pollitt's essay collections sometime - one of her more recent ones is "Virginity or Death!" (Sarcastic title, of course.)