Feds: 1.5 Million Babies Born to Unwed Moms in '04

[Jo Canadian]

 

[manda]

Same thing here, Percy. I don't think there is any single parent family on my street. As far as I can tell, every household with kids has two parents ... the way it should be.

The family institution here is very well and alive.

Let's not just blame fathers here in terms of child support....I happen to be very close to a situation where 2 kids live with their father, and the mother has not paid child support in 2 years....not to mention ran up bills in the fathers name when they were on opposite sides of the country.

I fail to see the problem with children born to unwed parents, as long as the parents take care of the child in all needs departments. I had my oldest when I was 17, and you can go ahead and try to find an area where you could call me a bad mother...you won't find one. But I do not appreciate the insinuation of otherwise James

I was also raised by my mother after my father ran off with his mistress. He was granted visitation rights, and my brother and I had to deal with the insecurities and emotional abuse inflicted on us by that woman. We would have been better off being raised without any input from our father considering the repercussions that we were faced with for many years afterward. Fortunately, my mother remarried a man who was able to act like a father should and show us that not all fathers are assholes

 

[missile]

I'd never say there were no single parent families on my street! I'd be lying through my teeth if I did.On a personal note,my youngest daughter is an unwed Mom..and one of the fathers has not given her one penny in 10 years.She has taken him to court,too.

 

[GL Schmitt]

“. . . marriage might not happen, or it may be a short-lived union . . .”

“. . . It's really unfair to children,’ says David Popenoe, sociologist and co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. “It means more children are going to grow up without mothers and fathers. . . . ”

“ . . . children fare best when raised by their married, biological parents. . .”

“ . . . 'Any kind of divorce sows lasting inner conflict in children's lives,' says Elizabeth Marquardt. . . .”

“ . . . unwed mothers are more likely to be economically disadvantaged. . .”

“ . . . .federal data found that almost two-thirds of girls ages 15-19 agree it's OK for an unwed woman to have a child. . . .”

“ . . . 'For children born into these relationships, the couple seems to have a positive relationship and a desire to marry, but as they are followed over time, not too many of these marriages happen,' she says. . . .”

Why must I always be the one looking for the pony. :?

Here I thought Jimbo was totaling up all the reasons for the baby's sake to support ROE v. WADE

 

[no1important]

And as to your neighborhood, it couldn't be more different than mine. Everyone I know on my cul-de-sac is married. There are some re-marriages and blended families, but every single house has a mother and a father on this street of 33 houses.

Percy

Same thing here, Percy. I don't think there is any single parent family on my street. As far as I can tell, every household with kids has two parents ... the way it should be.

The family institution here is very well and alive.

Bible Belt Battles High Divorce Rates This article is a couple years old.

The governor grumbles about how it is easier for Oklahomans to get out of a marriage than a Tupperware contract. The head of the Southern Baptist church complains that pastors are afraid to look love-besotted parishioners in the eye and tell them that they are too immature for marriage.

Here in Oklahoma, Gov. Frank Keating, also a Republican, diagnosed divorce as a principal cause of poverty in his state. He started a much-publicized, multipronged campaign, paid for with $10 million in federal welfare money, to cut the divorce rate by one-third in 10 years.

For the first time, the census showed that married couples with children made up less than a quarter of the American population (23.5 percent). In Oklahoma, the percentage of such nuclear families was even lower (23.2 percent).

Something else that caught my eye:

Massachusetts family values.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney enjoy mocking "Massachusetts liberals" and casting my state as the scene of all sorts of anti-traditional behaviors. So it was with no small amount of joy that I read William V. D'Antonio's op-ed in the Globe this morning. Let's see: What does "Massachusetts liberalism" really mean in terms of family values?

The state with the lowest divorce rate in the nation is Massachusetts. At latest count it had a divorce rate of 2.4 per 1,000 population, while the rate for Texas was 4.1.

But don't take the US government's word for it. Take a look at the findings from the George Barna Research Group. George Barna, a born-again Christian whose company is in Ventura, Calif., found that Massachusetts does indeed have the lowest divorce rate among all 50 states. More disturbing was the finding that born-again Christians have among the highest divorce rates.

The Associated Press, using data supplied by the US Census Bureau, found that the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt. The AP report stated that "the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average of 4.2 per thousand people." The 10 Southern states with some of the highest divorce rates were Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. By comparison nine states in the Northeast were among those with the lowest divorce rates: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

So I call "fraud and Bologna" that religion or being religious makes for more stable families or that they have less single parent households.