|
This weekend is all about families, and turkey, of course. You probably can find a joke hiding in that statement somewhere, but that's beside the point.
Thanksgiving and Christmas are times to commune with the other souls who are stuck to us by the glue of family, whether we like it or not. It typically is a time for looking backward, reminiscing and retelling stories that help shape our identities and sense of belonging.
Maybe it's time we looked forward a little bit, instead. What will the holidays be like in a generation or two?
Not so great, according to government statistics released last week.
A report out of Atlanta said 37 percent of all babies born in the United States in 2005 were born out of wedlock. That's an all-time high. To attach this to real numbers, more than 1.5 million babies, out of about 4.1 million, were born to unmarried mothers.
And perhaps the most astounding part of this report is that the numbers don't break down the way you probably suspect. Teen pregnancies are declining. The trend is taking place among women in their 20s and higher.
People tend to be a bit more level-headed by the time they reach that age. The forbidden Romeo-and-Juliet relationships have flamed out and people generally know what it takes to earn a living and begin building a life. The statistics, then, signal a shift in thoughts about marriage.
Unfortunately for those shifting thoughts, the realities of marriage as an institution don't shift. They remain firmly fixed.
Author Dorothy Canfield Fisher once said, "To force opinion is like pushing the magnetized needle round until it points to where we wish the North Star stood." I use that one when confronting people who hold onto opinions against a rising tide of facts. In this case, there is little debate about where unwed homes are heading.
Sure, there are success stories involving children from single-parent families. You also can find examples of abusive spouses who are best left behind. But study after study suggests the majority of single-parent situations do not turn out well, and that relationships that lack commitment tend to fail.
The Heritage Foundation studied crime statistics and found that unmarried mothers suffer more abuse, including the brunt of violent crime, than married mothers, and that their children are 6 to 30 times more likely to be seriously abused than are children in traditional families.
A recent Wall Street Journal story reported that 40 percent of cohabitating parents live below the poverty level, compared to only 8 percent of married parents. Meanwhile, 23 percent of the children of single or cohabitating parents were "suspended or expelled from school" during the past year, compared to 10 percent of the children of married parents.
Forty years ago, a lot of this was taken for granted, although people may not have been conscious of the specifics. "The Dick Van Dyke Show," a top-rated television sitcom of the time, featured a running gag about a female character who was getting on in years and was constantly on the prowl for a husband. Nobody questioned why that character seemed to think marriage was so important.
Coincidentally, 40 years ago was about the time Daniel Patrick Moynihan caused a stir by issuing a report warning of impending disaster among the nation's black families because of unwed motherhood. He predicted a "tangle of pathology" that included a lot of the problems already mentioned. A lack of commitment in marriage would lead to uncommitted lives in a lot of other areas, as well.
His warnings proved prophetic for life in America's ghettos.
Today, people who support marriage seem to be on the defensive. The gay-marriage debate often hinges on whether government has a legitimate interest in sanctioning wedlock.
Let's hope people get a true fix on the North Star before the glue that sticks us all together starts to wear off.
| 
