Society: The Death of Shame

The San Antonio newspaper ran an in-depth, two-part series Sunday and Monday about very young, unmarried mothers. At this point, anyone writing such a sentence as this is supposed to genuflect to political correctness by affirming his/her infinite tolerance, to include a complete acceptance of whatever lifestyle anyone may choose to adopt and any behavior that does not harm anyone else. After all, this continues, who am I to impose my standards on another person? After all, one's conception of right, wrong, and acceptable behavior is as good as another's.

We have a fertile field for all sorts of posts here, but for the moment, we'll restrict the discussion to one area. The word "conception" in the last sentence of the previous paragraph really seems to stick out, doesn't it? That's what these girls--no doubt we should call them "women" even when they are 14 or 15--have managed to do. As we all know, however, this was not done by the girls alone. They had enthusiastic help.

The young teenagers featured in the articles both followed in their mothers' glorious footsteps. A family history of early and unmarried pregnancy has been forged and nurtured. One of the girls is even a third-generation success at this. In fact, she managed to entertain a succession of "boyfriends" during her infant son's nap time. Later, when he is old enough to perceive what is going on, he will internalize all of this behavior and, in due course, doubtlessly will shower his own attentions on a 13-year-old girl. This will have the happy consequence of making his mother a grandmother at 28.

The lads who are the fathers seem to have a strange aversion to any real commitment, including (gasp!) marriage. Their commitment does manage to last long enough for them to obtain a little periodic private time with their, uh, sweethearts, however. Evidently they are viscerally conscious of the essence of an old saying even if they never have heard it: "Why buy the cow when the milk is free?"

Free? Oh, but there is child support, something these and so many other lads normally weary of fairly soon, especially if they have been energetic in their efforts and have managed to produce other happy offspring with other young lasses. They soon find themselves needing the income of a neurosurgeon to keep up with all the child support. Medical school being just slightly out of reach for what are typically high school dropouts, they look for miraculous income at burger joints and car washes. That proves disappointing, often prompting them to move on to greener pastures, fields of opportunity that do not vex them with crying babies, clinging girls, and impossible financial demands. Because these new fields of opportunity are generally very fertile fields, they soon produce additions to the population in their new surroundings.

We won't take time to review the dismal statistics here: They are easily available through a Google search. Suffice it to say, the "behavior-without-harm" business is pure baloney in this whole arena (but how it glides off the tongue). The compounding harm from all of this is right on track to overwhelm society in a surging sea of misfit, malcontent, self-absorbed sociopaths. What a heritage we are creating for a once-great nation. It is rather like descending from the dazzling heights of Mt. Hood in Oregon into the pit under the outhouse of a dysentery ward.

What can be done? Stopping and then reversing the plunge into wretchedness is as difficult a challenge as the plunge itself is quick and easy. Building is alway far harder and infinitely more time-consuming than destruction. I remember once tearing out a kitchen down to the wall studs. It took three of us precisely two hours. Replacing that kitchen was the work of two weeks.

So what can be done? Will not more among us step up and insist, with conviction, that marriage followed by children is the only way to have some realistic chance of building an unscathed family, not children followed by marriage or, more and more likely, children followed by no marriage at all but instead by a cascade of "boyfriends" and "girlfriends."

But all the harping and lecturing in the world will do little good. People have to feel it inside; they have to be motivated to do the right thing; they have to be different from the way they were. This does not come about from blase sex education classes, from distributing birth control devices from the school nurse's office, from running "safe sex" ads on TV. These things have no more to do with solving this problem than tinkering with the carburetor has to do with overhauling the engine. It's the "apply-enough-bandages-and-maybe-the-severed-aorta-will-go-away" school of foolishness.

How do we effect the transformation necessary? Ponder on this, and we'll take it up again in the future.