Saturday, April 19, 2008

UNWED MOTHERS

Has anyone noticed the current news trend with unwed mothers and a current election year? Without fail, all the reports come out about how these mothers and their children are just taking advantage of the system. Unwed mothers are blamed for welfare costs skyrocketing, crime, low educational scores for the schools and God only knows what else.

There has been calls for sterilizing these reproductive mothers. All you have to do is read the comments from the linked article. I have been on medicaid and foodstamps a couple of times during my lifetime. I spent that money very very wisely. I have always been responsible when it came to my own sexuality. Call it being my experience as an adoptee. Call it my adoptive mother teaching me wisely in regards to sex education and a parent.

One of the many Yahoo Answers questions came up. This question in particular really made me angry. The answer this person chose really amazed me. The question basically called for people to be sterilized.

Happymom wrote:

I just don't think there is a way to actually do this without it becoming very 1942ish....

This just implies that a "decision" maker or decision process would have to be created---and by "What" standard would we use to make such a process?

How can we possibly REALLY tell until things are actually done for real. It is true that some people who adopt look great on paper--some biological parents look great on paper too... But, the largest number of Undiagnosed Fetal Alcohol Children are living with their biological parents... Alcoholisim doesn't care who someone is and it happens accross all social economic boundaries....

Who gets to decide how to decide? Is it one group of values over another? Do we start saying that all parents with premature babies need to be supervised....

Or Wait...do we start looking at the younger children.... the ones with problems and give them shots that make if where they can't pro-create.... After all we could actually get rid of all the "bad" genetics and therfore eliminate some of the future pissy parents if we just start deciding which kids we don't want having the chance to reproduce.....

We could force people with mental illnesses to be steralized. After all we know there are genetic links with some types of mental illness--and more scary Personality Disorders....They should't have kids Right?

How about no one over the age of 30 is permitted to have a baby because there is an increased odds of Downs Syndrome.... Yes most people with downs are just the nicest people...but, still it isn't the best life so No One can have kids over the age of 30.....

Who decides? Do you want the government deciding....? Maybe they can weed out those lazy people who just use the system up. You want an agency in charge of deciding which people are permitted to pro-create?

So will it be about Zero Population? What about the Catholics are you going to say you can't have children--we have decided that you are not the type who should have children... We don't want any more crazy Catholics...or whatevers to come along--they just cause too many problems...

We should all hope people make informed and educated decisions before becoming parents.... That just doesn't always happen... In the old days people supported each other extended families helped when things went different then planned--today everyone is so wrapped up in their Own Personal Rights or whatever--that people are actually considering things Hitler thought might be a good idea......

Pro-creation is a God Given Right....and it should always be such... Adoption is Not A Right--Not one person has the right to Take over the Care of another persons child... Period. It should be harder when "People" step in and make God Like decisions... like who someone will have for a mom and dad.

It was almost like she was lying in wait to bait this person. Somehow her answer got selected. I commend her for it. I agree with the answer. I googled unwed mothers today to come up with this post. All a person sees is some really bad bashing of unwed mothers. Its almost like they want to go back to the "42ish time frame." That scares me as a woman, daughter and a mother. Then you come across another excellent article. It was written by Billie Stanton. She does have an excellent point. If you want unwed mothers to excel, then we educate them in school. We lift them up. Some of these women have also chosen to be single mothers.

Here it is:

Memo to columnists and commentators, conservative and otherwise: There is no such thing as an "illegitimate child."
Every child born is legitimate. Period.
I understood this long before I had a daughter and did not marry her father, two decisions that still stand as the best choices of my life.
I understood it in 1981 when, bringing a co-worker home from Kingman, I screeched my Karmann Ghia to a halt on the side of Interstate 10. I had to explain that truth to him before we reached the Marana home of a longtime friend who raised her fine son solo from Day One.
I understood it in 1990 when I clarified the concept for a Denver columnist so thick of skull that he kept insisting the girl he was writing about "really is illegitimate." (Some learn quickly, some slowly.)
Since giving birth in 1995 to the sweetest, most gorgeous baby on God's green Earth, however, I can honestly say the usage of that inaccurate moniker no longer annoys me.
Now it renders me apoplectic.
So does the nonsense that inevitably follows, decrying the miserable fate of those poor children condemned to academic failure, crime, poverty and imprisonment, all because they had the misfortune of being born to wanton single women.
Sorry, I almost forgot. We're not single women. We're "unwed mothers." We only qualify as "un," "non," less than nothing, not an actual something.
Funny, we never hear about "unwed fathers" or the "illegitimacy" of men who abandon the babies they helped to create.
So I should not have been surprised when syndicated columnist Linda Chavez invoked this societal fantasy in an effort to criticize Barack Obama's high-profile speech last week on race relations.
Chavez said he ignored the real issue: "illegitimacy." The fact that many children are growing up in "female-headed households" is the biggest crisis today, she wrote.
(Obama's speech did miss the mark, but that's because he needed to assure us that the divisive remarks by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright aren't an example he will follow - and that racism is inexcusable, whatever ethnic group is targeted.)
Chavez said Obama could have "proved himself a courageous leader" had he joined in faith-based efforts to "encourage marriage."
But marriage isn't always the answer, as many domestic violence victims can attest.
And despite the stereotypes that Chavez perpetuated, children from single-parent homes aren't doomed to failure.
For years, Cornell University researchers have studied about 1,500 such children - black, white and Hispanic.
At ages 6 and 7, the children's school readiness, social skills and behavior weren't affected by their one-parent status, the initial study showed in 1999. Ditto their educational performance at ages 12 and 13.
Cornell researcher Henry Ricciuti found that the mother's education and ability level were key. Income and home environment mattered to a lesser extent.
"The findings suggest that in the presence of favorable maternal characteristics, such as education and positive child expectations . . . single parenthood in and of itself need not be a risk factor for a child's performance in mathematics, reading or vocabulary or for behavior problems," Ricciuti reported.
Of course, children living in poverty - which is more prevalent in single-parent homes - face more obstacles.
But at least one child of a low-income, single, working mother grew up to be our president. (His wife now is seeking election to that office.)
For the good of their children, single parents - especially white ones - may want to stay single, a year-old study by The Johns Hopkins University suggested.
The more transitions children undergo at home, the likelier they are to act out, the study found.
White children especially had problems with behavior and cognitive achievement in those circumstances.
Not so for black children, possibly because they are more likely to have extended families nearby for emotional support, the researchers said.
Our society would be fabulous indeed if every child lived in a happy home with two stable, loving, well-adjusted parents.
But here in the real world, births to unmarried women aren't rare.
They increased 20 percent between 2002 and 2006, when it hit a record 1.64 million, the National Center for Health Statistics reported.
Whether by choice, divorce or death, a growing number of American families now have only one parent.
Many of these families are "more intact or cohesive than many two-parent families," says sociologist Robert B. Hill.
It's high time our society stops castigating these families Chavez-style, and starts to recognize the contributions of our nation's many hardworking single parents and their innocent, very legitimate offspring.

Another thing that I find interesting is that our society is out to gloom and doom unwed mothers. Nothing is ever mentioned about the fathers. It does take two to tango in order to create a child. A woman can not create a child by herself. I think in many ways fatherhood has been stripped of men by adoption, abortion, and to some extend the women's rights movement. In the sixties, women were sent to the maternity homes. In the seventies, women had abortion. In the women's movement, we have made it out that we don't men as fathers in order to raise children.

Many assume incorrectly with Roe vs. Wade, that women should have the full right to privacy and the full right to make all the decisions concerning her offspring. I agree to a point. Women must choose to have sex. Then a woman must decide whether or not she wants to remain pregnant. If she proceeds with her pregnancy and gives birth, she must decide whether or not to parent. This is where her total control of her choices end. A child is born who has the same rights as the mother and the father. At which point, both parents are responsible. Both parents should be held accountable for that child. If the child is placed for adoption, then their rights end and they don't get any news ones. I say this because the adoption industry would like to make adoption a right equal to the right to parent one's own child. As Happymom hints, it is something of a priviledge to adopt a child. That priviledge does not outweight one's right to parent. The adoption industry would also like to have the father kicked out of the process completely. In attempting to do this through history, fatherhood has been denied to many men. It takes away from the accountibility of fathers. The women's movement was created to give equal rights to women. It has been successful in bringing women some equal rights. The movement is now about the woman's right to choose with her pregnancy. In this, they have denied men fatherhood. Men should be held accountable. Unwed mothers don't exist without men.

One of the things that disturbs me the most about the way adoption is practiced today is that the natural parents are told that they have stopped being parents. What I have learned in this process is that the natural parents don't stop being parents. They may not be raising their children but they are still parents. They still have to answer to that child once they become an adult. Most mothers and fathers do this very willingly. They want to be acknowledged. I for one do that. Adoptive parents need to realize that they would not be parents without these natural parents.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I very much agree with the facts of child adoption..!
Giving birth to a child is all together a different ball-game than rearing that child up successfully.
There are so many children..today world wide who even donot get basic necessity.
Just go through the stats of the UN's Millenium Business development goals....
http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=47234928