I am a graduate of the University of Alberta, hence, get emails from their site. This edition celebrates the the awarding of a Killam annual professorship upon Lisa Strohschen a U of A sociologist. She studied teen pregnancy, although numbers may have declined statistically they are more vulnerable than they were a generation ago.
The statistics that she uses to back up her thesis are amazing – at least to me. The alarm felt is not just for teen moms but for women in general and particularly their poor children.
“In fact, 45 per cent of teen mothers from the Baby Boom generation were unmarried when they gave birth, versus 86 per cent in the millennial generation.
That doubling of unwed teen mothers within a generation is a bit misleading, Strohschein explained, noting that in the Canadian family situation as a whole, there’s been a great shift toward living together as a context for giving birth, coined by sociologists as “shotgun cohabitation.” But is this true for teen mothers as well?
“That’s what I want to find out,” she said. “What we do know is cohabiting unions—they tend to be more unstable and also have a high likelihood of dissolving, so I suspect these teenage shotgun cohabitations are even more so.”
Strohschein said she is also looking to see whether the rate of Canada’s non-residential dads—fathers who live apart from their children at least 50 per cent of the time—is skyrocketing like their U.S. counterparts.
The American situation, she said, features some marked differences from the Canadian one, including much higher rates of male incarceration and non-marital childbearing.”
So Girlfriend, you cannot get a guy to commit to marriage with you but you have a kid with him. And as one man recently said: “Having a child is a major commitment – bigger than a mortgage, you can get out of a mortgage but a kid you have forever.” Mind you, weeks later that man went back to his former fiancé, who has two kids already – and they plan to make a new one. One of their own. He has a daughter from a previous marriage. These people do NOT have my respect.
Statistically who is going to care for the child that is born of the non union. The Mom of course with little or no support from The Dad.
What seems to have been lost in the annals of history was a major objective of the Women’s Movement at its inception. First of all, what are annals. The synonyms are: records, archives, chronicles, accounts, registers, journals; history; rare muniments.
Then what is an objective? If used as an adjective it is: factual, actual, real, empirical, verifiable, existing, manifest. ANTONYMS subjective. If used as a noun it is: intention, purpose, target, goal, intent, object, end, end in view, grail, holy grail; idea, design, plan, scheme, ambition, aspiration, desire, hope; the point, the object of the exercise.
The chronicles, accounts and muniments of the 1970’s are lost. The empirical and verifiable fact is that the purpose, intent, ambition and aspiration of those days was to give women a choice.
Women, could, for the first time in history, choose:
!. To be married and have children OR
2. Have a career with equal pay and NOT have children.
That got lost, almost immediately. My daughter would know that she did not have to have chiders. But I did not have a daughter. My friend R., young enough to be my daughter, had a stay-at-home mother so she manfully takes on both, a career and a family. The choice was taken from her. She naturally wanted to please her mother, she naturally wanted to have a career SO she tried to do both. In my humble opinion, it is impossible, particularly when one does not have a supportive husband.
And what do women of today do? They do not even get a husband even though it is statistically proven that cohabiting unions tend to be more unstable and also have a high likelihood of dissolving.
But who suffers under this oppressive, self-made scheme? Not the grandmothers who derive their sole identity from being a grandmother. Not the poor women who raise the child alone and work at a menial job to support the child – she has no time to suffer, suffer is her middle name. The people that suffer the very MOST are the poor children, those poor kids raised by someone else on wages that barely support them and hence are anxious and often to not speak English. Children who hardly ever see their mothers.
But I suppose that there is light at the end of the tunnel – in a very small way. I know lots and lots and lots of people – not one woman that I know has had a child out of wedlock. Perhaps having a role model can help. But I am immediately devastated as I recall that there is one – a niece. I tried my very best at the time – offering education that I would pay for. But her parents denied her this opportunity. Oh well, I tried and the family is not part of my life anymore so I am free to write about this situation. Sometimes when the pain is overbearing it is necessary to cut ties. Wise Man agrees with me – and he is not only wise, he is scientific.
You: This is too serious.
Me: Tough! I will try to find a David joke to cheer you. I know I have one or two, not used as yet. Then there is always the vulgar Icelandic book.
Often the last thing that I do is the title. When doing that today the word precept came to mind – of course I looked it up. Precepts’ synonyms: principle. rule, tenet, canon, code, doctrine, guideline, working principle, law, ordinance, statute, command, order, decree, mandate, dictate, dictum, directive, direction, instruction, injunction, prescription, commandment; Judaism mitzvah; rare prescript.
I spoke of a decree, almost a mandate, a directive and perhaps a mitzvah. It is either a career OR children.
Perhaps I shall use the vulgar Icelandic comic book. It is easier to find than searching through my emails. Sorry David! I will apologize in person soon in London Town.
