This post by Terence Jeffrey at the Daily Signal caught my eye a while ago – I just couldn’t cram it into my schedule at the time as it takes time to reflect upon its message and how it is adding to the crumbling of our traditional norms.
Per the Daily Signal’s policies, I am replicating it here with emphasis mine.
I also have a bit of commentary on vows, promises, covenants, and kids after this. If you are bored by the stats (and I do ask that you at least glance through the bolded parts and then read my thoughts on how our traditional American Societal building block, committment, is being destroyed by Culture.
UPDATES: at the bottom of the post.
In 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II, there were 2,515,427 babies born in this country. Of those babies, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 95,700—or 3.8%—were born to unmarried mothers. The traditional family led by a mother and father was a foundational fact of American culture.
In 1945, the percentage of babies born to unmarried mothers rose to 4.3%. But, by 1946, the first full year after the war, it dropped back down to 3.8%. The traditional family survived.
Then in the 1950s, the percentage of American babies born to unmarried mothers began to slowly tick upward, hitting 5.2% by the end of that decade. By 1969, as this column has noted in reviewing these numbers before, 10% of American babies were born to unmarried mothers. In 2008, it surpassed 40%. In 10 of the last 13 years on record (2008 through 2020), it has surpassed 40%—and in the three years that it did not surpass 40%, it never dropped below 39.6%. In fact, in the 13 years from 2008 through 2020, there were 51,138,204 babies born in this country, according to the CDC, and 20,642,649 of those babies (or 40.36%) were born to unmarried mothers.
This country is not headed in the right direction. A generation will soon be coming of age in which a large percentage of the population will have been denied a traditional family life.
What happens when families fall apart or fail to form in the first place? Government, as this column has noted before, gets bigger and takes more control over people’s lives.
In 1941, Medicaid, which is a form of welfare, did not exist.“Authorized by Title XIX of the Social Security Act, Medicaid was signed into law in 1965 alongside Medicare,” says the program’s official website, adding:
All states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories have Medicaid programs designed to provide health coverage for low-income people. Although the federal government establishes certain parameters for all states to follow, each state administers their Medicaid program differently, resulting in variations in Medicaid coverage across the country.
By July 2021, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, there were 76,705,180 people enrolled in Medicaid. Last fiscal year, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement, the federal government spent $520.58 billion on that program.
When Medicaid was created in 1965, 7.7% of American babies were born to unmarried mothers. By 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest birth report, the percentage of American babies born to unmarried mothers had risen to 40.5%. The percentage born on Medicaid, according to the CDC report, was 42%.
As this column has noted before, Census Bureau data shows that the traditional family and economic well-being are interconnected. In 2020, according to the bureau, only 4.7% of married couple families in this country lived below the poverty level. But at the same time, 38.1% of female householders with children under 18 and no spouse present lived in poverty, as did 46.2% of female householders with no spouse present and children under 6.
If America continues on a long-term trend in which 40% or more of the babies born each year are born to unmarried mothers and even more than that are born on Medicaid, it is hard to see how this country will prosper. This nation was built by pioneers who sailed across broad oceans and ventured onto vast prairies, seeking to live their lives self-sufficient and free. They did not want to be dependent on government. They wanted to be independent.
We should teach our children and our grandchildren to emulate those pioneers who gave us this great country.
Me again. As I have recounted before, I grew up in a broken home and I know what it’s like to not have a father figure. No, at the time, I didn’t realize what I was missing then – but I do now. What saved me, in part, were the father stand-ins at church. I didn’t realize at the time that most ‘knew” my situation and took a special interest / watchover concern during church activities (and I was there constantly for all kinds of youth activities – and my church had lots of activities for us). I’m not sure how else I would have turned out as an adult.
So many things left untaught that I had to learn in order to teach my boys. I’ll admit, some things I learned in time and others, some quite important, I didn’t. I wish I had.
I also, as I have said before, seen it in the lives of the little ones at the daycare that TMEW and I owned years ago (now decades). It was easy to see the effect of no Dad at home in those that had no father figure – and those that did. What was worse were the cases where “Dad” was a long series of rotating-in-and-out boys masquerading as men in their lives. Kids get attached to such a male fast – and then “break” when they leave. Do it enough times, and you can watch the walls go up and the hearts / emotions get compartmentalized away. Sullen is a great word, sadly, that described the transitions I saw.
And no, for almost all of them, there was no “church life” for these little ones to fall back onto or into. We have become, more and more, a secular State that ignores the existence of God or even a Deity that is that Higher Power. NH is one of, if not THE, most secular State in the Union. Instead, the power of belief, of God Himself, has oft become a source of paternalist head-nodding (at best), to a source of ridicule, and on to outright acrimony at the worst end. For a country that was, in large part, built on the idea of religious freedom, the State has become quite Tyrannical towards individual beliefs (e.g., the chaplain in the Army disallowed from taking a religious exemption from being forced to take the Jab. What, he wasn’t “religious” enough????
No committment, either, by these men-who-are-really-boys that floated in and floated out of their lives. Their focus was on the Mom and for specific purposes. When “things changed” with that relationship (and some were not much more than a “two -week” / “two-month” fling), that door didn’t hit them in their butts because they were moving too fast.
The problem in the piece isn’t that Medicaid is the program at fault in this – it is only the measuring stick and a symbol of the greater rot in American life. Marriage was traditionally about a committment to each other. You know, that old:
“I, _____, take thee, _____, to be my wedded wife (husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”
When I said those words, over 40 years ago, I knew two things:
- I was making a promise to TMEW
- I was ALSO making a covenant promise to God with the belief that He had brought us together.
A mark of a good man is to keep his word. A promise is to be kept, especially like the above. Unfortunately, Culture had been turned against such attributes (I guess it’s part of that “toxic masculinity” that Feminists are always yammering about. Sorry, girls, this hold for you too, so I could call it “toxic femininity” as well.
Let’s be honest, in every marriage, one or the other is going to have those thoughts of “did I marry the right person?”, or “should I leave as this isn’t working out?”, or the worst one “MY needs are not being met – why should I stay?”. Note that I’m not talking about about drugs, infidelity, abuse, or violence – just the normal ebb and flows of a marriage.
Unfortunately, the “ME” generation of the 60s has morphed, hard, into “It IS ALL about ME”. And because of that, one is announcing that the only committment is to ME – not you. Or anyone else. And the fallout from it is simple to see – marriage doesn’t count for much anymore.
And it hurts the kids most of all in which marriage was supposed to be the “safe space” in which to grow up in.
All because Society has become “self-selfish”.
Once again, this Culture War has made it easier for the Life of Julia (Obama) and the Life of Linda (Biden) in which Govt becomes both husband and father to be implemented.
Dependency – the opposite of the traditional American norm of self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and that we are not our own god.
UPDATE – From CNSNews, data reporting the percentage of out-of-wedlock babies:
Among the 50 states, according to the report’s Supplemental Table I-7:
- Mississippi had the highest percentage of babies born to unmarried mothers (55.8 percent).
- Louisiana (54.5 percent);
- New Mexico (53.2 percent);
- Nevada (48.8 percent);
- Alabama (48.5 percent);
- Delaware (48.1 percent);
- Florida (47.2 percent);
- Arkansas (46.8 percent);
- West Virginia (46.8 percent)
- South Carolina (46.6 percent).
Utah had the lowest percentage of babies born in 2020 to unmarried mothers (19.3 percent).
- Colorado had the second lowest percentage (23.2 percent),
- Idaho (27.7 percent);
- Washington (31.6 percent);
- New Hampshire (32.1 percent);
- Minnesota (32.6 percent);
- North Dakota (32.8 percent);
- Massachusetts (33.0 percent);
- Nebraska (33.4 percent);
- New Jersey and Montana (both at 33.9 percent).
UPDATE 2 – What normally should be a BlogLine of the Day:
The Allure of Totalitarianism: The Stasi were masterful at exploiting the vulnerabilities of artists. Today’s social activists may be learning the same tricks.
“One thing that many informants had in common was fatherlessness.”
