The Age of Unwed Mothers

[four1298]

These are quotes from the report The Age of Unwed Mothers.

What we have called our “teen pregnancy” crisis is not really about teenagers. Nor is it really about pregnancy. It is about the decline of marriage.

America’s teen birth rate is almost 9 times higher than the Netherlands’, four times higher than Sweden’s, more than twice as high as Austria’s, and higher than Great Britain’s

I don't like the US but this makes me patriotic for once though this book is old/outdated so I wonder how true it still holds.

Why is it a problem if a teenager decides to have a child?...One way that this question is almost never explicitly answered in expert dis-course is: Because she is not married.

The teen birth rate is, and has been for many years, much lower today than it was in the 1950s and early 1960s, when many teens married and began their families young. It is the unwed teen birth rate that has grown rapidly enough to earn the label “epidemic.”

According to one 1996. study, “adolescent mothers experience significantly more mental health problems and significantly less well-being than married adult mothers but report similar levels of psychological adjustment when compared to single adult mothers.”1

“The economic situation of older, single childbearers is meager at best; their situation is much closer to that of teen mothers than that of married childbearers . . . ”

Even after con-trolling not only for socioeconomic variables (parental education, occupation, family income, welfare receipt, and race), but also for family process variables (parental warmth, discipline, and time spent with children), “the net effects of non-intact family structure on child development outcomes are negative and strong,” according to Lingxin Hao of Johns Hopkins University.

This explains my first quote. I like this because I guess a nearcel would be able to tell a woman, "I may not have the most money, but we can get married and that will benefit the child."

“the typical woman who uses reversible methods of contraception continuously from her 15th to her 45th birth-day will experience 1.8 contraceptive failures.”

This is why vasectomies and tubal ligations
should be banned - they're effective. And Norplant too as this report mentions(though this report supports Norplant)

Even achieving only delays in repeat unwed childbearing may be important for children’s well-being.

This seems to contradict when it said earlier that unmarriedness is the problem not pregnancy. This book doesn't seem sufficiently pro-teen pregnancy.

White teen mothers, despite the obvious hardships, actually reported greater enjoyment of life and a more positive sense of well-being than childless teens: “The adolescent mothers were developing a stronger purpose for living since the births of their infants?.”

Teen mothers... can admire themselves for being good mothers, willing to sacrifice for their babies. “Today, pregnant teenagers are even beginning to be viewed by some of their peers as role models

“The most common reason for not using birth control among these youths is that unprotected sex is a pledge of intimacy and trust which elevates [simple intercourse] to ‘making love.’”

This is true(the author criticized this view though)

more than 80 percent of both Black and White teen mothers said that they were in love with their partners at the time of conception.
Most of the mothers hoped to marry the father.

Another study of teen parents from the Pacific Northwest, the majority of whom were White and from homes that were not currently welfare-dependent, finds that three-fourths of these teen mothers were either “planning to marry” or “going steady” with the father at the time of the birth. Yet most of them, of course, do not get married.

After all, a slight majority of White teen mothers, and almost 40 percent of Hispanic teen mothers, currently marry before or soon after the child’s birth.

Canadian study looking at women at age 30 found that mothers who married before age 20 had lower educational attainments than single teen moms. But lower educational achievement among early-married moms did not necessarily translate into lower labor force participation or career achievement at age 30.

Five to seven years later, when those children were entering school, fewer than a third of these mothers were generating enough income on their own (including child support payments and help from relatives) to avoid poverty. The mother’s age at birth seemed to have no effect: moth-ers who had first given birth in their early 20s were no better (or worse) off than mothers who had first given birth as teenagers.

I guess ban young adult pregnancy too

In Frank Furstenberg’s longitudinal study of a sample of mostly Black, poor, urban teen mothers in Baltimore, early marriages often played a role in helping teen mothers to avoid welfare dependency and achieve middle-class economic sta-tus. Overall, about 40 percent of these mothers married, either before or soon after the birth. Seventy percent of these marriages — all of which, let us remember, began with unwed pregnancies or births, among mostly disadvantaged women in troubled neighborhoods and had the bad fortune to be launched during a time in which the entire society was undergoing a profound divorce revolution — had ended in divorce or separation by the time the child had reached age But inter-estingly enough, 30 percent of these marriages survived.

I guess instead of banning teen marriage, one of the things we should do is ban no-fault divorce

Retire the term “teen pregnancy” from our public discourse... How about “unwed parenthood” as a substitute?

 

[foidslayer4ever]

Tldr, they are whores from 13

 

[Dr. Autismo]

Only solution:

 

[four1298]

Tldr, they are whores from 13

In a way, it seems like teen mothers aren't whores. Whores use contraception and do it for money unlike teen mothers. It sounds like you're trying to discourage pregnancy by insulting them as "whores." It seems like you're saying whoredoms are bad, as if prostitution should be illegal, so that many men get incarcerated due to your hatred of whores.

Obviously teen pregnancy is bad because I think it's against the law though.

 

[.hiei.jaganshi.]

Tldr, they are whores from 13

Whore alert! Foids are such whores

 

[.hiei.jaganshi.]

In a way, it seems like teen mothers aren't whores. Whores use contraception and do it for money unlike teen mothers. It sounds like you're trying to discourage pregnancy by insulting them as "whores." It seems like you're saying whoredoms are bad, as if prostitution should be illegal, so that many men get incarcerated due to your hatred of whores.

Obviously teen pregnancy is bad because I think it's against the law though.

Teen mothers are whores tho because they’re having sex when they’re teens

 

[Lo3e]

Tldr, they are whores from 13

 

[Lonelyus]

My mom is divorced and hates me i think, Well they sure as fuck dont act supportive, Im being dismissed and neglected all the time.