THE FADING INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE
Posted in Uncategorized on April 4th, 2006
1971 was an emotional, stressful, life-altering year for me. It was the year my parents got divorced. I knew it was coming, they’d been fighting constantly, my dad had become physically abusive, and I couldn’t imagine it getting any better. A little advice for all you women out there in physically abusive relationships, get out while you can, he isn’t going to change, it will only get worse. And so in that fateful year, I entered the realm of the single mother. The next few years my life changed dramatically. While my mom did her best, Four teenage boys, work, and keeping up with the house, bills and whatever the forces of cruelty could throw at her, was simply too much. We soon started skipping school, doing drugs, having sex way too early, and anything else we could get away with. Discipline was always my dad’s job and we were just too much for my mom to handle. The sad reality is, one parent is one parent short of the minimum to get the job done. I know a lot of single moms are doing their very best, but I also know your killing yourself to do it. This played out all over my neighborhood, as women shed their marriages for new freedoms, or to escape abuse, society became an experiment in whether or not women could raise kids on their own. Women were told they could have it all, career and family. What they got, most of the time, was a job not a career, and a near impossible task of raising a family alone. The myth of the superwoman, for most women, turned out to be unattainable. Yet, to watch T.V. you’d think it’s simple, with an endless flow of money and good “father-figure” men, our T.V. counterparts make it look easy, even fun. Who’s perpetuating this myth and why? Why are fathers being shoved to the side as unimportant? Why are marriages treated as just a legal formality? Why has commitment to each other all but disappeared? What’s the truth about how this is affecting our kids? To find the answers, I put my entire research team (me) on it. Here’s what we found.
The move in the U.S. since the 1960’s has been towards unmarried moms and divorced moms. The cultural revolution for women began with the advent of feminism in the early 60’s. Along with increased freedom, and fairer work opportunities, these feminists began devaluing marriage by declaring it oppressive. The feminist book, “Diary of a mad housewife” by Sue Kaufman became required reading for women fed up with the ho-hum life of taking care of the husband and kids. Betty Friedan, author of “The Feminine Mystique” another marriage bashing left-wing book, even went so far as to define marriage as a “comfortable concentration camp,” the end result was, marriage fast became uncool.
More problems for marriage came in the form of Roe vs. Wade in 1973 making abortion legal, this, along with the addition of birth control, gave women even more sexual freedom. For the first time, women felt in control of their bodies. But, to quote Pete Townsend, “Freedom stinks of reality.” Some women found they couldn’t stomach abortion, and others found contraceptives falling short of 100%. Add that to the pressure of competing for men against women willing to have sex, and the stage was set for millions of single moms.
It didn’t take long for things to start changing for the worse, in 1960, the births to unmarried women in the U.S. was at 5.3% but by 2004 the figure had jumped to 35.7%…Wow! The U.S. Census has some staggering stats on how bad it has become, for instance, in 2002, 89% of all births to women 18 and 19 were to unmarried women. Their chances of ever marrying the father of that child have fallen from 47% in 1970 to 16% in 2002. The end result for that year was a whopping 10.1 million single moms.
Black families have suffered the most from this trend. Despite the fact that blacks are only 13% of the U.S. population, they constitute 34.7% of the U.S. abortions. Abortion is killing blacks at nearly 3 times the rate of whites. But even with all these abortions, children born to unwed black moms shot up from 24% in 1965 to 64% in 1990 according to the Brookings Institute for Social Policy. The latest census results put that figure at 72% for 2004! For this “Freedom” brought to them by rich, white, feminists, black women have paid with crime, poverty, and the delusion of the black family. But, are only the Gender Fems of the ’60’s to blame or are there other villains? Well, surely the media has to share some of the blame, their attacks on marriage are endless. After watching a few “Lifetime T.V. Specials” even I started hating men. Add to that the over sexualization of women in music videos and every other media outlet, and you have a culture of casual sex that believes marriage only leads to fighting. By the way, where are all the feminists on the sexualization of women? Rap and Hip Hop stars treat women like disposable vaginas and every supposed feminist movie star is applauding as they hand them awards. The men all portray themselves as “players” who use women, and nothing is said by the left at all!
So what can these women expect once they become single moms? Well, they can expect to have lower incomes, lower education, a greater dependence on welfare, and reduced marriage prospects. Sound good ladies? It does stop there, your children are more likely to live in poverty, have more socioemotional problems, get less education, engage in sex at a lower age and end up in more troubled marriages and divorce. What a deal! Thanks Fems! Thanks media! Thanks worthless boys pretending to be men!
Now the purpose of this column is not to make single moms feel guilty about the mistakes you’ve made, I sympathize with your plight. I watched my own mom struggle to raise kids on her own and I know how hard it is. But as a society we have to throw the curtain back and look at ourselves in the mirror. Women are being sexualized at a surprisingly young age, just look at how some of them are dressing and acting at 10 or 11 years old. Our young men are being taught that it’s cool to be a “playa,” and treat women like trash. Men are so feminized that they no longer feel any need to protect or provide for women even when they have their child. I’ve heard young guys remark about getting a girl pregnant, “her body, her choice,……her problem.” I see young girls clinging to men as if trying to fill a void. This is a problem that will propagate itself, troubled families breed troubled families. Until we put more emphasis on responsibility, more value in marriage, and stress monogamy, it’s only going to get worse. And women will bear most of the suffering. H.C.