Dumb Arguments About Out-of-Wedlock Births

I frequently comment on the silliness perpetually on display at Pandagon, but this has to be one of the dumbest.

Amanda has a post about the non-relationship (in her opinion) between morality and illegitimacy. She is criticizing Heather McDonald for stating that 70% of black babies are born out of wedlock.

I won't bother arguing about the morality or lack thereof of having children outside of marriage, but there was this eyebrow raiser that I thought was interesting:

There are many assumptions you have to hold and carefully refrain from questioning in order to fall for this line, not the least of which being that there’s a causal relationship between having a baby while not being married and poverty, when it could be correlative or, since she references race and not class, it might not even be as correlative as she implies. But more insidious implication behind this standard issue rant is that there’s something wrong with a woman who doesn’t get married.

It is incredible to me that anyone would write something like this and say they are an advocate for women.

First, there's the skepticism that there is a causal relationship between illegitimacy and poverty. There are many studies linking teenage motherhood with poverty.

"People love to argue about how to prevent teen pregnancy, but sometimes we fail to shine enough light on the basic problem," Sarah S. Brown, director of the campaign, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization, said. "Teen pregnancy is a major contributor to poverty, single parenthood, and limited futures for adolescents and their children."

And it isn't just teenagers having babies that face more poverty. Certainly, there are other factors involved in poverty rates for unwed mothers besides just their non-marital status. But it's hard to ignore giving birth to children outside of marriage as a source of poverty when there are stories like this one.

Half of unmarried women who gave birth in the United States in the past year lived below the poverty level, compared with 12 percent of married mothers, U.S. Census Bureau data show...

The analysis found that 29.1 percent of women who had a birth in the past year were not married and that 50 percent of such unmarried mothers were living below the poverty level. That means they had an income of less than $19,900 for a family of four. In contrast, only 12 percent of married mothers with new babies had incomes below the poverty line.

Amanda was using the 70% of black babies born out of wedlock statistic to make a different point: that women shouldn't be expected to be married before giving birth (and that, in fact, they aren't waiting until marriage to have kids). I guess that's where the morality question would come into play and Amanda doesn't really like to discuss morality unless it is to bash anyone who thinks some choices are better in life (personally and for society) than others.

It was astonishing to me to see any woman make this sort of argument when there is a world full of low-paid single mothers to prove the opposite point. If all single moms were Murphy Brown, in a higher-paying profession which seemed flexible enough to work with a single woman's childcare situations.

But the real world doesn't present such a pretty picture for single mothers, who are most frequently working at low-skill, low-pay jobs. This isn't a problem that could be solved simply with government-mandated universal preschool or required family-friendly policies for businesses. While those theories might help with the work side of the working mom, it doesn't deal with the multitude of issues that go with raising any child: nurturing, feeding, clothing, etc.

There are several snarky comments on the Pandagon thread that go like this: "Marriage sucks. I know people who are in terrible marriages and their children would be better off with one parent. I also know unmarried couples together who have a great relationship. Marriage is just a legal contract between adults."

That might be true to gay marriage supporters, for instance, but for most folks, marriage and children goes together because marriage still provides the most stable situation in which to raise children. Is it possible for single mothers to raise good kids? Absolutely. But it seems silly to condemn marriage as patriarchal slavery until one has had to deal with all the problems of parenthood without a spouse.