Link between out-of-wedlock birth rate and poverty tied to contraception and abortion rise

[tz620q]

I found an interesting article that was written for the Brookings Institute in 1996 and studied factors that had caused the rise in out-of-wedlock birth rates from the 1960-90's. Note that one of the authors is the current U.S. Secretary of Treasury, Janet Yellen.

The basis to start was the economic reality that
"If we have learned any policy lesson well over the past 25 years, it is that for children living in single-parent homes, the odds of living in poverty are great. The policy implications of the increase in out-of-wedlock births are staggering."

The authors hypothesize that the increase in contraception and abortion was supposed to decrease the out-of-wedlock birth rate. Instead it can be shown to correlate with an increase in out-of-wedlock birth rate. This seems to be because the social stigma attached with having a baby out-of-wedlock has eroded and what they call shotgun marriages where the man feels compelled to marry the pregnant woman have fallen drastically. The attitudes towards sex have changed for both men and women with women being more willing to engage in pre-marital sex without a commitment from the man and men being willing to place the childbearing and childrearing choice on the woman.

If only some wise man or woman had foresaw this issue and written a prophesy of this happening before we jumped off that cliff. Oh, wait, wasn't that exactly what Pope Paul VI did in Humanae Vitae.

Their conclusion is that the genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back to more conservative moral values. What are your thoughts?

 

[pescador]

I for one am happy that there is no going back to more conservative moral values. Moral values are just that; "conservative" is a political philosophy that is out of step with modern times and God's truth in Christ.

Try reading the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4. Obviously Jesus wasn't a political conservative.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Their conclusion is that the genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back to more conservative moral values. What are your thoughts?

The only way possible is for Christians to actually live the faith, be observed living the faith, and be observed to have far less dismal consequences for having lived the faith. Only then will a few people see that different moral choices matter. But for now it's pretty much a rout and things will get worse. It will start getting better ever so slowly when we live the faith whole and our own children decide to do the same.

 

[tz620q]

I for one am happy that there is no going back to more conservative moral values. Moral values are just that; "conservative" is a political philosophy that is out of step with modern times and God's truth in Christ.

Try reading the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4. Obviously Jesus wasn't a political conservative.

Perhaps I should have used the word Catholic or Christian instead of the more politically charged word conservative. I checked the meaning in Websters of conservative and it said, "1. averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values." So I used the word to mean the values we had as a nation say 100 years ago relative to sex and marriage. In my thinking these were more in line with Christian morality and not secular hedonism.