THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605100007
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Mothers' Day isn't supposed to stir mixed feelings. The day is for celebrating motherhood and mothers' love. But the proliferation of single-parent households - a phenomenon attributable in large measure to the rising rate of teen pregnancies - and the increase in child abuse by mothers as well as fathers do not inspire celebration.
Who doesn't agree by now that children having children out of wedlock is a human, social and economic catastrophe for parent, child and nation? Single-parent households headed by teen mothers are all but surely doomed to poverty and public assistance.
The offspring of unmarried teen mothers are extremely likely to be reared in squalor, abused or neglected, fail in school, perish young (often violently) or spend many of their years in the prisons or on welfare.
Every seven hours in the United States, a child dies of abuse or neglect. Far more often than not these children are from poor households.
Nothing new in that. Novelist Charles Dickens, who personally experienced the horrors of poverty in 19th-century England, understood the perils that life at the bottom of society poses for children. He wrote movingly about them. Children who bear children stack the deck of life cruelly against themselves and their babies.
Yet the percentage of births to unmarried adolescents in relation to all adolescent births continues to be ruinously high. In 1960, unmarried teens bore 15 percent of all children born to teens that year. In 1990, out-of-wedlock teen births constituted 67 percent of all teen births. Ninety-one percent of African-American teen births in 1990 were to unmarried teens, compared with 67 percent of whites' teen births. These are heartbreaking statistics.
What to do? President Clinton last week directed states to deny welfare funds to teen mothers who don't stay in school or won't live with responsible adults. Perhaps that will trim teen births, but don't count on it. Cutting welfare benefits is scant deterrent to unmarried-teen pregnancies and births.
Family-life education in the schools may eventually shrink unmarried-teen births as a percentage of all births, but that too is uncertain. Calls for teens to abstain from sexual intercourse until emotional maturity or marriage have little effect.
Motherhood has never been a joy unalloyed by pain. And mothers, being human, ever vary in ability to love, nurture and guide their young to fulfilling adulthood. Competent loving mothers are treasures to be cherished and honored not only on this day, of course, but every day. Thank heaven there are as many as there are. The price everyone pays for those who aren't is intolerably high. by CNB