Amber and I just listened to the NPR debate between Brad Wilcox and Stephanie Coontz. There was clear agreement between the two of them that the retreat from marriage among Middle Americans and among the poor is a disturbing trend. Coontz acknowledged that 41% of children born outside of marriage is not a cause to celebrate.
But Coontz treats it as an incontrovertible reality that high numbers of young women will continue to have lots of sex outside of marriage, bear children outside of marriage, and that couples will choose to cohabit instead of marriage–to hear her talk, you’d think it was a law of human nature that came into effect sometime after 1960. As she said multiple times “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.”
Our question for Coontz is this: would you say it’s an incontrovertible reality that income inequality will only increase, that the poor will only get poorer and the rich get richer? That poverty will only increase? That unemployment will only continue to rise at alarming rates?
When it comes to economics, most of us don’t take the deterministic position that “We can’t put the genie back into the bottle.” Our government spends hundreds of billions of dollars trying to stimulate the economy and our editorial pages are littered with proposals on how to revitalize the economy. Philanthropists even declare that by such and such a date we will end poverty in America. We see economic injustice–and we wrack our brains and use our hearts to figure out how on earth we can end it.
What if we channeled some of the courage that we apply to our economic problems to our marriage and family problems? Today, we say “Well, yes, it’s unwise for teens to have lots of sexual partners, but hey, it’s the twenty-first century–kids will be kids!” Or “Well, yes, it’s unwise for young people to have children before they get married–but you can’t put the genie back in the bottle!”
But what if we dared to believe that, working together in a spirit of solidarity and compassion, we could actually reduce the proportion of children born outside of marriage among the poor (54%) and middle class (44%) to the level that it is among the upper class (6%)? What if we proposed to lower the chance of divorce among the poor (36%) and the middle class (37%) to the same level as the uppder class (11%)? What if, instead of just handing out condoms and contraception, we proposed a vision of fertility and sex as a gift (not something they should have to avoid until they’re 30), and connected that gift to marriage and parenthood? And then what if we had a massive social movement in America to help the marriages of young couples flourish?
Just as I refuse to believe that we’ll only have more poverty, so I refuse to believe that young people will only have more sex outside of marriage, more children born outside of marriage, and more divorce. If we’re not economic determinists, why should we be family determinists?
What would that look like? What do you have in mind?
I’d really like to see a link to a reputable study that demonstrates that working class and poor people have more sexual partners over the course of their lives, or even just during the teen and young adult years, than middle and upper class people.
Because if they aren’t, then the problem isn’t “having sex out of wedlock”. (I maintain that folks aren’t having any more sex than they ever were—what changed is that people are more willing to be honest about sex in surveys—though not perfectly honest, as there is a great discrepancy between the number of sexual partners men report and the number of sexual partners women are reporting).
Perhaps greater access to birth control (and a variety of birth control at that—birth control for women shouldn’t be limited to just “the Pill”) is an effective solution. Perhaps cost-free college educations (a la the current practice of elementary and secondary public schooling) is another solution (young women who look forward to college are unlikely to bear children before graduating and starting their careers). Perhaps changing the culture in a way that convinces more young women that they have more to offer the world than their ability to procreate (I know this is a hard sell for many of the readers of this blog, but there are a hell of a lot of young women who think that raising a child is their only real talent—the only thing they are or could be good at).
In other words, the solution is more feminism.
And let’s get real—most of the women having children as single mothers are grown women. We now have that option (as opposed to abortion being our only realistic option) because of workplace legislation that prohibits the firing of pregnant women. We could reverse that by revoking the Pregnancy Anti-Discrimination Act of 1978, but we would see a concurrent rise in the abortion rate (whether abortion is legal or not legal).
What we aren’t going to see, no matter how many lectures offered—abstinence until marriage. Realistically, we can’t expect that large numbers of people are going to abstain through most of their twenties or on into their thirties. (and in any case—-that isn’t what the middle and upper classes are doing).
(no, really. I’m waiting for the stats that show single mothers like myself as having had more sexual partners than women who completed college or grad school. I strongly suspect that college women have had more sexual partners than women who did not complete college, because of availability of partners and the greater amount of—I hate to say, “free time”, because I don’t want to underestimate the amount of work involved, but yeah, free time to socialize and enjoy the social aspects of college life—college students network with one another a hell of a lot more than the young folks that didn’t go to college (who are usually working, and have less disposable income for socializing).
I do agree with the bloggers on this site that the lack of religiousity is a factor. I differ with the bloggers in that I don’t think of that as a bad thing. No doubt that fear of hellfire may have prevented some folks from having sex—but losing that fear is a good thing (I’m sure a lot of counselors can testify to the damage that can do to a person’s sexuality, and how often that feeling did not go away after the wedding. Also, the madonna/whore syndrome put a hell of a damper in many a marital bed). In any case, a lot of the lack of religiousity stems from people questioning the beliefs they were raised with—and coming to the conclusion that they don’t really possess those beliefs—they were just told to. And now that they’ve reached that age where they discerned that—there is no going back. You can’t make someone believe what they don’t—unless you can offer hard-core, physical proof. That isn’t going to happen with religion.
So. What do you really want to see here? Fewer children born out of wedlock? That’s easy—free birth control (including free diaphragms, cervical caps, or IUDs for women who don’t want hormonal birth control). Boom. A lot fewer children out of wedlock.
Or….is what you really want to see…..healthy children? Because there are plenty of means to insure that more children raised in single-parent families have the same outcome as those in two-parent families. You can’t fix every relationship that falls apart (or even most); you can do a better job of mending the ways in which parents parent their children.
I agree with Coontz; the genie isn’t going back in the bottle. One of those genies is women’s greater rights (access to education, the workplace, the public sphere). One of those genies is the changes industrialization and post-industrialization wrought. One of those genies is the wave of science and humanism that eclipsed many traditional strains of western religious thought and practice.
And…it’s maddening to me that so many of the authors on this blog claim to not want to see women’s rights disappear….but yet examples offered of “what this would look like” (as Jeffrey mentioned above) tend to be reversion to the never-never land of the 1950s—breadwinning fathers, housewife mothers totally dependent just like their children on that father. (meanwhile, in the real 1950s, my grandmothers were…well, one was slinging hash, the other working in a factory. Both took odd jobs on the side to make ends meet—clothes washing, mending, ironing, that sort of thing. Not very Ozzie and Harriet, huh?).
I for one am breathtakingly glad I don’t have the life of my grandmothers….and so are they. They are glad their daughters, and especially their granddaughters, had more choices than they did. When old women see me with my tools, working on something…..they always say something. Stop and talk. Tell me how wonderful it is that women can do these things now. They are overjoyed to see this. I’m not kidding.
These women know something that I don’t. They experienced a life I haven’t. And they tell me mine is better. That they wish they grew up in the world I grew up in. That ought to tell you just why those genies aren’t getting crammed back in that bottle.
La Lubu, one question I have is this: how much would free access to birth control prevent children outside of marriage? I’m sure that it would reduce the number, but I also fear that it’s missing the point: Many women want to have children and see their fertility as a gift to society. I’ve known many a woman who got pregnant, had access to birth control (or was using it) and still got pregnant. Why? Well, frankly, they were ambivalent about preventing it. They wanted to have children, and so having birth control in their medicine cabinet did not necessarily mean that they used it.
You could say that we need to give these women other options, like college. I’m all for that, but I also don’t think we should make those women who want to be mothers feel ashamed of that perfectly good, perfectly natural desire. Rather, we should support them. And since we know that children can benefit from the support of fathers, and that many of these mothers would like to have a supportive partner to help them raise their children, one way we can support women who desire to be mothers is to strengthen the marriage culture through education and institutional support.
Feminism is not just about giving women the right to career (although I too am grateful for so many of the opportunities we have that our grandmothers did not), but about giving women CHOICES. Feminism is not about promoting a narrow script, but about pluralism of scripts. There is no reason that college should be seen as a more valuable option than motherhood.
La Lubu, see the latest issue of State of Our Unions, which cites data from the National Surveys of Family Growth showing that the least educated and the moderately educated have more sexual partners than the highly educated. It finds that 70% of the moderately educated (high school education) have had three or more lifetime sexual partners, and 64% of the least educated have. Contrast that to 57% of the highly educated.
You can see here (figure 11): http://stateofourunions.org/2010/SOOU2010.php
Jeffrey, for a list of recommendations on how to improve the institution of marriage, see the 101 Ideas in the Institute-published Marriage Index:
http://www.americanvalues.org/pdfs/IAV_Marriage_Index_09_25_09.pdf
Of course, that list certainly doesn’t exhaust what we could do!
I have to say, David, that the Marriage Movement has been saying the same things for almost 20 years without much real success. I wonder whether there are any new ideas given our changing understanding of where there needs are.
I am often frustrated by how debates about premarital sex and single/unwed motherhood paper over gender differences. Ideologically driven sex-ed programs like the ones propounded by SEICUS, for instance, seem to treat everyone as androgynous sexual beings who naturally, rightfully pursue as much [contraceptive, consensual] sex as they want—denying the real, physiological differences in how women experience sex and bonding. I think that women face very difficult pressures in today’s sexual marketplace, and may participate only very reluctantly in non-committed sexual activity. They may put up with the hook-up culture, but I think it’s quite disproportionately harmful to them. I think that working toward a revitalized culture of sexual restraint and support for marriage, as Wilcox described in the interview, would look like a new women’s movement.
David, are you sure that’s entirely correct? If you look at the data from the NSFG in more detail (see page 29 of this pdf file), what it shows is that the women with the fewest (male) sexual partners are the least educated. Specifically, 59.7% of those who never graduated high school; 72% of those with a high school degree; 67% percent of those with some college; and 60% of those who have a college degree have had 3 or more sexual partners.
Women with no high school diploma were also the most likely to report that they’ve had exactly one sexual partner in their life.
That’s from the 1995 report, admittedly, so it may be out-of-date. But it would be a little surprising to me if women with no high school degree shot up from reporting the fewest sexual partners to reporting the most sexual partners in a short period of time.
most people do see fertility as a gift. Having kids is still the most congratulatory event in society.
I do happen to believe that more sexual restraint is a good thing but who exactly is the amorphous WE that’s going to promote it and how?
Many women want to have children and see their fertility as a gift to society.
I’m not so sure about the “gift to society” part; not just because I’ve never heard that sentiment expressed, but also because US society views children as a consumer good, not as people. Society certainly doesn’t consider children—or anyone else who isn’t a “rugged individual”—a “gift”, or even worthwhile.
But anyway….I’m a mother. I’m well aware that many women want to have children. that’s why I said “birth control”, not “sterilization”. Birth control allows one to plan when to have to children. One can’t control all the various exigencies of life, but there are practical steps one can take; using birth control is one of them.
As is getting an education. Look. I’m not Big Sister. If a woman wants to forego education and be a stay-at-home mother with a high school diploma, so be it. But I’m also not going to pretend that this is a wise choice for the majority of women—it isn’t, full stop. It’s a very risky choice, with a greater chance of failure than success. Carissa may be a success on an individual basis; on the larger scale, more women are not going to achieve the life they wanted by following this path.
Amber, you’re setting up a false dichotomy of “career” vs. “motherhood”. Why? No one is doing this to fathers. No one. Meanwhile, I guess the majority of women are doing motherhood wrong, by doing both, just like the men. Unlike us, they don’t get the lectures about “you can’t have it all.” They can enjoy a healthy paycheck, the pride of achievement on the job, plus the warmth of family—all lecture-free. (women can enjoy these things too—I am—but not without the sneering condescension of the peanut gallery).
David, I’m skeptical that folks of lower social classes have more sexual partners than folks of higher social class; the few stats I’ve seen on that showed the opposite. “Common sense” says that would be untrue; more money means more opportunity for socializing, travel, new experiences—all of which increase the potential number of sexual partners. It’s also worth mentioning that pregnancy—no matter the social class of the woman—tends to happen within an exclusive relationship, not from a chance happening with a casual partner. (which again stands to reason; that’s where most of the sex is taking place).
Regarding “sexual restraint”—can anyone give me a good working definition of what that is? How many partners does a person with “sexual restraint” have? Zero until marriage? Only one? I have a friend who works at a place where, if you don’t use any sick time for the full year, you get an extra day of paid personal leave the following year. Does it work that way for “sexual restraint” as well—once you reach a certain age, you get another “partner”, to put you under the bar for slutdom?
About that slutdom, anyway….I’m assuming men get more partners than women before reaching that “promiscuous” mark, no? After all, that’s the status quo. (I picked Kinsey’s numbers because they’re probably the most accurate. There are some stats that show men as having three or four times the number of sexual partners as women, which…is really unlikely. Either that, or there are a relative handful of women out there who are really, really exhausted.)
La Lubu, I sure hope that I am not contributing to the “sneering condescension of the peanut gallery”–that is definitely not my intention. That is exactly what I’m against–which is why I said that feminism is not about promoting a narrow script. We can recognize that different women have different preferences when it comes to work and family, AND THAT IS OKAY.
Just as you are reacting out of your own life experiences as a single mother, I’m reacting from the pressure (esp. in NYC) that I often feel to pursue career and delay having children. I do not think that there has to be a dichotomy b/t career and children (I know plenty of successful women who have done both), but I also do not want to condemn the women who forgo career for homemaking, or vice versa. I think we can probably agree on that–no judgment, right?
Oh, and for more on how many women view fertility as a gift, see “Promises I Can Keep” by Edin and Kefalas. Perhaps society does not value children as persons, but of course mothers do.
Barry, on the data from National Survey of Family Growth:
Take a look at Figure 11 on this page: http://stateofourunions.org/2010/SOOU2010.php
It shows what you mentioned: in 1995, 57% of the least educated had three or more sexual partners, compared to 62% among the moderately educated and 59% among the highly educated.
In 2006-2008, 64% of the least educated had three or more sexual partners, compared to 70% among the moderately educated and 57% among the highly educated.
What’s noteworthy is that the proportion of highly educated who reported three or more sexual partners actually dropped slightly, while increasing for the other two groups.
Thanks, David. That’s a good point.
That said, I have a couple of concerns about the State of Our Unions numbers.
First of all, the numbers reported by the CDC for 1995, and the numbers reported by SoOU from the same data source, don’t match (for example, among the least educated group, CDC’s numbers say 59.7%, SoOU says 57%). The 2006-2008 numbers haven’t been released in a form I can read (as far as I know) — but it’s hard for me to trust the SoOU reporting for the newer numbers when the older numbers seem to be mistaken. (Unless there’s something which accounts for the discrepancy that I’m unaware of, which is certainly possible.)
Secondly, it’s a bit shaky to report that “the proportion of highly educated who reported three or more sexual partners actually dropped slightly,” since the difference is less than the margin of error the CDC reports.