In the early 1990s, Dr. George Waldmann, a general practitioner in rural Oregon, decided to use his bully pulpit as president of a national physician association to address a problem that he perceived was growing—teen pregnancy. What bothered Dr. Waldmann was the increasing number of girls who were having children out of wedlock—not accidentally, but purposely. He had treated many teenage mothers who wanted a cute little baby and didn’t see the need for marriage. The program he proposed was bold: Pay teenage girls not to get pregnant. On a slow news day, his audacious idea was picked up by the national CBS evening news.

Dr. Waldmann laid the groundwork for a countywide pilot program while the topic was much debated in the local press. Could money make a difference in the number of pregnancies? Would monthly payments bribe teenagers to remain childless? Would it increase the incidence of abortion? In the midst of controversy, I was invited to speak before the local chapter of a national honor society to teens, parents, and educators. I remarked that our vocabulary was limited for describing such a program as Waldmann’s. There are words that describe being unchaste for money, but there was not a word for getting paid to be chaste. I suggested inserting “chastity” into “prostitution” to arrive at chastitution. The beneficiaries would be chastitutes. Dr. Llewellyn, a colleague of Waldmann’s who was in attendance, laughed so hard he nearly fell off his chair. I followed up with the observation that some behaviors are not practiced with money in mind, although I knew that all life-altering decisions have profound economic consequences.

Although Dr. Waldmann failed to get his chastitution program implemented, he succeeded in calling attention to the problem and shortly thereafter the number of local teen pregnancies began declining. Like other socio-economic phenomena, it is now difficult to know if this decline was part of a pause in the increase of out-of-wedlock births nationwide (see graph below), which may have been due to people like Waldmann calling attention to the problem. Let’s not forget then Vice President Dan Quayle, who, in 1992 took Murphy Brown, a TV sitcom character, to task for her decision to not to marry the husband of her baby. But out-of-wedlock births took off again in 1998 until, by 2007, the rate had increased to a startling 40 percent of all births in the U.S.12 States differ considerably, with Utah being the lowest at 20 percent, and the territories of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia all tied for the highest at 58 percent. Nowhere does it shows signs of decreasing. The fractured family will change nearly every aspect of society including the poverty rate, economic production, education, law, and medicine. Where is the outrage? Today the sociologists and national media are silent about single mothers and the consequences. Where is the vice president?

These data foreshadow an increasing lower class. Economist Walter Williams has summarized national statistics on poverty and noted that the majority of poverty is in female-headed households, where over 70 percent are poor. He proposed a simple 4-step plan to avoid poverty:3

1. 1.Graduate from high school.
   

2. 2.Get a job.
   

3. 3.Get married before you have children.
   

4. 4.Stay out of jail.
   

The level of poverty for two-parent families is miniscule compared to single-parent families. After analyzing a large dataset of out-of-wedlock births, social scientist Robert Rector and coworkers noted, “In the overwhelming majority of cases, marriage would lift families out of poverty.”4 Children in poverty are most likely to live in single-mother families.5 Two-thirds of these single-mother families start with out-of-wedlock births. To summarize, the disintegration of the family leads to more children being raised at the poverty level.

As grim as the economics are, the psychological poverty may be worse for children from a broken home. (Remember when people would speak of children “from a broken home?”) A single mother may easily join a man and bring together a stepfamily, but the stepchildren and new spouses have inherent conflicts for the parent’s attention and loyalty. Grimm’s fairy tales Hansel and Gretel and Cinderella were telling the truth—a stepmother does not usually have a natural maternal bond to her stepchildren. Neither does a stepfather. Stepchildren are more likely to be physically and sexually abused than children in intact families.

The family has been assaulted on several sides and in multiple ways, such as: entertainment that glorifies pre-marital sex and extra-marital sex; the blaming of any natural or manmade catastrophe on declining resources caused by increasing population; the disdain for children; pornography that inspires sexual predators; the culture of sex-saturated advertising; homosexual and lesbian groups aggressively pursuing societal change; and the lack of sanctity of the marriage vow. All the assaults on marriage and the family are the subject for an entire book—here we are just concerned with the end result, which is: breaking the seventh commandment wrecks the family structure and leads to familial economic ruin.

The 10 commandments can be viewed as statements of natural law, or statements of fact about the way to live a better more satisfying life. Although the world today doesn’t think of sex as anything but a private affair, sexual activity is key to determining familial relations upon which society is organized. It is odd that this needs to be said, but the misinformation of the sexual revolution has sought to separate reproduction from sex activity. But in spite of birth control and STD prevention measures, sexual relations outside of marriage still result in unwanted children. And that makes it a societal problem and an economic problem.

Traditionally, marriage is the basic commitment between adults that requires a commitment economically, socially, and sexually. It provided for reproduction and the training of the species. The family is the basic unit of society. Disconnecting sexual relations from having children was a progressive goal established over a century ago and championed by Margaret Sanger, a eugenics disciple, abortion advocate, feminist, and founder of Planned Parenthood.6 It relied on elevating sexual pleasure ahead of family solidarity and marriage vows. With slogans like, “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” the feminist movement is advancing in the culture war. Speaking on feminism, author and radio personality Laura Schlesinger has observed that:

More than a generation of women have foolishly bought that destructive nonsense and have denigrated men, marriage, familial obligation, and motherhood—all to their own detriment. Normal, healthy women yearn to be in love, married, and raising children with the man of their dreams. However, when their own mothers, much less society, tell them that they don’t need men to be happy, or to raise children, and that their own children don’t even need a mother raising them (daycare will do), it’s caused many women to lose the incentive and ability to treat their personal lives with the love, dedication, sacrifice, compassion, and loyalty that will ultimately bring them happiness and a sense of purpose.7

Ironically, Sanger’s feminist doctrine may have more followers among men, because polls have shown that the majority of single mothers in romantic relationships would prefer to marry the father of their newborn child.8 Evidently the men won’t commit. Deadbeats. Sanger’s goal to liberate women has had the opposite effect—to free men from responsibility.

The children, of course, feel the greatest distress at having only one parent who lives with them. They look around and see that an intact family is rare. The poetry of our generation reflects this emptiness and insecurity due to loss of familial ties. Illegitimacy is no longer a legal designation, nor a moral concept, and it is doubtful that most children even know the definition. Paternity is now determined by a genetic test rather than by a marriage license.

Divorce in the U.S. stands at 46 percent of all marriages.9 This occurs in spite of evidence that marriage is the doorway to health, wealth, and happiness, according to social researchers Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher.10 The majority of married partners rate their marriages as “very happy.”11 Divorce rates appear to be leveling off in the U.S. only because of the growing rate of marriages that never happen. Thirty percent of men over 25 have never married.

Back in 1995, LDS Church Leaders proclaimed:

Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets. (The Family, a Proclamation to the World).

How, exactly, will the family disintegration bring calamity? More poverty. Fewer educated workers. The love of men waxing cold. Less loyalty. Even more poor children. More dependence on government to provide—in other words, the nanny state. These are not future scenarios. They are happening now.

RETURN TO COMING CALAMITY PAGE

FOOTNOTES

1 Sharon Jayson. “Out-of-Wedlock Births on the Rise Worldwide.” USA Today, May 13, 2009

2 National Vital Statistics Reports, Volume 57, Number 7, Jan 7, 2009, page 11, table D

3 Walter Williams. How can it be? January 14, 2004, http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/04/how.html

4 Robert E. Rector, Kirk A. Johnson, Ph.D., Patrick F. Fagan, and Lauren R. Noyes, “Increasing Marriage Would Dramatically Reduce Child Poverty”, 2003, Center for Data Analysis Report #03-06 www.heritage.org/research/family/cda0306.cfm#_ftn12

5 Patrick Fagan, Robert Rector, Kirk Johnson, and America Peterson. The Positive Effects of Marriage: a Book of Charts. (Washington, D.C., The Heritage Foundation, 2002)

6 Angela Franks. Margaret Sanger's Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility. (Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland & Company, 2005)

7 Laura Schlesinger. The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. (NY, Harper, 2006) xxii.

8 Rector et al., 2003, op cite.

9 Divorcemag.com

10 Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher. The Case for Marriage: why married people are happier, healthier, and better off financially. (New York, Broadway, 2001)

11 The National Marriage Project. The State of Our Unions: the social health of Marriage in America. (NJ, Rutgers, 2008) marriage.rutgers.edu