Social Dysfunction
One hesitates to write this post. I could generalize it so as not to refer to anyone specifically and thus be accused of erecting a straw-man. Lord knows I’ll be accused of persisting in animosity that never existed in the first place. If we are to change the culture however, we must address the real problems and people’s willful blindness to them. And before I get much further, let me offer a sympathetic voice by saying that the worst thing about having children is they remind you of every fault you have and yet still manage to find ways of having their own faults. One doesn’t comment on the raising of the next generation because the task is easy and readily accessible. One comments because the costs of failure are so terrible.
For those unaware, the daughter of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has given birth to her child. The engagement with the child’s father is broken, and the couple is having a public airing of dirty laundry. All of this is rather sad. Speaking for myself, I had hopes that the child of this union would be able to grow up never having known that he was anything but the culmination of the love of two people brought together to pass on their faith, history, and ideals to the next generation. Of course, rationally I shouldn’t have held such expectations. An engagement without a date is not an engagement but a promise. When obligations are manifest and people sue for more time, they are making clear their hesitancy at assuming said obligations. Still, the quaint saying, “All babies are born after nine months except for the first,” has a history, and its veracity has held over time.
At base in this is that we as a society have lost the concept of what good actually is. During the campaign, those that demurred from proclaiming the pregnancy was good were castigated. Out of wedlock teen pregnancy was better than teen abortion, so out of wedlock teen pregnancy became good. The more gregarious wondered why liberals all the sudden started caring about family values. I guess it is a dirty secret that most any liberal or progressive book on community calls abortion – yes abortion – a social harm even as the author typically falls all over themselves claiming that they aren’t proposing and don’t believe there should be legal restrictions on abortion. (A conservative parallel would be Rod Dreher’s book Crunchy Cons that lamented the industrial food complex but vociferously denied that State intervention would be desirable.) Liberals, at least of the communitarian-side of the equation, recognize that removing the bonds of family and the bonds of community empowers the State, because the needs of the individual, being a communal creature, extend beyond the self and those needs are going to be filled by the State, often poorly and in a grossly inefficient manner, if there is no family or community to fill them. (Yes, I know it sounds pretty conservative to me too, but I’m not in the Vox Nova taxonomy department.)
The common objection to calling evil by its name is that a worse evil will follow. In this case, if we claim that having children with people we have no intention of raising those children with is bad, then abortion will increase. This argument rests on the premise that if we discourage having children out-of-wedlock, more people in that circumstance will choose abortion. As stated the proposition is reasonable enough and appears intuitively sound. Our analysis shouldn’t end there though. We next need to evaluate the null case. Is it true that if we encourage and are supportive of mothers with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the number of women that choose not to have an abortion will be higher. Again, this proposition seems sound. The problem arises when we ask if our question affects the premise. Specifically, will the social attitude toward out-of-wedlock birth affect the number of women having out of wedlock births? Intuitively we know the answer is yes, but we are tempted to argue that stigma can’t make a woman unpregnant. If however we are to concede the power of stigma, could we not stigmatize abortion?
The surprising answer is that there is quite an aversion to stigmatizing abortion. The logic of the Menendez Brothers’ jury holds forth in declaring the mothers committing abortion are victims. While lamented as being a dirty trick, the Newsweek columnist that asked how long we pro-lifers would propose jailing mothers for having an abortion did point out a basic incoherence of the movement. At present, it is in vogue to celebrate mothers that have had abortions and even doctors that have performed them. They are given speaking engagements and prominent roles. Yes, they now renounce their past actions (although some of the renouncements can be quite mild) but there seems to be no sense of shame. Shame is not just sadness over past events but embarrassment over them. (This parallels nicely with the convert phenomenon where all of the sudden people are seen to be oracles of wisdom for discovering and holding what nearly all have held to be true their whole life. Sadly I went through the phase too.) The temptation is to point to the prodigal son parable, but I don’t see the verse where the son takes every opportunity to tell his brother, father, and their servants how riotously he had lived it up and what a wise man he was. Instead he comes in humility and asks to be treated as a lowly servant. Such isn’t to claim there isn’t a role for forgiveness. Forgiveness does not mean denying evil though.
We face real social problems in this country. Those problems won’t be addressed until we recognize that there are real social harms. The myth of the autonomous individual is a myth. Our actions have personal and social consequences. Abortion is not merely evil because it takes life, although that is certainly sufficient to make it evil; it is evil because it vitiates the obligations one generation has to the next. The scourge of out-of-wedlock birth also does harm to this obligation. The next generation has the right to be raised by his mother and father. Those that take it upon themselves to deny the child these rights commit evil. Through the course of life there are enough things that keep children from being raised by their parents through no fault of the parents (like the death of a mother or a father) that we don’t need to add to society’s burden by intentionally bringing this situation into being.
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Outstanding! Thank you for this post!
If however we are to concede the power of stigma, could we not stigmatize abortion?
Some would argue that abortion is unacceptably stigmatized as it is, and are working to overcome the stigma.
Great post! Children do have rights. Among them – as you point out – is the right to be cared for lovingly by her father and mother.
Why is it always — in these kinds of discussions — the men who are so ardently pro-life and so concerned about children being raised by both a father and a mother? Is it the case in “real life”?
I do realize that men tend to outnumber women in these kinds of forums (why?), but even so, the men tend to be the ones that make the really emotional statements.
I don’t have any statistics, and I am not sure how one would gather them, or even come up with the right concepts, but it does seem to me that, setting aside abortion itself, men seem to be responsible for a lot more bad behavior than women in dealing with the opposite sex and with children.
It’s not just men. Read Feminists for Life. On marriage, you should read Jennifer Roback Morse. (She has a compelling defense of marriage from a libertarian standpoint.) There are strong women with compelling reasons for “traditional” child rearing. I know a few in my own family starting with my mom.
Mr. Nickol, about the point that men seem to be responsible for more bad behavior in society than women… I agree. It seems that way. Even more reason to support the need for good fathers.
With men the social mooring tends to be milder. For example, women were told at one time to be concerned with a man’s pedigree. A lot of concern was placed on a man’s ability to pay for his household before dating was considered. Today, “Peter Pan” syndrome is still used to describe some men. Clean and sober men were desirable. There are a lot reasons behind this. If a married man abandoned his wife, there was quite often an expectation that the husband’s family would aid in providing for the wife and children. A single woman who found herself pregnant would be a burden upon her family or be pushed into prostitution.
As far as responsibility goes, the numbers suggest that men commit more child abuse and domestic violence. I think it is 3:1 or 2:1. There is much speculation that abuse by women is under-reported though. Several studies based on self-evaluation suggest equal propensities towards abuse as noted in this study: http://www.law.fsu.edu/Journals/lawreview/downloads/304/kelly.pdf
It’s not just men.
Paul,
I didn’t intend to imply women were not interested in issues like abortion or children being raised by intact families. I was saying that in online forums, it seems to me it is almost always the men who devote the most time and emotion to what might be thought of as “women’s issues.” It’s also the case in politics as well (or so it seems to me).
No women have commented on this thread yet, either.
When I have questioned certain “pro-life” tenets and been castigated for it, it has rarely if ever been by a woman. There are probably many reasons why this is the case.
David, Point taken. Many good women I admire would never spend the amount of time that I and some of my buddies spend online reading stuff posted from other guys. I know I like to talk – the online forum is a safe place to do it without feeling insecure. (That said, I have often been surprised at the vitriol that emerges on some of these pages here at Vox-Nova and other political blogs by, as you point out, men.) Some strong women I know, starting in my own family, have been shining examples of fortitude, love and justice. I’m sure you know many too. They will remain teachers and examples for me and a great number of other men. I find the most important aspect of your comments to be the suggestion that men need to concretely love women and invite them to the table when we have these discussions and when we work to heal the fractures that exist in our culture and society. I agree.