[acb-hsp] Social Pressure to Marry Is Dead

[peter altschul]

Social Pressure to Marry Is Dead
  Mona Charen
  The advice columns of newspapers are good windows into the 
conscience of a culture.  There you will find a field guide to 
what is considered socially acceptable and unacceptable.  One of 
the advice columnists for the Washington Post, Carolyn Hax, is 
consistently sensible and solid in her suggestions.  
Straightening out busybodies, drug abusers, interfering in-laws 
and ungrateful children with equal aplomb, she's usually a 
pleasant read with the morning coffee.
  But not always.  A recent response to a letter from 
"Grandmother-to-be" provides an example of the collapse of social 
wisdom on the subject of marriage and childbearing.  "My 
26-year-old son's girlfriend -- of four months -- is pregnant," 
wrote grandma.  "I have very mixed emotions about this, mainly 
because he just met her, and I do not know her.  They work and 
live across the country.  I am disappointed in their behavior.  
How do I tell my friends the news? I am embarrassed."
  If I were an advice columnist, I would start with the reminder 
that telling one's friends is a low priority at the moment, while 
acknowledging that feeling ashamed of her son (not the young 
woman, as she has no relationship with her and thus cannot 
justifiably feel disappointed in her) is understandable under the 
circumstances.
  Next, I would have pointed out that since the couple will be 
parents, the very highest priority should be to encourage them to 
marry as soon as possible.  A shotgun wedding? Obviously not.  
Those days are gone.  But for all concerned -- most particularly 
for the unborn child -- a stable family is now essential.
  Hax indeed began by dismissing the friend worry but with a very 
different emphasis.  "There's a child on the way, and this is 
your big concern? ...  American adults overwhelmingly choose 
premarital sex . . .  Plus, birth control isn't perfect, so you 
have statistical permission not to single this couple out for 
shaming."
  Well, if shame still attached to getting pregnant outside of 
marriage, it would be no bad thing.  But fine, Hax seemed to be 
going in the right direction with the next sentence.  "Any big 
concern belongs with the stability of the home that will welcome 
this baby . . .was But then, instead of recommending an immediate 
and tasteful elopement, she wrote, "If they plan to raise the 
baby as a couple . . .was
  If? For so many 21st century Americans, that's the way it's 
done.  A child on the way will not affect the couple's decision 
about marriage.  They may move in together.  They may not.  She 
may move into her mother's house.  He may visit every day -- for 
a while.  She may try to raise the child by herself.  It may not 
be her first or his.  The fate of the relationship is regarded as 
utterly separate from the fact of the child's existence.
  Many, many young adults who already have babies and toddlers 
will explain that they "aren't ready" for the commitment of 
marriage, or that they haven't found the right person.  How have 
we managed to get so confused?
  The collapse of marriage among the lower and lower-middle 
classes is rapidly tapping our national strength.  Women from 
wealthier families get it.  They basically wait until they're 
married to have babies.  They know that two parents create 
stability, financial security and the social structure to 
optimize the chances of rearing happy, healthy and productive new 
citizens.  The illegitimacy rate among women with college 
educations, while it has tripled since 1960, is still only about 
8 percent.  By contrast, 67.4 percent of illegitimate births were 
to women with less than a high school diploma in 2006, and 51.4 
percent were to women with only a high school degree.
  The failure to marry on the part of the lower and lower-middle 
classes, not the tax code, Wall Street or competition from China, 
is what is aggravating inequality in America.  The toll is 
incalculable.  In every way that social science can measure -- 
school performance, drug abuse, unemployment, suicide, poverty, 
depression, dependence on government handouts, mental illness, 
violence, and far more -- children raised by single parents 
(especially when their parents never married) are at a severe 
disadvantage.  The failure to form families is devastating our 
schools, exacerbating inequality and diminishing happiness on a 
grand scale.
  So yes, "Grandmother-to-be" should be worried -- not about what 
to tell her friends -- but about what will become of her 
grandchild if his/her parents choose to join the ranks of the 
great unwed.
  Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist, political analyst and 
author of Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help.