I have a Vision of The Future, chum,
The worker's flats in fields of soya beans
Tower up like silver pencils, score on score:
And Surging Millions hear the Challenge come
From microphones in communal canteens
"No Right! No wrong! All's perfect, evermore."
The indefatigable Robert Rector draws attention to the ongoing disaster created by the de-stigmatization of bastardy and the state subsidization of illegitimate children:
"Last week, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that the U.S. just saw the largest annual increase in poverty recorded in our nation’s history: In 2009, 3.7 million more Americans joined the ranks of the poor.
"The recession bears part of the blame, but media outlets have failed to inform the public about the long-term root cause of poverty in this country: unwed childbearing. Buried in the Census report are startling figures revealing that the collapse of marriage is creating this crisis of poverty. Single-mother families are almost five times more likely to be poor than are married couples with children; overall, nearly 70 percent of poor families with children are headed by single parents.
"The biggest secret in the Census report: Marriage is America’s number-one weapon against child poverty. Tragically, however, marriage has been rapidly declining in our society and the number of women who have children outside of marriage has soared. Historically, unwed childbearing was rare. In 1964, when the federal government launched its War on Poverty, 6.8 percent of births were to single mothers. Today, the unwed birthrate has climbed to 40 percent: four of every ten births are to single mothers. For Hispanics and African Americans, the rates rise to nearly 50 and over 70 percent...
"It’s not a question of money: The government has continued to pour funds into welfare programs over the past several decades, to the point that the United States will soon be spending $1 trillion a year on programs for the poor. Yet poverty rates have significantly climbed...
"If Americans are serious about reducing poverty and getting control of federal welfare spending, it is vital to strengthen the institution of marriage."
Unfortunately, Rector's suggested solutions are very weak tea, indeed:
"There are two steps that the United States can take to help low-income couples build healthy marriages, and by so doing, break the cycle of poverty. First, the federal government must reduce the marriage penalties in current welfare programs. Second, government and society should send a clear message to young people in low-income communities that having a child outside of marriage dramatically increases the odds of long-term poverty and other ills..."
Like that's going to work. Sigh.
But I don't blame Rector. For there's no policy that has any real chance of working, here, which can even be mentioned in polite society. So instead what we'll get - indeed, what we've already got - is a policy that doesn't work: the policy of "Social Apartheid".
Over to Charles Murray, in a little noticed article he wrote for British readers, not too long ago. As always, he casts a cold eye on life, on death. I highlight only a single passage, among many that deserve it.
* * * * *
Underclass is an ugly word, and we live in an age that abhors ugly words, so it is good to hear that the Blair government has devised a cheerier label: Neet, an acronym for “not in education, employment or training”.
Once a government has given a problem a name it must develop effective new strategies for dealing with it. That too is in train, The Sunday Times told us last week, replete with urgent cabinet meetings, study groups roaming about the country and even a “Neet target” to reduce the Neet population by 20% by 2010.
You may use whatever euphemism the government adopts, but it’s still the underclass. Its numbers are not going to be reduced by 20% by 2010. Its numbers will increase. The good news is that the rate of increase will probably begin to slow in a few years and in another decade or two Britain will have learnt to manage the problem — meaning you will have learnt how to keep the underclass from getting underfoot, even though its numbers are undiminished.
When The Sunday Times first asked me to look at the British underclass in 1989, the American underclass was about 15 to 20 years ahead of Britain’s. You were tracking the American experience with remarkable fidelity then and you are still tracking it.
From the beginning I have used the simple-minded assumption that Britain 16 years on would look like America did when I was writing, and that’s more or less the way things have worked out. Nothing about the underclass is rocket science. It’s all basic, the kind of thing our grandparents took for granted. It just has to be rephrased to accommodate today’s delicate sensibilities.
Our grandparents thought bastardy was a problem to be avoided at any cost. Today’s translation: children who grow up without being nurtured by two biological parents are at risk. Poverty isn’t the problem. Inadequate educational opportunities aren’t the problem. Social exclusion isn’t the problem.
Throughout history, societies around the world have been poor, with inadequate educational opportunities and with socially excluded people. Those same societies have been remarkably successful at ensuring that almost all children came into the world with two biological parents committed to their care. That’s the difference between societies with small underclasses (for every society has had an underclass) and with large ones.
Children today usually still have a mother with them. The problem is the growing number of children who have no father and who live in areas where hardly anyone has a father. Girls without fathers tend to be emotionally damaged.
Among other things, they tend to search for father substitutes among young males, which in turn increases the likelihood of repeating their mother’s experience. Boys without fathers tend to grow up unsocialised. They tend to have poor impulse control, to be sexual predators, to be unable to get up at the same time every morning and go to a job. They tend to disappear shortly after the baby is born. These are not the complaints of a conservative lamenting the lost good old days. They are social science findings that are as robust and unambiguous as social science findings get.
I use the word “tend” because none of these outcomes is carved in stone for any particular child. But we can’t deny a problem exists because some children of single women do well. Of course, there are many exceptions but the statistical tendencies are pronounced, and tendencies produce a large and problematic underclass.
Our grandparents thought you couldn’t “do” with a youngster who wasn’t brought up right. Today’s translation: social programmes for intervening with children at risk have consistently meagre results. This finding has even longer shelves of analysis than the literature on the children of single parents.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Americans tried everything: pre-school socialisation programmes, enrichment programmes in elementary schools, programmes that provided guaranteed jobs for young people without skills, ones that provided on-the-job training, programmes that sent young people without skills to residential centres for extended skills training and psychological preparation for the world of work, programmes to prevent school dropout, and so on. These are just the efforts aimed at individuals. I won’t even try to list the varieties of programmes that went under the heading of “community development”. They were also the most notorious failures.
We know the programmes didn’t work because all of them were accompanied by evaluations. I was a programme evaluator from 1968 to 1981. The most eminent of America’s experts on programme evaluation — a liberal sociologist named Peter Rossi — distilled this vast experience into what he called the Iron Law of Evaluation: “The expected value of any net impact assessment of any large-scale social programme is zero.” The Iron Law has not been overturned by subsequent experience.
I should add a corollary to it, however: “The initial media accounts of social programmes that ultimately fail are always positive.” Every training programme for young men or parenting programme for young women can produce a heart-warming success story for the evening news. None produces long-term group results that survive scrutiny.
None of this experience crosses the Atlantic. When the Blair government began its ambitious job-training programmes, I wondered whether anyone within the bowels of the appropriate ministries said: “You know, the Americans tried lots of these things years ago. I wonder how they worked?” But apparently nobody did or nobody listened. Now the government seems ready to admit that the results of the training programmes have been dismal. But as it sets off on the next round of bright ideas, I still don’t hear anyone saying: “You know, the Americans tried those programmes too . . .”
The bottom line for this accumulation of experience in America is that it is impossible to make up for parenting deficits through outside interventions. I realise this is still an intellectually unacceptable thing to say in Britain. It used to be intellectually unacceptable in the United States as well. No longer. We’ve been there, done that.
Our grandparents’ most basic taken-for-granted understanding, which today’s intellectual and political elites find it hardest to accept, is this: make it easier to behave irresponsibly and more people will behave irresponsibly. The welfare state makes it easier for men to impregnate women without taking responsibility for them, easier for women to raise a baby without the help of a man and easier for men and women to get by without working. There is no changing that situation without reintroducing penalties for irresponsible behaviour.
This is the sticking point for every political figure in Britain, Labour or Tory. Frank Field has been miles ahead of other politicians in recognising the growing problem of the underclass and in speaking out, but last week even he was saying: “Surely we can say that the traditional family unit is the best way to nurture children without making it a campaign to beat up single mums.” With respect: you cannot. If you want to reduce the number of single mums you have to be ready to say that to bring a child into the world without a father committed to its care is wrong.
The government need not sponsor publicity campaigns to beat up single mums. Put the cost of irresponsible behaviour back where it belongs — on the man and the woman, their families and their community — and the recognition that the behaviour is wrong will revive instantly, along with powerful social pressures to make sure it happens as seldom as possible.
Some of those pressures will be positive, celebrating marriage as a uniquely valuable institution and bestowing social approval on the bride and groom. Some of those pressures will be negative, consisting of various forms of stigma. This is good. Stigma is one of society’s most efficient methods for controlling destructive behaviour.
How can the government realise this desirable state of affairs? By ending all government programmes that subsidise having babies. But this moves us into the realm of solutions that haven’t a prayer of becoming reality. They haven’t in the United States, where the total package of benefits for single mothers has not been diminished despite the hoopla about welfare reform, and there is no reason to think Britain will act any differently in the foreseeable future.
Now for the good news, if you want to call it that. You don’t need to reduce the underclass to reduce the problems the underclass creates for the rest of us. As evidence, I point to a dog that no longer barks. The underclass, the most important domestic policy issue of the 1980s, is no longer even a topic of conversation in the United States.
The American underclass isn’t any smaller. The three indicators of an underclass — the proportion of children born to single women, criminality among young men and young men who have dropped out of the labour force — have all grown or remained steady during the past 15 years. The underclass is no longer an issue because we successfully put it out of sight and out of mind.
Consider the presence of the underclass in American cities. Fifteen or 20 years ago, the homeless, panhandlers and street hustlers were everywhere. Today they are virtually gone in most cities (San Francisco remains the exception). Graffiti used to be everywhere in American cities. Today it is rare in the better parts of town. You have no idea how depressing graffiti is until you’ve lived without it and then encounter it again, as you do in cities throughout Europe.
The social segregation of the underclass has been nearly perfected. We have not learnt how to compensate for the parenting deficits that cripple the lives of children of the underclass, but we have learnt how to avoid dealing with the consequences.
American children of the middle and upper classes no longer go to school with the children of the underclass. For a number of years, progressive American educators managed to dilute the old principle that a school drew only from a restricted geographic area. That principle has been reinstated so parents can be sure that if they move to the right neighbourhood their children won’t have large numbers of disruptive, foul-mouthed, sexually precocious and sometimes violent classmates. Middle and upper-class parents who remain within large cities commonly send their children to private schools.
Increased geographic segregation of the underclass has facilitated social segregation. In many large cities, urban renovation has reclaimed deteriorating downtown areas for glitzy shops and gleaming offices. Gentrification has retrieved much of the urban housing stock that had fallen into disrepair. The “inner city” is seldom literally located in the inner city but in decrepit neighbourhoods on the periphery that need not be on the travel route of the rest of us.
Most importantly, America has dealt with its crime problem. The crime rate has dropped by about one-third since the early 1990s. It has dropped even more in the better parts of town. People walk the streets of New York and Chicago without taking the precautions they used to take. Triple-locked doors and bars on the windows are not as necessary as they used to be. People feel safer and are safer.
We didn’t solve the crime problem by learning how to get tough on the causes of crime nor by rehabilitating criminals. We just took them off the streets. As of 2005, more than 2m Americans are incarcerated. That number is inefficiently large — it includes many minor drug offenders — but it responds to the question “Does prison work?”.
If you are willing to pay the price — a price that would amount to a British prison population of roughly 250,000 if your sentencing followed the American model — you can reduce crime dramatically.
All of these are policies that the British political establishment may come to accept in another decade or so. If London were to get a mayor who decided to take the homeless off the streets, scrub away the graffiti and adopt a zero-tolerance policing policy, I suspect he would find the same surge in popularity that Rudy Giuliani experienced in New York.
British parents are increasingly vocal about their dissatisfaction with schools, and especially with their spinelessness in dealing with disruptive children. In every area of life that the underclass affects, the public mood is shifting towards support of the American solution. Politicians who covet votes will come around eventually.
Hence my prediction that in 15 years, perhaps less, the underclass/Neet will no longer be a political issue in Britain and urban life for most of you will be more pleasant than it is now. The price will have been a great deal of money spent on prisons and, in effect, the writing-off of a portion of the population as unfit for civil society.
In the United States I have called this the coming of custodial democracy — literally custodial for criminals, figuratively custodial for the neighbourhoods we seal away from the rest of us. Custodial democracy is probably headed your way.
It is not a happy solution. On the contrary, it means abandoning a central tenet of a free society — that everyone can exercise equal responsibility for his or her own life. But Britain, like the United States and western Europe, is locked into a welfare state that by its nature generates large numbers of feckless people. If we are unwilling to prevent an underclass by giving responsibility for behaviour back to individuals, their families, and communities, custodial democracy is the only option left.
* * * * *
Hat tip to Laban Tall, with special thanks for pointing my way toward that glorious bit of verse by John Betjeman.
Comments (77)
I prefer the state subsidization of illegitimate children to the de facto incentivization of abortion that working against it would create.
I think it would be more promising to promote marriage through anti-divorce laws, though I'm not optimistic that this would ever happen in America, at least in today's political climate.
Posted by Josh | September 22, 2010 6:38 PM
One of the scarier trends is the surge in divorce and bastardy among middle class folks as well. The numbers for suburban whites are now approaching the levels that so alarmed D. P. Moynihan when observed in urban blacks in the early 60s.
And yet, perhaps the most fervid agitation in the land is for yet more reckless innovations in the human family and the institution of marriage.
Posted by Paul J Cella | September 22, 2010 7:11 PM
"I think it would be more promising to promote marriage through anti-divorce laws"
Wait. People who are having babies out of wedlock and have no inclination to marry will be more likely to wed if it's harder for them to get out of a marriage they aren't inclined to enter into in the first place. How irrational do you take these people to be?
Posted by Clayton | September 22, 2010 7:16 PM
"And yet, perhaps the most fervid agitation in the land is for yet more reckless innovations in the human family and the institution of marriage."
Precisely so, Paul.
To coin a phrase - we are doomed.
Posted by steve burton | September 22, 2010 7:23 PM
Fascinating read, Steve.
Posted by William Luse | September 22, 2010 10:33 PM
The other thing that is often not noticed is that prior to a 1971 Illinois custody case, a man who sired a child out of wedlock had to pay child support but had no custody rights unless he married the woman. The state also presumed that any child born while a couple was married to each other was that couple's natural child. If someone outside the family--the mother's lover, let's say--wanted "visitation" rights, he couldn't get the government to give them to him. No, he had to either convince the woman to divorce her present husband and marry him (but divorce was very difficult), or if he wanted to subject himself to a blood test to test paternity, he would have to pay child support if it was proved to have sired the child, but he still couldn't visit the kid.
Extra-marital sex was risky and expensive, as it should be, since children and their futures hang in the balance.
Any country that is willing to borrow from future generations to help them pay for the good life now, has no problem of underwriting sex without consequences with the souls of those future children.
This is why, except for in rare circumstances, we should not allow anyone except married male-female couples to adopt. Every child has a mother and a father and is entitled to the protection of both together, that means wedded, committed to each other and the child forever. An adopted child, thus, requires a replacement for each. This means gay couples, single couples (gay or straight), and singles are prima facie unqualified.
Anyone who knowingly adopts a child to enter a family situation that does not include a permanent male-female married couple, when one is in fact available, is willfully denying that child to what it is entitled. That means that Rosie O'Donnell, Andrew Sullivan, and Laura Ingraham are very bad people.
Posted by Thomas Aquinas | September 22, 2010 11:58 PM
Hi Clayton,
You wrote, "Wait. People who are having babies out of wedlock and have no inclination to marry will be more likely to wed if it's harder for them to get out of a marriage they aren't inclined to enter into in the first place. How irrational do you take these people to be?"
Nice response. But as a response to your response, think of it like this (I know that's a patronizing phrase, but I don't know what else to use. Should I have said "how about this"?):
1. Divorce becomes harder
2. Marriage becomes the kind of arrangement you can't as easily escape as before
3. This sends a message that marriage is pretty significant
4. Because marriage it treated by the government as pretty significant, people take it more seriously
5. Because people take it more seriously, it seems more important
6. Because marriage seems more important, people want to enter into it more
7. Because people want to enter into it more, and because it's harder to get out of once entered, the out-of-wedlock birth rate goes down.
It may be implausible, but it's at least a mechanism.
Posted by Bobcat | September 23, 2010 1:20 AM
“'Surely we can say that the traditional family unit is the best way to nurture children without making it a campaign to beat up single mums.' With respect: you cannot”
I challenge this point because it is so rare to hear praise for the traditional family in the first place. Our leaders praise "hard-working single mothers" far more than upstanding husbands and wives whose taxes support them.
I especially favor derision towards the idea that mere *tax policy* can help create or rectify the problem of illegitimacy. However, I think welfare incentives favoring the intact family would do more good than Steve Burton thinks they will. I've read the Irish illegitimacy rate balooned to 25 percent when anti-family welfare incentives were created, so wisdom in this area should help.
The increase in illegitimacy is going to mean the problem will be much more irreformable. A few of my friends are now never-married mothers themselves. How hard will it be to oppose illegitimacy if your brother-in-law was born out of wedlock?
Worse, the illegitimacy scribblers and academics encounter tends to be higher functioning than average.
High-functioning illegitimacy is especially hard to rebuke. The Murphy Brown-type is lionized, hiding the fact that many single mothers appear to function well because they are still subsidized by their own middle class parents (not to mention the taxpayers!).
The segregation Murray speaks of is economic, not moral. This is another reason why the clueless "fiscal conservative / social liberal" chimera is counterproductive. (This is also a reason why some people view economics as the primary reality, since it's one of the few remaining forces allowed to determine social structure and status.)
Moral segregation is presently forbidden, since one often can't legally discriminate against unmarried people in housing, employment, or many services. This ban even side-tracks conscientious people into objecting to such discrimination instead of to problematic lifestyles.
In the first comment on this thread, Josh brings up the inevitable pro-life objection to stigmatization of illegitimacy. "Let's shut up and pay up, or they'll kill their babies" recalls a terrorist's threat.
There's probably a consequentialist debate to be had on this issue. What if higher taxes needed to support illegitimate children also indirectly cause more abortions by decreasing jobs and encouraging fornication?
But that's a tangent. It's quite possible to stigmatize abortion more than illegitimacy, and this should be the aim of a good society. Silence in the face of illegitimacy undermines the virtues of honesty and sound judgment, not to mention the family.
While silence can be wise, it is also a very dangerous temptation to be silent in the face of an obvious wrong, for fear that a greater wrong may result. "Open rebuke is better than silent love."
Miscellaneous-but-related indicators of cultural decline:
Fatherless girls *start puberty earlier*. Google "Absent fathers can cause early puberty in girls"
Even slight promiscuity among women drastically increases their divorce risk.
Posted by Kevin J Jones | September 23, 2010 2:45 AM
Bobcat,
It's an interesting argument, but the chief flaw seems to be the way it generalizes across both the sort of people who would value marriage more if it is harder to get out of as well as men who now don't care whether they leave a single woman pregnant and without support. If we're just engaged in armchair speculation, my speculation is that someone who is already unconcerned with the plight of someone he sleeps with and his biological children won't be made into a caring and responsible person if marriage becomes more valued by the sort of person who thinks the value of a marriage is partially a function of how hard it is to end it once it started. Does anyone have any specific reason for thinking the armchair speculation that supports Bobcat's argument is more reliable than the more pessimistic armchair speculation I have to offer.
Posted by Clayton | September 23, 2010 8:58 AM
I would also like to throw into the mix here that adoption has been undermined over the past thirty-so years by judicial and statutory moves giving power to the unmarried biological father. I know of one case where a mother believed (probably rightly, though she didn't seek legal counsel) that she could not place her illegitimate child for adoption because the father said he "wouldn't let her." This despite the fact that the child was conceived only as a result of a (literally) faked marriage. This relatively new legal structure making fathers and mothers of illegitimate children equal all needs to be dismantled. It was a result of the feminist attempt to make men and women equal in law. Fathers of illegitimate children should have vastly fewer rights than mothers and should not be able to block adoptions, period. Most states (all states?) have it set up that the father can block the adoption even if he is unwilling, unfit, or unable to take full custody of the child himself. It's outrageous and undoubtedly (and ironically) increases the number of children growing up without a father.
Posted by Lydia | September 23, 2010 9:09 AM
Clayton writes:
"it generalizes across both the sort of people who would value marriage."
That is precisely the problem. WE have a generation of people who think that things like marriage are valuable if people value them. In the past, marriage was thought to be valuable intrinsically regardless of whether others valued it.
But Clayton is in good company: Henry VIII, Hugh Hefner, etc.
Posted by Thomas Aquinas | September 23, 2010 10:17 AM
Clayton:
"Wait. People who are having babies out of wedlock and have no inclination to marry will be more likely to wed if it's harder for them to get out of a marriage they aren't inclined to enter into in the first place. How irrational do you take these people to be?"
Okay, I wasn't expressing myelf very well... I apologize.
I was thinking about how to address single motherhood in general. Divorced single mothers might have children born within marriage (making them technically not "bastards") but their children are lacking a father just as much as children born outside marriage altogether. The broader issue is the breakdown of traditional marriage and anti-divorce laws would address part of the problem of single motherhood -- though you're right, I don't think it would address the issue of women having children without ever having been married, at least not directly.
Kevin Jones:
"In the first comment on this thread, Josh brings up the inevitable pro-life objection to stigmatization of illegitimacy. "Let's shut up and pay up, or they'll kill their babies" recalls a terrorist's threat."
Does it recall a terrorist's threat? A terrorist has the intention to use violence to cause his political opponent to submit to his demands. A pregnant woman who doesn't think of a fetus as a human life who would be ashamed to have a "bastard" child might have the abortion without any thoughts of demands or anything of the sort. This terror bit is unnecesary rhetoric that clouds the issue instead of clarifying it. Without addressing the issue of incentives for abortion, a Christian solution isn't possible, in my opinion. If the Christians don't do anything to safeguard the lives of the unborn, no one will because virtually no one else cares. Those lives are more important than any economic concern.
Kevin Jones:
"There's probably a consequentialist debate to be had on this issue. What if higher taxes needed to support illegitimate children also indirectly cause more abortions by decreasing jobs and encouraging fornication?"
Well, if taxes cause more abortion, then obviously we have a case for lower taxes. If that's the case, however, we should be against spending for any government program whose value is less important than protecting the lives of the unborn -- that is, virtually all of them. Goodbye, vast majority of the Department of Defense, Social Security, Medicare... virtually everything. And maybe such a solution is fine, if it really does reduce abortion, extreme though it is, but I have the feeling that the correlation between higher taxes and higher abortion rates isn't that strong. I doubt it exists at all -- maybe you have some statistics showing otherise?
Posted by Josh | September 23, 2010 12:24 PM
I especially favor derision towards the idea that mere *tax policy* can help create or rectify the problem of illegitimacy.
Well, it would if you were willing to be draconian about it: Every child born outside of wedlock automatically is DNA tested and both the biological father and mother pay a long (18 years) levy to the adopting family. Oh, and the SAME tax is levied on them if they abort the baby instead - the money just goes to other adoption programs. If the married couple has the baby first, and then divorce, the SAME tax applies. If you had some really draconian tax laws, you could reduce single parent "families" pretty well. Of course, none of these could ever get passed - people like the freedom to be irresponsible toward their children.
We need to learn ways of helping the needy without encouraging irresponsibility. Since the governmental way of helping the needy never asks things like "so, why is it exactly that you are so needy?", it stands to reason that other approaches that those are needed. Either, a government that makes value judgments about lifestyles, including promiscuity, or taking care of the needy out of government hands and putting it in the hands of people who are ready and qualified to make such value judgments, like churches.
Posted by Tony | September 23, 2010 5:31 PM
Tony, unfortunately, non-governmental charities are highly unlikely to make such value judgments in the relevant way. Can you imagine any church organization taking into account a woman's promiscuity in the context of trying to decide whether to give her money now that she has a child? Can you imagine their considering any sort of "tough love" according to which they would not subsidize her as a single mother on the grounds that that would reward and encourage single motherhood? Of course not. It would be seen as penalizing the child. Look, I have read recently in two completely different places Catholics saying quite explicitly that drug addicts and alcoholics on the street must be given money handouts with no strings attached, even if they are simply going to take the money and use it to purchase drugs or their next drink. They consider it a _Christian duty_ to continue to enable utterly self-destructive behavior. I mean this quite literally. I have been appalled. How much the more would such arguments from the duty to attach no conditions to love, etc., etc., be made when there was a child in the situation?
Some time ago, Tony, you said that unwed mothers should lose their parental rights. I'm still highly unlikely to endorse that as a blanket policy, because the foster care system is so incredibly bad, and I don't trust the government to care for children.
But as a matter of incentives, I do see the problem with telling a woman that she can have a child out of wedlock, keep that child, and collect money (whether from private or public sources) simply because she has done this. I read recently of a doctor who said that a young woman came into the ER where he worked about to give birth. She already had several illegitimate children at home, living with her and her mother. She told the doctors, "My mother says I'm the bread winner." Having the babies, that is, to collect welfare for each of them. Really makes you think.
Posted by Lydia | September 23, 2010 6:40 PM
Lydia,
This is only just if you are willing to absolve the father of all legal obligations to the child, as our ancestors did. Our ancestors were smart enough to realize that the only way to keep women from getting pregnant out of wedlock was to make a woman's claim on the resources of her "baby daddy" was to be his lawful wife.
Posted by Mike T | September 23, 2010 7:52 PM
Mike, if that were the price to be paid for freeing the child for adoption, no strings attached, it might be worth it. However, I do wonder to what extent that sort of quid pro quo springs from the very notions of equality of the sexes that gave us the more recent messed-up adoption laws.
I should add that there really needs to be a way to push adoption and urge it on the unwed mothers as well, even if only in terms of social expectations and people talking to the women and counseling them. I worry about this a bit with crisis pregnancy centers. My perception is that they are so concerned to support the woman in whatever she decides that they don't push adoption at all. Our local one gives parenting classes to the unwed mothers, for example.
It's as though all the woman has to say is, "Oh, I could never put my baby up for adoption," and that's the end of the conversation. Nor does this necessarily spring from selfless love, because often it is said by women who are considering aborting. Reminds me of the bit from the movie _Ladyhawk_ where the bad guy says that if he can't have the heroine, no man shall. They'd rather kill the child than let someone else have him. (Wonder how that would have played out in Solomon's court. I guess both claimants would have been yelling to have the baby cut in half.)
Posted by Lydia | September 23, 2010 8:25 PM
The best way to end illegitimacy is to restore a proper understanding of two things: God and Marriage.
I have no idea how to do that although I realize that whatever the solution is, it must start with me.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | September 23, 2010 8:29 PM
Dear Dumb Ox,
"Clayton writes:
"it generalizes across both the sort of people who would value marriage."
That is precisely the problem. WE have a generation of people who think that things like marriage are valuable if people value them. In the past, marriage was thought to be valuable intrinsically regardless of whether others valued it.
But Clayton is in good company: Henry VIII, Hugh Hefner, etc."
That's cute. Of course, I never said that valuings determine the value of a marriage, but why should you let that get in the way of trying to make a cute point?
Posted by Clayton | September 23, 2010 8:29 PM
Would it, in fact, penalize the child? If the answer is "yes" then resistance to the idea is perfectly sensible. Sometimes there is just brokenness and lots of water under the bridge. Broken people and their broken children still need food, clothing and shelter, do they not?
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 23, 2010 8:36 PM
Lydia,
I think you are over-reaching. This sort of "quid pro quo" was the norm of human civilization long before liberalism existed.
Posted by Mike T | September 23, 2010 8:49 PM
Well, Jeff, it's a very difficult question. As far as I'm concerned the best way to give charity while avoiding having charity incentivize bad behavior is
a) to have the charity given in a small and _unpredictable_ way rather than systematically and predictably, from a large source with deep pockets,
b) for those who give the charity to try with all their ingenuity to find ways to avoid giving the recipients the expectation that behavior that is destructive of themselves and of others will be rewarded,
and
c) for the charity not to give the person a life he is likely to think desirable. In other words, it is for the good of society if a life lived on the charity of others is less materially desirable, a lesser lifestyle, than a life in which a family provides for itself.
When people are being chided (I have seen it myself) for "judging" the homeless if the homeless have *laptop computers* (because, we are told, they might just be impulsive people who make "poor choices"), we have a problem.
Illegitimate children whose parents are not going to marry and care for them should be put up for adoption. I believe that very strongly. Once the child has bonded with his mother and come to be really conscious of that bond, this can of course come to be a bad idea. It should be done in early infancy.
As long as we make unwed motherhood seem normal and simply support the unwed mothers without a word of judgement, as long as we accept without a word of protest their declaration that they intend to raise the child themselves, as long as we think that the government _owes_ it to them to shell out more and more money for each and every child they deliberately raise in this broken situation, we are perpetuating a problem for all concerned. How exactly to break this cycle I don't know, but I do know that "unconditional charity, no questions asked," cannot be the best answer. There ought, if nothing else, to be a way to seek to make unwed mothers give a good reason not to place the child for adoption, a reason other than a desire not to do so, before subsidizing the raising of a child in a fatherless home.
Posted by Lydia | September 23, 2010 9:24 PM
I agree, in principle, save for the problem of how to sort out who's going to marry from who isn't going to marry. Local jurisdictions might consider policies in which every child born to an unmarried mother is placed under review for possible adoption. The review would consider a number of things in addition to the marriage prospects of the mother. How long would the child likely linger in foster care? Would the child be taken from a devout Christian mother and placed with married worldlings? Are there siblings in the picture? Etc.
Would I support such policies? Probably not under present conditions. I'm highly averse to giving CPS any more authority to remove children from parents than they already have, given their horrific record and knowing the ideology which often motivates them.
It's not a matter of government owing anyone anything, but of you and I providing for the poor as best we can - and in some cases that might be through the agency of government. Furthermore I would not frame the problem in the language of economic determinism. Money and material provisions are not the only incentives for changing or not changing one's behavior. By the time a family is homeless, in any case, it is hard to imagine additional material disincentives being effective. The prospect of starvation and death might work, but I'm not interested in going there. Sometimes the risk of "perpetuating" a sinful lifestyle is the lesser evil.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 23, 2010 9:58 PM
I agree with you about CPS, which is why I said what I did above to Mike T. But at a minimum, there ought to be some way for charitable organizations to make adoption seem more like the norm. Even a questionnaire along the lines of, "Are you placing your child for adoption? If not, why not?" would be better than the strict non-judgementalism with which charitable organizations and welfare organizations now dole out help, etc., to unwed mothers. The mere psychological pressure of implying that they _ought_ to place their children for adoption, even without direct sanctions attached, would be better than nothing.
Posted by Lydia | September 23, 2010 10:12 PM
Yes, absolutely. I'd even go for publicly funded billboards: "Pregnant and unmarried? Please consider adoption. Call 1-800-etc."
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 23, 2010 10:17 PM
There is the not so insignificant matter that marriage is more an anticipation or fulfillment of greater earnings than the cause. Then there is the matter of social and familial capital that simply isn't that prevalent among the lower classes, and hence their is an absence of need for marital legitimacy. For all practical purposes you would get similar results measuring families with country club memberships versus households without them.
Perhaps I shouldn't be shocked at Lydia's opinion that lower class wombs should be put to use for the barren upper class, but I'm not.
Posted by M.Z. | September 23, 2010 11:23 PM
How is it that you became such an insufferable jerk?
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 23, 2010 11:37 PM
Josh writes:
"This terror bit is unnecesary rhetoric that clouds the issue instead of clarifying it."
I meant to focus in on the idea that we should not necessarily allow another's threat to kill to be a guide our arguments and actions. Creating a stigma on illegitimate births could incent abortion. So could simply listing the economic costs of illegitimate births.
Why should the possibility that stigmatization leads to more abortions make us renounce stigmatization?
"Without addressing the issue of incentives for abortion, a Christian solution isn't possible, in my opinion. If the Christians don't do anything to safeguard the lives of the unborn, no one will because virtually no one else cares. Those lives are more important than any economic concern."
Let's recall that "incentivization" tends to be from utilitarian economist language, not Christian language. At some point truth must be said, regardless of the bloody consequences. The automatic pro-life fear of causing more abortions can have paralyzing and compromising effects.
Posted by Kevin J Jones | September 24, 2010 12:57 AM
Why not punish the cause instead of the results? Outlaw all fornication and adultery and punish the malefactors with heavy fines which would pay for the unwed children. But if fornication is not a crime, there can be no legitimate complaint against so-called illegitimacy, when the sex is acknowledged to be legitimate. Or you have effectively mandated contraception. Must be the new marriage or something.
Posted by Timon | September 24, 2010 2:27 AM
WTUnholy Boogers is WITH folks going from "this should not be encouraged" to "this should be illegal, with nasty movie-type guys in black leather and shiny glasses going about doing horrible things For The Good You Have Promoted!!!!!1!11!11!
The notion is really simple: do not pay women to get knocked up.
You are NOT incentivizing abortion by making bastardry not pay-- you're disincentivizing fortification.
Timon-
I hope you're just ignorant, so I'll bother to respond; if you're a troll, you're just pathetic.
I'll use small words:
Legal is not right.
Right is not legal.
Because you can doesn't mean you should.
Because you should not does not mean you can not legally do so.
Posted by Foxfier | September 24, 2010 5:53 AM
You get what you pay for. Poverty is a great incentive to not do things which make one less able to be a productive citizen. Becoming an unwed mother instead of a married women with children is at the top of the list for women.
Jeff, you might want to revisit some of your musings about why some of us are so hard on the welfare state and realize that it is the welfare state that lets these women even exist in the first place. It is the institution which funds the assault on marriage. You can't reform it because its very purpose is to keep people from feeling the consequences of their actions in such cases.
Posted by Mike T | September 24, 2010 6:05 AM
Ever watch one of those martial arts movies where the student spends years of hard work honing his skills in a monastery in the mountains? Yeah, it's something like that...
Posted by Mike T | September 24, 2010 8:26 AM
MZ's silliness is even worse than jerkiness to me. It's a use of his simplistic categories to erase the harm being done to children by the situation we're discussing here--the deliberate, repeated, chronic conception of children to be raised by mothers alone.
Posted by Lydia | September 24, 2010 9:51 AM
It is a common rule of thumb regarding government: Because human beings are normally creatures of incentive, you get more of what you subsidize, less of what you tax. Construct your public policy from there.
Posted by Michael Bauman | September 24, 2010 10:02 AM
MZ has made it clear here that he is more committed to a Marxist view of the world than a Christian one. Accordingly, he judges the harm on a material basis, not a Christian one which gives equal or greater weight to the spiritual harm done to them. To him, it is better to have a well-fed, well-clothed, fat, dumb and sassy bastard who doesn't know their father than a dirt poor child who has a stable family.
The church is supposed to be concerned with the material well-being of poor as an aspect of the spiritual care they need. A lot of Christians, especially Catholics, don't seem to grasp that. The good of the soul begins with that poor person's acceptance of Jesus Christ. All good the church can do for their soul must work toward that end. Giving people money to continue a lifestyle that is contrary to that can never be a spiritual good. It is simply an abomination as it works in the name of Christ but flagrantly discourages people from obeying Him.
Posted by Mike T | September 24, 2010 11:21 AM
foxfier,
Ignorant or pathetic as the question may be, why is fornication legal, and why, when most people perhaps do not think it is wrong, should people turn a cold shoulder toward unwed mothers and their little bastards? It's sort of like eating your young, or swallowing your own tail.
Posted by timon | September 24, 2010 12:28 PM
Ignorant or pathetic as the question may be, why is fornication legal, and why, when most people perhaps do not think it is wrong, should people turn a cold shoulder toward unwed mothers and their little bastards? It's sort of like eating your young, or swallowing your own tail.
Actually, fornication is legal because of the imprudent idea of personal privacy espoused in such rulings as Row v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. The Supremes seemed not to realize that since marriage is a public act and marriage is ordained for the purpose of begetting and rearing children, then sex, although an intimate act, also has a public effect (if, sex and children are not separated as cause and effect). Thus, in a sense, the public has a right to make sure that private acts are still ordered to the public good.
The idea of personal privacy has been misused to allow fornication on the theory that what one does in the privacy of one's bedroom is no one else's business. It was the shoddy thinking of Justice Blackmun, in part, that allowed this to happen. This, plus the introduction of the Pill and the re-emergence of feminism made for no-consequence (or supposed no-consequence) sex. These are all outcomes of the youth movement and female employment that arose after WWII. Similar things happened after WWI. The aftermath of World Wars are always bad for morality.
The Chicken
Posted by The Masked Chicken | September 24, 2010 1:27 PM
No MikeT. I believe a child will have a more stable life by insuring his parents have the proper support to raise him rather than ripping apart the biological bonds in some enlightened attempt of the privileged to save the heathens. The Church historically wasn't in the adoption business, and adoption is in fact a modern phenomenon once we get outside of intrafamily arrangements.
If I'm a jerk for finding outrageous the idea that children should be surrendered by force from their birth parents, then I'll gladly accept the charge. I have little patience for the feel good enlightenment stories the privileged offer for their evil.
Posted by M.Z. | September 24, 2010 1:27 PM
Kevin Jones:
"I meant to focus in on the idea that we should not necessarily allow another's threat to kill to be a guide our arguments and actions. Creating a stigma on illegitimate births could incent abortion. So could simply listing the economic costs of illegitimate births.
Why should the possibility that stigmatization leads to more abortions make us renounce stigmatization?"
Because the lives of the unborn are worth a great deal, and no one cares anything about them except Christians, for the most part. If Christians don't take their lives into consideration, then we are showing through our actions (as we usually do) that we don't consider abortion to be all that great a crime. If we remove the incentive for one sin and in doing so, increase the incentive for another, are we really making progress?
I'm not saying we shouldn't work against sex outside marriage. Extra-marital sex is a sin against God. I'm not saying we shouldn't work to promote traditional families. I'm saying that the solutions offered here are inadequate because they compromise our belief that the unborn are human lives -- lives that we must value. I'm for the traditional family and against extra-marital sex because these stances are Christian stances -- any economic benefit is gravy. If it happened to be the case that some new liberal philosophy arose that developed a new kind of "family" that was against the laws of God but made everyone in the world wealthy, I'd be against it. (I'm not saying such a thing is possible; I only bring it up as a hypothetical example that highlights why we should value the traditional family.) I'd expect all Christians would agree with me here.
Kevin Jones:
"Let's recall that "incentivization" tends to be from utilitarian economist language, not Christian language. At some point truth must be said, regardless of the bloody consequences. The automatic pro-life fear of causing more abortions can have paralyzing and compromising effects."
As for language, yes, you're right, it isn't Christian language, but neither is scientific language Christian language, and there is a lot of truth in scientific language.
Maybe I'm talking out of my butt, but I think it's almost always true that in political discussions, Christians can either have the most ideally correct beliefs (I'm personally tempted to be an absolute monarchist -- I'm sure one can dispute the purity of this but fill in the blank how you will) or we can take into account the reality of today's political climate in an attempt to develop a pragmatic, if compromised stance. Being an idealist seems more pure, but it's completely impractical and gets us nowhere. Being realistic means watering down Christianity. This tension is awful and is why political talk is difficult for me.
The "speak truth at all costs" perspective really isn't that convincing to me, because I'm sure you know that one can speak the truth with any number of tones (e.g. optimistic, pessimistic, angry, indifferent), with any number of variations of attitude (e.g. strident, meek) or different degrees of emphasis. One can go to an obese woman and say "Hey fatty, why don't you cut down on the cheeseburgers? You'll live longer!" -- but I don't think most would see that as appropriate. It doesn't matter that it's for her good (she really would live longer) or that it's better for society (others won't have to pay for her health costs), it's not appropriate.
Yes, of course Christians should be against having children outside marriage, but we need to decide if speaking out to the extent that we create a stigma is really what we as Christians want. And part of what we need to consider is the effect it would have on the unborn.
Ideally we will come up with a solution that addresses abortion and women having children outside marriage. Until that happens, I suppose you will look at the single parent issue and not emphasize the effect it will have on the unborn. I will look at the abortion issue and not emphasize the effect it will have on reducing single parent families. If you like, yes, I'll admit I'm compromising myself, but as I see it, you are as well.
Posted by Josh | September 24, 2010 1:53 PM
MZ,
Since the strawman you dismembered wasn't posting in this thread, would you care to point out some examples of "the idea that children should be surrendered by force from their birth parents?" I must have missed them...
Feel free to just post a comment with the comment permalinks in the body...
Posted by Mike T | September 24, 2010 3:15 PM
I don't know if MZ is worth even answering, but those of us who have known adoptive parents know that portraying adoptive parents generally as some sort of privileged elite preying off of the poor is an obscene slander. Nor is there anything remotely unChristian about adoption. Many of us who have known its benefits thank God frequently, realizing vividly that our whole lives are a gift.
I suggest we put MZ and Tony in a room together and let them fight it out. I like Tony, so perhaps I shouldn't suggest this, but actually, I have no worries.
Posted by Lydia | September 24, 2010 3:23 PM
It's very simple. Take most of the proposals here and add to them abortion (for reasons other than to save a woman's life) being placed under first degree murder.
If you really regard abortion as a form of murder, then that should be as natural as placing the house cat under the genus felis.
A woman who would voluntarily murder her unborn child to preserve her lifestyle, which is what 99% of abortions are for, is entitled to only the same Christian sympathy (at the most) that a man who needlessly guns down a stranger on the street is entitled to. In fact, one could argue that the fact that it is her own child makes her even less sympathetic when you soberly consider the true nature of the act.
Posted by Mike T | September 24, 2010 3:37 PM
I'd suggest we put MZ and a rabid badger in a room to duke it, if for no other reason that it'd be a battle between equals.
Posted by Mike T | September 24, 2010 3:40 PM
You're a hard man, Mike. Have some fear of God. "For with the same measure that you shall mete withal, it shall be measured to you again." "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy."
I think the abortion issue is, in most cases, a little more complex than some guy gunning down a stranger on the street for fun. Yes, even if "lifestyle" is part of the mix.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 24, 2010 5:47 PM
Jeff:
Okay, compare it to a guy who murders his boss or competing coworker because he thinks he's about to get fired. He'd still elicit very little sympathy. Mike is hard but right: elective abortion should be seen as murder, and should be soberly taken into account when Christian charities decide how to spend their money. And yes, there should be a stigma against single motherhood, just as there is a stigma against absentee fathers. I think the tendency of men to wring their hands and get out the kid gloves with women, when they'd rightfully hold men accountable for similarly self-serving behavior, is at play here.
Posted by The Deuce | September 24, 2010 6:01 PM
Deuce, no, there is much more self-deception involved with women who abort their babies. Consider the stats pertaining to ultrasound technology, which reduces the incidence of abortion dramatically. Once a mother SEES with her own eyes that her baby is really a baby, she can't make the same excuses anymore. That doesn't mean that abortion isn't murder with or without ultrasound, but it does indicate that varying degrees of culpability are involved. In addition to the emotional turmoil of a "crisis" pregnancy, pregnant women can also suffer from severe hormone imbalances, rendering them much more susceptible to the lies of abortion advocates.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 24, 2010 6:18 PM
That tendency is God-given. Women are indeed the "weaker sex" by nature. Absent a strong personal faith and without men to buttress their convictions, women are more easily manipulated.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 24, 2010 6:24 PM
Posted by The Deuce | September 24, 2010 6:49 PM
Let's remember--it's the abortionist who tears the child apart and reassembles the little arms and legs afterwards. If anyone should be compared to a shooter, it's the abortionist.
Posted by Lydia | September 24, 2010 6:54 PM
Deuce, I'm on record opposing the 19th amendment, though mostly for other reasons. Certainly it's all of a piece.
Abortion is most directly tied to the social acceptance of promiscuity. 83% of abortions are procured by unmarried women. That's a number with a fairly stark message.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 24, 2010 7:09 PM
Quite right, Lydia. Knowledge, malice, premeditation, foresight, etc. - it's all there.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 24, 2010 7:11 PM
Jeff:
Right, which is part of why I don't buy the line that stigmatizing the production of bastards, or even just refusing to subsidize it, only drives more women into the arms of abortionists. While there would probably some cases of this, it seems likely to me to also reduce promiscuity over time, and hence prevent more abortions in the long-run. This is particularly true when you consider that bastard children are the most likely to end up exhibiting the social pathologies the perpetuate more bastardy and abortion. And if it's combined with the illegalization of abortion, it's a lock.
Lydia:
You're right, though the woman is still culpable, and people who have others killed for them can still be considered guilty of murder (take this recent case in Virginia, for instance).
Posted by The Deuce | September 24, 2010 7:44 PM
Yes, there ought to be social stigma for becoming pregnant (and for impregnating) out of wedlock. I'm all for that. But of course this has to be balanced against the needs of the child, who is entirely innocent of this fault and has a right to live with a measure of respect. I'm not sure what the balance is, but I'm skeptical of any "solution" that doesn't attempt to deal with this tension.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 24, 2010 8:03 PM
Jeff, there is nothing "hard" about my view here. It is simple cold logic to me:
1) Abortion is a species of homicide.
2) Abortion as birth control requires volition on the part of the woman that receives it.
3) Ergo abortion is pre-meditated homicide, thus capital murder.
You and I have different standards of mercy. To me, it is cruel beyond measure to give someone a long prison sentence. It is cruel and degrading, like a form of psychological torture. I favor corporal punishment and punitive restitution for most crimes, including most felonies. In part because they are swift and less disruptive to the recipient of the punishment (less likely to lose a job, for example).
As a recovering Calvinist, I have need to be reminded of how little any of us deserve mercy.
With all due respect, no, it doesn't. To use the Deuce's arguments, that would be like arguing that if your boss is a fiend toward you, that you are less culpable for murdering him than if he were a saint toward you. Pre-meditated murder is pre-meditated murder.
Posted by Mike T | September 24, 2010 8:15 PM
Of course, as I've said here before, I have no desire to see the state carry out waves of executions of unwed mothers. I'd gladly accept an alternative where the punishment for administering or supporting the administration of abortion was a capital punishment, and the state would swiftly and comprehensively enforce it.
Posted by Mike T | September 24, 2010 8:18 PM
Mike, if you're a "recovering Calvinist" you've got a long way to go. Pre-meditated murder, like any other sin, admits of degrees of culpability or subjective guilt. But when all you have is a hammer I suppose everything looks like a nail.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 24, 2010 8:20 PM
As far as social stigma, what do my Christian and conservative friends think of the following propositions:
1) It can be morally legitimate and should be legal for an employer to fire a continuously sexually promiscuous employee, male or female.
2) #1 can be morally legitimate and should be legal even when the promiscuous employee has minor dependent children.
3) Ideally neither the state nor private charity will provide on-going, predictable monetary benefits that equal or exceed what the people in question could make by being employed, even if the people in question have minor dependent children.
You can see how putting all of this together could disincentivize bastardy-for-profit while still permitting charity to be given on a case-by-case basis.
Posted by Lydia | September 24, 2010 8:30 PM
The thief who humbled himself on the cross is an interesting case. He never quibbled about his culpability, but said he was justly condemned. He threw himself on the mercy seat and received mercy because his intent was to accept responsibility not rationalize it away in any fashion.
This is why a pastor I knew called him the greatest theologian, as he perfectly illustrated repentance and submission to Christ.
If a woman wants to receive mercy for her unborn child's murder, all she needs to do is repent. If she justifies herself by saying "I didn't know, so I'm not as bad as they say I am," she condemns herself with her rationalizations.
I say this as someone who struggles with plenty of rationalizations and who knows that mercy is something he does not ever, in any circumstance, merit.
Posted by Mike T | September 24, 2010 8:34 PM
Lydia,
1) Agreed.
2) Agreed.
3) Agreed.
We can do the most good for the most people if we help them survive until we can get them independent. Anything more and we risk making them dependent on us which harms them.
Posted by Mike T | September 24, 2010 8:36 PM
While we're on the subject of murder and mercy, what is your opinion on this case, Jeff?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/23/teresa-lewis-executed-mentally-disabled-virginia_n_737454.html
Posted by Mike T | September 24, 2010 8:58 PM
Mike, although I don't have anything to go on but mainstream news reports, I've read a bit about her case and it appears to me the penalty is just. What is unjust is the fact that her two accomplices did not receive death sentences as well.
Why do you ask? Her attorneys' mental deficiency argument, if true (and I haven't a clue), probably would mitigate her subjective guilt, but as a general rule the law should be enforced based upon the objective violation. That she was a model prisoner and apparently devout is not, in itself, a sufficient reason for clemency.
That said, I do believe that in exceptional cases leniency could be the better choice. I think judges should be judges and not merely ticket writers. But at this point I don't have any reason to believe Teresa Lewis is such a case.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 25, 2010 1:33 AM
Let's consider an alternative scenario. Suppose Mrs. Lewis were pardoned, released, and found herself homeless, promiscuous and drug addicted. Do you think that Church and state should do nothing for her material needs? I would favor institutionalization, myself, but if that's not an option and she gets in the soup line, do we refuse her?
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 25, 2010 1:37 AM
Interesting. If the welfare state is responsible for people existing who would not otherwise exist, then I'm all for it.
Mike, in this country the rise of the welfare state has been accompanied by a loosening of morals and a refusal of government to discourage immoral behavior. But it doesn't need to be that way. The state can pick up the slack (observing subsidiarity, of course) by assisting the needy while at the same time discouraging behaviors that tend to lead to dependency in the first place. Look what it has done for smoking. Welfare - for the poor and rich alike - provides indirect funding for cigarettes, but a strong and comprehensive government campaign against smoking, at every level, has succeeded in marginalizing this behavior all the same.
Again, you reduce human behavior to economic incentives and disincentives. How is that different from the philosophical materialism of atheists and Marxists? Economics is part of the mix but nowhere close to the whole picture.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 25, 2010 2:39 AM
These all sound very good to me, Lydia - assuming that "what the people in question could make by being employed" is a living wage that keeps them off the street and out of homeless shelters.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 25, 2010 2:44 AM
Talk about outlawing fornication or treating abortion as first degree homicide on the mother's part strikes me as an e-traditionalist dead end. There are too many intermediate steps needed to even think about such action, and arguing about its wisdom tends to distract.
With that caveat, I'll argue that laws against abortion were somewhat lenient towards the mother for several reasons. Recall the NRO symposium on Anna Quindlen's challenge to name the sentence for a woman who procures an abortion.
As I understand it, the American states' sentences for such a woman were somewhat lenient because the woman was seen as a victim of the abortionist, because fetology was unclear, because her testimony was needed to convict the abortionist, and for other reasons.
This topic seems like a point where absolute Right-to-Life rhetoric runs afoul of the need to secure minimal justice. So long as abortionists are driven from the community and anti-abortion law can be justified in the public mind, I don't see a need to treat the crimes as the explicit equivalent of first degree murder.
But what is deeply disturbing to me about my supposed realism is that the courts have used inconsistencies in anti-abortion law as a reason to overturn such laws and deny personhood. Check out footnote 54 of Roe v. Wade: http://texaspersonhood.blogspot.com/2010/06/footnote-54.html
"in Texas the woman is not a principal or an accomplice with respect to an abortion upon her. If the fetus is a person, why is the woman not a principal or an accomplice?" the high court wrote.
Obviously the reasons I give above are adequate for someone seeking laws consistent with minimal justice. But if one demands that laws are maximally consistent with pure reason or pure justice, then there might not be a culturally sustainable legal prohibition on abortion. If it is intolerable to have concessions to realistic enforcement or to the situation of a desperate pregnant woman, abortion simply won't be outlawed.
Posted by Kevin J Jones | September 25, 2010 2:54 AM
I agree completely.
Of course not. What the church needs to do is make its spiritual ministry overt and felt in the process.
Nice in theory, but in practice the state will:
1) Compete with private charities. The state hates competition and the feds won't even observe subsidiarity with the states, so the church is a foregone conclusion.
2) Not tie in any spiritual ministry.
3) Never divorce it from politics. It will always be expanded for a politician's benefit and will be framed in terms of "a right," not a "privilege" that comes from mercy.
That is how American politics will invariably take it.
I don't see how philosophical materialism has anything to do with this.
Posted by Mike T | September 25, 2010 8:05 AM
Hi JC!
‘Consider the stats pertaining to ultrasound technology, which reduces the incidence of abortion dramatically.’
Let's do that: Where precisely can one access the stats which show that women who’ve decided to have an abortion do change their mind after they see an ultrasound - and presumably don’t change their mind again; in what range is this percentage you refer to?
‘Women are indeed the "weaker sex" by nature. Absent a strong personal faith and without men to buttress their convictions, women are more easily manipulated.’
By pro-choice advocates? Is there any evidence that women of faith have fewer abortions than other women, or that men will tend to oppose abortion?
It’s also not clear if you agree with Deuce that pregnant women only should be denied the right to vote on grounds of hormonal imbalance or all pre-menopausal women, who still get their periods.
Lydia
‘Let's remember--it's the abortionist who tears the child apart and reassembles the little arms and legs afterwards. If anyone should be compared to a shooter, it's the abortionist.’
You remember wrong, Lydia. Haven’t you heard of RU-486? But by all means let your male friends keep buttressing your convictions, in case they allow you to keep the vote!
Posted by Overseas | September 25, 2010 8:20 AM
Sometimes RU486 is used and works, and sometimes it isn't or doesn't. I've read a shocking story of a woman who took it, saw her early, partly developed child dead, and was totally cold about it. Invited her boyfriend to come and look. That's the kind of woman that makes me sympathize with Mike T. It's not as though all women who have their children killed are victims of the process. But many are. I would certainly outlaw RU486--its manufacture, sale, possession, use, etc. I can only hope that the majority of women who do see their unborn child miscarried do not have the cold and unmoved reaction of that woman.
And in any event, it's hard to see what your point is, Overseas. That we should regard women as being totally responsible and knowing about having their little ones killed? If so, the question is simply how to take _that_ into account in public policy. It hardly follows that abortion should be legal, as you liberal feminists believe.
You do make me laugh a bit, though, with your implication that my male friends are oppressing me. It's very amusing. Around here I'm considered a bit of a holy terror, but they put up with me nonetheless.
Posted by Lydia | September 25, 2010 8:57 AM
‘And in any event, it's hard to see what your point is, Overseas. That we should regard women as being totally responsible and knowing …?’
Well, no less than men are so regarded anyway. What are the alternatives if women with a low IQ are executed for masterminding murders committed by men? I think Deuce made that point. Do you expect me to take what you say or do with a pinch of salt because you’re a woman? Or because it’s ‘that time of the month’?
I didn’t claim it follows that abortion should be legal; I didn’t know I was a liberal feminist either, but thanks for the free diagnosis. In fact, whether abortion is legal or illegal seems to make little difference to actual abortion rates; the rate is higher in Latin America than in North America, for example. And it’s hard to see how a substance could be outlawed which is available over the internet. But if one in three women in the US have an abortion by age 45, I think that those in favour of meting out capital or life sentences will want to consider the implications.
Re your relationship with your male friends, I don’t wish to intrude in private grief. (Just meant to make you laugh a bit more.)
Posted by Overseas | September 25, 2010 10:54 AM
I for one care about the end result (stamping out abortion), not the means. I think we could achieve that by the state executing the entire staff of an abortion clinic for murder and conspiracy to commit the same (sorry, but even a secretary at such a place knows damn well what he or she is supporting).
Posted by Mike T | September 25, 2010 12:00 PM
You can use a search engine, no?
http://www.profam.org/pub/rs/rs.2303.htm
http://www.optionsprc.org/services/project-ultrasound
http://www.lifenews.com/nat2151.html
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 25, 2010 12:26 PM
Thanks, Jeff. Yes, I can just about use a search engine; reliability assessments are more tricky.
I’ve accessed the first link you kindly provide. The academic credentials of the two authors aren’t cited, which does not mean they’re necessarily non-existent; but the article dates back to 2006, and what I had in mind was an article in the NYT dated May 2010
(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/health/policy/28ultrasound.html?_r=1), which states that there have been no studies on the impact of ultrasound laws in the United States and mentions one study in British Columbia which found that, of 254 women who viewed sonograms ‘none reversed her decision’. I have no idea in which peer-reviewed journal, if any, this study was published but I hope you can understand why I was surprised at your claim about the statistics available and what they show.
Posted by Overseas | September 27, 2010 4:19 PM
Now I get foxfier's small words. It was my wordplay on legitimate. To go after unwed childbirth will not discourage fornication, but encourage contraception, and so the stigma which would be newly attached would be an unjust one, and the application would be obviously imbalanced in any case. Lydia's idea of allowing someone to be fired for being promiscuous would be more on target provided that managers, executives, and stockholders could be deprived of all income in the same manner.
Posted by timon | September 30, 2010 3:17 PM
I realize I'm a bit late to this particular thread, but I'd like to provide a warning, or a notice, or, uh, something that I've found it necessary to post before in discussions on socially conservative blogs about a potential return to the "stigmatization of bastardy." I should preface the following with a declaration that I am a frequent reader of this blog (though a very infrequent commenter), and am in general sympathy with its purpose and aims. I am also a Catholic by conversion (from atheism), for whatever that's worth.
I agree entirely that solutions to the problems that bastardy's general acceptance raises must be found, and that they might have economic and/or social elements. Removing financial incentives for unwedded childbirth would seem to be a good start; removing incentives for childbirth full stop seems like a mistake to me, though, given how delicate the demographic situation in the West actually is. On the social level, stigmatizing those parents who willfully engage in the production of bastards might have some merit, and see some results. Stigmatize those, that is, who actually made a foolish or selfish choice.
It is absolutely essential, though, that any re-stigmatization of bastardy must not also involve a re-stigmatization of bastards. I say this not as a disinterested observer, I must admit; I am a product of an unwedded union myself. Still, in a thread in which the federal execution of abortionists has been seriously proposed (by at least one person), I don't think it would be out of line to declare that I and the rest of my illegitimate kind would be quite happy to knock the wretched teeth from the mouth of anyone who thought he or she was striking a blow for the revivification of the culture by making our lives more difficult.
One of the necessary features of the rising number of illegitimate children in the West is that there are more and more of us out there. Kevin J. Jones asked how hard it would become to oppose illegitimacy when your brother-in-law was illegitimate; how hard, then, if it's your own brother? How hard, then, if it's you?
Posted by Nick Milne | September 30, 2010 10:56 PM
Mr. Milne, I had intended to say something to that effect myself, but lost my train of thought somehow. I agree wholeheartedly, and appreciate you making the point.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 30, 2010 11:04 PM
Mr. Milne: if there's anything that we don't have to worry about, it's the "re-stigmatization of bastards."
Won't happen. Indeed, can't happen, short of some sort of barely imaginable social conflagration.
I think that's part of Murray's point.
Posted by steve burton | September 30, 2010 11:30 PM
It could certainly happen within sub-cultures and smaller groups, e.g., among people who are sympathetic to blogs like this one. Indeed worse things have happened and do happen. We're trying to revive little pockets of sanity here, sometimes looking to the past (as we ought). A little reminder to be discerning in the process, from a friendly source, is welcome.
Posted by Jeff Culbreath | September 30, 2010 11:42 PM
Thanks, guys; sorry to be a bother about it. It's been an interesting experience to have grown up in a culture that doesn't care in the slightest about one's parentage and then to have voluntarily entered into a system of religious and political thought that (sometimes) actually takes it seriously. Refreshing, in a way, but still.
As far as the "if there's one thing we don't have to worry about" and "won't happen" sentiments go, I tend to agree, more or less, on a broad societal level, but Jeff Culbreath is right about the little pockets in question. Nevertheless (if we want to draw some really broad examples from history, here), I don't imagine the legendarily decadent citizens of 15th C. Florence would have believed - had they been told in 1452 - that an infant just born would, within a few short decades, have them burning their finery in the streets and whipping themselves in sorrow. Sometimes things change very rapidly, and for reasons only dimly understood. Often we can only stand back and watch.
Posted by Nick Milne | October 1, 2010 12:16 AM