A record 39.7 percent of babies in 2007 were born to unmarried women.
I remember at one time actually being alarmed by such figures, pushing for government policies that might stem the tide of what I viewed as social decay.
I still see this as a form of social decay. One that will have far reaching complications later on down the road. Thing is, now I realise that there is nothing anybody can do about it.
Societies rise and fall. It is the course, and the curse, of all great societies throughout history. After a reaching an apex, a society allows its cultural mores to fall by the wayside, loosing the very thing that helped the individuals prosper through more difficult times.
Keep in mind,that before a people can become A People, they are first just individual people-persons doing what they do to get by: interacting with each other for selfish benefit as individuals are prone to do.
Societies and cultures work the same way. And they decline they same way: one person at a time, doing what individuals are prone to do, individually, selfishly getting by as they see fit to do.
We don't have a problem that governmental policy can solve even if it wanted to. What we have is millions of individuals making personal lifestyle choices, as others before them have done.
7 comments:
I don't know about you, but I relish the stupidity of that comment.
Someone did a study of confessional records during the time of Shakespeare. Fully 50% of kids were bastards. Generally bastard children in standing marriages, of course, but still ... I suspect widespread ... what do they call it, legitimacy? is a myth of the Victorian era.
Don't get me wrong, I'm Catholic and do believe that one marriage for life no cheating is the ideal ... I just don't think it happens all that often.
kr--I think the old saying in medieval Europe (a bit before Shakespeare even) was that every town had a monastery, a convent, and an orphanage somewhere in between...
It's worth noting that this was the very picture of a "stable" society. Social, philosophical, legal, and scientific norms barely budged for a thousand years. I'm pretty sure that wasn't a good thing.
I'm certain that traditional marriage is not for everyone. I'm not even sure it's right for most people. Ditto for parenthood (even more so, actually.) So I'm not bothered by morphing norms of family life. Things change. You can certainly focus on negative outcomes of particular changes and say "this is bad", but in the aggregate, dynamic societies fare better than stagnant ones.
Brian: the orphanage comment: heh ;).
Gino, you are right to point out that this is not "a" problem, but millions of problems. The only way to reverse it is by tackling one problem at a time. Of course that's a lousy way to put it. We've got to give a damn about the folks around us.
Goodness...
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