{"id":629,"date":"2014-02-04T21:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/02\/just-another-lifestyle-choice.html"},"modified":"2014-02-04T21:45:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T21:45:00","slug":"just-another-lifestyle-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/02\/just-another-lifestyle-choice.html","title":{"rendered":"“Just another lifestyle choice”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I suppose I\u2019m showing my age if I quote Dan Quayle (hey, look it up yourself if you don\u2019t know what I\u2019m talking about) but two articles today really reinforce the fact that the American Left is pretty indifferent to whether\u00a0women bear their\u00a0children within or outside of marriage.\u00a0 I guess Glen Reynolds would call this \u201c21st century relationships.\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t have a cute tagline for it, but may have to invent one, at the rate that these stories keep popping up.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Story one, linked to by a facebook friend:\u00a0 \u201cWhy Does Everyone\u2014From Pastors to Progressives\u2014Doom Teen Mothers to Failure?<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 This was on a site called Dame Magazine, which I\u2019d never heard of, and it may be that said facebook friend just came upon something that\u2019s indeed rather obscure.\u00a0 The author raises a legitimate concern:\u00a0 whether pregnant teens are being \u201cpunished\u201d in order to serve as an example to frighten other girls into avoiding pregnancy.\u00a0\u00a0 Now, in terms of particulars, the author laments the lack of day care and other social welfare provisions for teen moms \u2014 where, in reality, there\u2019s no shortage of these programs, though inevitably they\u2019re not as generous as progressives would like.<\/p>\n

But the core of the author\u2019s message is this:\u00a0 there\u2019s no reason to be ashamed of being a teen mom; having sex is inevitable and a certain percentage of sex-having teens will get pregnant due to the simple fact of contraceptive failure, so if they choose to parent, we as a society need to step up and given them what they need to succeed.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Actually, she doesn\u2019t even say, \u201chaving sex is inevitable\u201d \u2014 she just takes this for granted.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Story two, a Slate piece by Amanda Marcotte, \u201cBill O\u2019Reilly Begs Barack Obama to Save \u201cFutures of Babies and Children<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Most of the article consisted of a transcript from a portion of an interview of Obama by Bill O\u2019Reilly, talking about the issue of unwed parents, especially in the black community.\u00a0\u00a0And here\u2019s Marcotte\u2019s take:<\/p>\n

Black women are not conducting their sex lives in precisely the way that O\u2019Reilly thinks they should.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

. . . <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0Obsessing over whether women have their paperwork in order before they choose to reproduce is what conservatives do when they don\u2019t want to think about more realistic and effective ways to solve income inequality in this country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, to be concerned with whether children are born to a married mother and father is not a reasoned response to the serious statistically-demonstrated controlled-for-other-factors disadvantages that children of unmarried parents face \u2014 it\u2019s just none-of-your-business moralizing and meddling by people who have no right to do so.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Which gets us back to the problem I was trying to think through in the fall:\u00a0 how can we remedy the growing number of fatherless children if we can\u2019t even all agree it\u2019s a problem?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose I\u2019m showing my age if I quote Dan Quayle (hey, look it up yourself if you don\u2019t know what I\u2019m talking about) but two articles today really reinforce the fact that the American Left is pretty indifferent to whether\u00a0women bear their\u00a0children within or outside of marriage.\u00a0 I guess Glen Reynolds would call this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"Just another lifestyle choice"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I suppose I'm showing my age if I quote Dan Quayle (hey, look it up yourself if you don't know what I'm talking about) but two articles today really\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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