e-mail
(continued from last post)
When I was pregnant and considering adoption, my friend Todd tried to counter all the socially conservative advice I was getting. “Heather, my mom raised me by herself. We had the best time. And look at me – I turned out great!” (Lack of modesty aside, he has.)
But Todd’s voice was in the minority in my world. As the Newsweek story states, “Conservatives warn that the surge in out-of-wedlock births will lead to problem kids who perpetuate the cycle.” This is what my family believed, and what most of my friends and acquaintances believed. All the world’s problems could be traced to single moms, who raised their children irresponsibly and badly, turning out a constant supply of delinquents and troublemakers.
“It’s a disaster,” says Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, who calls unwed births the primary cause of child poverty and welfare dependency.
Why would any responsible mother-to-be want to add to that?
But the hard evidence points to the contrary. Newsweek again:
“…sociologists say many of these kids actually fare pretty well, especially when two parents are involved. The determining factor seems to be family stability—and marriage has no lock on that. “When you compare the child of a stable single mother with a child whose parents got married and later divorced, the child with the stable family may do better,” says Stephanie Coontz, a history and family-studies professor at the Evergreen State College.”
My point is, I no longer think single parenthood is inherently bad – and neither do the experts. I also don’t think you should make it your only reason for choosing adoption.
Despite changing views on the acceptability of single motherhood, it’s still subtly frowned upon in most circles I know. Women aren’t tarred and feathered for getting pregnant out of wedlock, but they are often disparaged and set apart. Unless, that is, they ADOPT as a single parent. For some reason, that’s different.
While being single wasn’t the only reason in Munchkin’s placement, it was a huge factor. And, really, I wish it wasn’t.
Thanks for the info on the article, Heather.
There are some pretty damning numbers out there for single parenting also. I found this on a website called rainbows.org.
75% of children/adolescents in chemical dependency hospitals are from single-parent families. (Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA)
More than one half of all youths incarcerated for criminal acts lived in one-parent families when they were children. (Children’s Defense Fund)
63% of suicides are individuals from single parent families (FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin – Investigative Aid)
75% of teenage pregnancies are adolescents from single parent homes (Children in need: Investment Strategies…Committee for Economic Development)
But can all that be pinned on the single parenthood, or might it also have something to do with the poverty, lack of education, lack of good jobs, and other factors?
This goes along with what I was saying – if OTHER factors are pushing you toward adoption – okay. But if single status is the only thing going against you, that is not strong enough.
If your list above can all be pinned on single parenthood, and only single parenthood, single people should not be allowed to adopt.
I don’t think single people should be allowed to adopt. Perhaps from foster care, not because these kids are less deserving of a two parent home, but because they are deserving of ANY home and any sense of permenancy.
No I’m sure the above factors aren’t just based on single moms, poverty, lack of education etc… are all factors going into this, but the fact remains that these are pretty startling numbers. Why are there still so many women not using birth control?
What evidence is there that single women adopting are given any less hassle by society? I know of a few single adoptive moms who have reported their share of unfair critisism.
I think at the same time it has in fact become more accepted to be a pregnant single mom, so it has that single women are now more acceptable to society to adopt.
I think we should be supporting single parents to succeed no matter if they had an untimely pregnancy or they just found themselves unmarried but desiring to offer a needy child a stable home.
Why are there still so many women not using birth control?
OMG. Wake up. Birth control fails, lady. What a judgemental attitude.
I don’t think that saying that many women aren’t using birthcontrol is judgemental at ALL. Obviously Jenna has something big against me as she has made very hateful comments to me before..
birth control fails less than 5% of the time. That could not POSSIBLY account for all the children that are unplanned out there. So my question stands.
Government statistics indicate over half of the pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned. That speaks volumes. Should we be judging ALL those women harshly? Honestly, I am not sure I believe that birth control fails less than 5% of the time.
Women get pregnant on birth control often. For women who are ultra fertile, NOT getting pregnant is harder than you might think.
I agree with Peanut – single women who want to parent should be encouraged to do so.
As for all those statistics, look at some of the statistics about the numbers of adoptee in treatment. How many of them had two parent families? If you look hard enough, you can find statistics to support almost any position.
Maybe birth control does fail more than that, but the CDC says the pill fails less than 2% if taken properly. Perhaps the numbers are wrong. I don’t think that stating statistics is being judgemental.
I work in a center for pregnant moms in poor neighborhoods. We teach them basic parenting techniques, help them with government assistance etc… One of the intake questions we have is were they on birth control. IN the five years I’ve voulenteered there I’ve come across maybe twenty women out of literally hundreds who have been faithfully using birth control.
And I did look at the numbers for adoptees in treatment, from the ones I found it is no higher than the general population.
I also disagree with the If you want to do it philiosophy that Peanut stated. Doing things because we want to, isn’t always the best decision. Why is progressiveness a better choice than traditionalism which has been the way humans have existed for at least ten thousand years? I think in our fear of offending people and drawing a line in the sand of thing being right and things being wrong (and I’m not talking about single women, sex etc…) we are losing our direction as a society.
That being said I don’t want to see the age of closed adoption come back. I don’t want to see women who are single and pregnant forced to place their babies, or to be made to feel ashamed.
The US is so far behind much of the rest of the world on this. In Europe many, many women have kids before they marry, even if the partner stays the same throughout. I have lots of friends … Swiss, German, French, Brits … who’ve had kids long before they married, and the decision to marry had little to do with having the kids. With many it’s one process to decide to have kids and another to decide to marry. Professional women seem to be the ones to put off the marriage part the longest even when they’re happy to have kids while in their mid-thirties. In conversations about this, they don’t understand why Americans are so hung up on the idea of marriage. This could be why there divorce rates are lower, or at least multiple marriages. All of my European friends are amazed that I’ve been married three times. They don’t understand that at all.
Here in Seychelles, most of the weddings are for people in their 50s who’ve been together for years and had loads of kids. The marriage takes place when the kids are grown and things have settled down.
At one point we were in the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest percentage of out-of-wedlock births … 76%. It’s probably still right around that figure, if not higher. Unwed parenting is not a big deal.
Some 50% of marriages end in divorce; that includes adoptive families. Unfortunately, just because you entrust your child into a two-parent family does not mean it will remain that way. I’ve seen it many times.
MaryMartha, I too found your question insulting. Jenna covered part of the problem with your quetsion. The other part is – what makes you think all children born to single moms were unplanned? Many women WANT to have children but are not married. Who are you to deny them the basic human right of procreation?