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Too greedy for babies

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Here’s a Canadian story about a young couple “struggling to get by.”

The young couple is planning to marry in six months and, within a couple of years, start their own family. Before long, they’ll want to move out of their cramped, eighth-floor apartment and buy their first home. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to do it on their own. With a combined annual income of $80,000 and zero savings, they simply don’t have the means to qualify for the $200,000 mortgage they’ll need to get into a starter home.

These are our North American standards; house first, then kids. Until all our financial ducks are in a row, we are “struggling to get by.” I blame these set standards for many of the abortions conducted in Canada for financial reasons. In the US, 21.3 percent of women having an abortion state they “cannot afford a baby” as their main reason. We often closely mirror their stats. (No one knows the exact figures in Canada because “StatsCan doesn’t collect data on the reasons for termination.”)

I am not turning a blind eye to poverty in this nation. I do, however, refuse to believe that one fifth of women seeking abortions in Canada are truly poor. In Nigeria, where nearly three quarters of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, 11.4 percent of women having an abortion claim it’s mainly because they cannot afford the child. In Mexico, 15.9 percent. Honduras: 5.3 percent.

Gandhi said, “We have enough for everybody’s need. But not enough for everybody’s greed.” If StatsCan ever does start collecting data on reasons for abortion, I think they should include “too greedy for baby” as a possible answer.

UPDATE, Saturday: Governor General Michaelle Jean is not turning a blind eye to poverty in this country either, as she prepares for her visit to Canada’s North.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080411/national/gov_gen_arctic

 

Obama, poverty and families

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Obama’s recent speech discussed race and poverty: Here’s what he did not discuss. Marriage is an anti-poverty campaign in itself. The article is from a non-so-con source (very important-because so-cons are born with a pro-marriage, pro-life gene, as we all  know).  

Researchers estimate that the entire rise in poverty in America since the late 1970s can be attributed to “changes in family formation,” a euphemism for the decline of families headed by two married parents. … Given that a significant body of research now shows that children raised in two-parent, married families do better in school, are less likely to wind up in jail, and are less likely to end up on welfare, the startling racial divide in marriage tells us that a new generation of children, especially blacks, are growing up destined to struggle academically, in the job market, and in forming their own families. And policy prescriptions like a higher minimum wage or tax credits are unlikely to help many of these kids. What they mostly need is another parent-usually a father.

And lest you think the Republicans are doing any better on this issue…

Even Republican presidential nominee John McCain-whose economic agenda focuses on pro-growth policies, like corporate tax cuts-has little to say about the family, though the children of many fractured poor families will be in no position to take advantage of such tax cuts. … Comparing the rhetoric of the presidential candidates with the latest stark data on families is a reminder that, until we can at least begin to discuss in the political sphere one of the major causes of economic woes in America today, we can’t begin to take the necessary steps to reduce long-term poverty.

Facilitating immaturity

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Great article in today’s Globe by Margaret Wente, discussing the hows and whys of beautiful single women who would like to get married but can’t find a man. She cites Kay Hymowitz, author of Marriage and Caste in America, a smart book, which identifies how marriage is a great protector against poverty (to do the book no justice at all in one sentence). Says Hymowitz:

It is marriage and children that turn boys into men… Now that the single young man can put off family into the hazily distant future, he can – and will – try to stay a child-man…

Adds Wente:

In other words, why grow up, when you can get sex whenever you want and spend 25 hours a week playing with your Xbox 360?

Indeed.  When sex has no ramifications at all and is a separate game entirely from pregnancy and children… Why grow up? It’s just one more reason why the friendly feministas who love abortion are, in a sense, preventing women from reaching their goals and facilitating more Xbox time for aging male adolescents. It’s not very pro-woman in my mind.

Some women don’t want to wed, and sleeping around may suit them fine. But those who do ought to know that sex without consequences is a poor way to get there.

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Véronique adds: Reminds me of a conversation I had with a young man about 12 years ago. I was 22, in my second year of law school and expecting my second child. He was asking me so many questions about the reasons why I “kept” my babies. I felt like an exhibit at the anthropology museum.

At some point, I asked: “You have sex with your girlfriend, don’t you?” He answered: “Yes, of course.” I asked again: “Haven’t you thought about these things?” “About what things?” “Well, what will you do if she gets pregnant?” “Well, I’m too young to be a father!” I replied, “Well, I’m too young to be a mother, but here I am. You didn’t answer my question: What will you do if your girlfriend gets pregnant?” “Well, she would get an abortion.” I asked: “What if she couldn’t? I always thought abortion would be an option until I got pregnant. I knew immediately that I would never be able to go through with it. I think that some women are unable to even contemplate getting abortions. What will you do if your girlfriend is one of them?” “Then it would be her choice. If I choose not to be a father and offer to pay for the abortion, she’s responsible for her choice if she doesn’t want to go through with it.”

Today’s knight in shining armor offers to pay for the abortion. How did our expectations get so low?

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Rebecca adds: I agree with both of you, but would add that it’s marriage and family that makes kids of any age into adults. (Well, ideally. We all know people who manage to be astonishingly adolescent despite spouses and children.) The perpetual adolescents of Friends, Sex and the City etc., generally concerned themselves with the anxieties an earlier generation consigned to high school years: Does he like me? What should I wear? Will he dump me? Should I ask him out? And so on, despite steaming merrily into their 30s and 40s.

Growing up is hard. Marriage and parenthood are hard. (For that matter, running a marathon or finishing a degree are hard. Not many major accomplishments are easy.) In a culture that values immediate gratification, and defines happiness as pleasure, rather than anything more substantial, we have essentially stopped asking people to live adult lives, which often requires foregoing transient pleasure in the short term (uncommitted sex, 40 hours a week of Xbox) for the sake of longer term happiness (building a solid family, being able to support that family.)

Hymowitz is always worth reading. Another author on the same topic is David Blankenhorn, who pointed out that if in the 1990s, fatherlessness led to a “feminization of poverty,” this only came about because of a corresponding masculinization of irresponsibility.

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Andrea adds again: What a fine Valentine’s Day discussion this is: The “feminization of poverty” versus the “masculinization of irresponsibility.” Love it. But perhaps not first date material for the unsuspecting male. (Wait until the second.)

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