WHAT SHOULDN'T YOU DO OUT OF WEDLOCK?: Lynn Gazis-Sax

...Well, the starting point either has to be "have children" or "nothing," right? It could be rational, in an age of relatively reliable birth control, to find sex outside of marriage acceptable but not children outside of marriage--maybe you favor unmarried people scrupulously using a "Double Dutch" approach of combining the Pill and condoms, but they should marry before actually having kids together. But to discourage, say, sex or romantic love outside marriage, but accept childrearing outside marriage would make no sense. So, I'll focus just on the "children out of wedlock" question. ...

Second, the counterarguments. Why wouldn't you want to discourage having children out of wedlock?

The first set of counterarguments I can think of involve ideals bumping up against real life. Maybe a single woman is already pregnant; in a world that too harshly discourages having children out of wedlock, will she be driven to an abortion, whether she likes it or not? Or maybe she and the prospective father already have a shaky relationship when the child is conceived--should they be trying to repair that relationship, and marrying anyway, or should they figure that the shotgun marriage is likely to lead to the shotgun divorce? Maybe two parents are married, but the marriage is in sad shape--at what point should they call it quits? Violent abuse? Chronic unhappiness? Since Eve has specified that her questions concern an ideal, this set of arguments doesn't, strictly speaking, address the question; at the same time, that doesn't mean they aren't important, and sometimes contentious, questions in their own right.

A special case of adjustment to the not so ideal is the question of what you do when you want children and it seems you can't marry. What about a group like Single Mothers By Choice? ...

So, at least, you shouldn't be simultaneously actively encouraging people to do childrearing together while actively discouraging them from marrying. Or actively encouraging them to marry while actively discouraging them from raising kids together (barring, perhaps, rare cases, like that of someone willing and prepared to marry someone who is seriously chronically ill).

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posted by Eve at 9:16 PM | link

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