By Penna Dexter
In 1960 5.3 percent of all births in America were to unmarried women. In 2015 40.2 percent of births were out of wedlock. These facts are pretty persistent recently and — well — they’re just disturbing — and depressing. Among non-Hispanic blacks the out-of-wedlock birthrate is 70.4 percent. Hispanics had a 52.9 percent out-of-wedlock birthrate for 2015. And among non-Hispanic whites, it’s 29.2 percent. These statistics represent children mostly being raised in far less-than-ideal circumstances.
Co-habitation has increased tenfold since 1960. Back then married families made up three quarters of all households. Today, kids growing up with parents who aren’t married, or with two adults one or both of whom is not their biological parent are missing the ideal, some by a longshot. But they are often the lucky ones when compared to those growing up in single parent homes.
We don’t call those co-habiting relationships illicit anymore. Kids living in those homes don’t really face the stigma that existed back in the sixties. But that stigma actually incentivized more stable families.
The Left has succeeded in pulling much of the traditional societal support out from under the marriage culture and certainly from the chastity culture that once prevailed.
One result is teen pregnancy. Both the Left and Right have been trying to solve this. We’re now seeing studies that show us what remedies are working and what are not. Making condoms accessible to students is not working. A recent Pew Research paper finds that access to condoms actually led to a ten-percent increase in teen births. The study showed that schools that offered condoms with no required counseling had the highest teen birthrates. Plus, gonorrhea rates were higher among teenage girls in schools with condom programs.
The Pew report suggests several reasons why teen birth rates were higher where there were school condom programs.
One theory is: Condoms encouraged riskier behavior.
Another: Teens took the free condoms at school and didn’t look for something more effective.
And finally: Perhaps when schools implemented condom programs they put less effort into encouraging other pregnancy prevention strategies.
The Church and cultural conservatives warned of this back in the 90’s when the condom programs began. ‘Teach abstinence-until- marriage’ we all said. ‘No, all kids won’t comply. But teach that as the standard. It’s a recipe for a happier life.’
And, no big surprise, the results bear out the wisdom of this approach. The Institute for Family Studies looked at marriages five years in. The responses showed that “women who were virgins when they got married are the least likely to divorce.” And with every additional sexual partner a young woman has before marriage, her chance of divorce climbs.
Can we now learn that young people deserve a holistic form of sex education that does not separate things that should be together in a person’s life? Love, marriage, sex, and procreation, and then parenting: These go together and are best in that order.
