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Introduction: Children Having Children
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10649 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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7 / 1993 |
486 Words |
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The sexual revolution in America--begun in the 1950s, coming into full bloom in the 1960s, and culminating in the 1970s--changed the social mood and spirit of the country. The changes began with only some people---the outré, the young, the bohemians, the young bohemians later called hippies, some academics--but eventually moved across the country and affected all, although many people never became participants and some still remain opposed. The revolution became the prevailing norm for many people, certainly in the influential media and the entertainment business: large-city newspapers, mass-circulation and significant magazines, the universities, radio, TV, the movies, and even in many of the churches and pulpits. Gone were the views that people should remain married for the sake of their children, that sex between other than married heterosexuals was immoral and therefore to be shunned, and that giving birth out of wedlock was socially and morally unacceptable as well as ruinous to the future of both mother and child.
The result has been millions of innocent casualties: the children of divorce and of single parents.
Single motherhood has lost its stigma and is increasingly prevalent; by 1990, some 28 percent of all births in the United States occurred outside of marriage, and mothers of two-thirds of all babies born to black women were unmarried. The most tragic cases are births to unmarried teenagers: In 1990, more than 361,000 babies were born to such girl-mothers in America.
The fallout is children who are near-irreparably damaged. Today an increasing number of our young people are incapable of any constructive and ethical participation in our economic, political, and social life. The great majority of those youths are the product of single parents (although some single parents do cope well and some children of single parents succeed in life). They face lives of crime, poverty, sexually transmitted diseases, and giving birth to ever-more single-parent children. The economic and social costs of all this are very high.
What is to be done? Our theme this month raises these questions and attempts some answers. Lloyd Eby and Charles A. Donovan present details of the problem and of attempts to deal with it. Most attempts have involved some technological approach--supplying contraceptives and trying to get young people to use them--but this has so far been unsuccessful.
The latest such supposed technological solution, or "magic bullet,"
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