This is one of the themes of “Red Families v. Blue Families,” a provocative new book by two law professors, Naomi Cahn and June Carbone. The authors depict a culturally conservative “red America” that’s stuck trying to sustain an outdated social model. By insisting (unrealistically) on chastity before marriage, Ms. Cahn and Ms. Carbone argue, social conservatives guarantee that their children will get pregnant early and often (see Palin, Bristol), leading to teen childbirth, shotgun marriages and high divorce rates.
This self-defeating cycle could explain why socially conservative states have more family instability than, say, the culturally liberal Northeast. If you’re looking for solid marriages, head to Massachusetts, not Alabama.
To Ms. Cahn and Ms. Carbone’s credit, their book is nuanced enough to complicate this liberal-friendly thesis. They acknowledge, for instance, that there are actually multiple “red family” models, from the Mormon west to the Sun Belt suburbs to the rural South.
More important, Ms. Cahn and Ms. Carbone also acknowledge one of the more polarizing aspects of the “blue family” model. Conservative states may have more teen births and more divorces, but liberal states have many more abortions.
I believe the premise that there is a fundamental difference between families of the “Red” and “Blue” is true. One believes in sin and responsibility and the other believes in patrimony of the state and group care.
Don
teen childbirth, shotgun marriages and high divorce rates: liberals considers these worse than abortion while conservatives do not, that is our divide. (realize that is oversimplifying a bit)
Progressives want government to regulate everything except sex and drugs.
Brother Michael said (#3.),
“Progressives want government to regulate everything except sex and drugs.”
You left out one item,
“Progressives” want to limit all non-progressive public speech and journalism, including political and religious, except for ‘progressive’ speech.
Where I live, the folks with the highest out-of-wedlock birth rates vote blue. This is nonsense.
In Wisconsin no one bothers to get married. Does that mean there are “no out-of-wedlock birth”s, or, are they all “out-of-wedlock birth”s?
(I’m of course overstating things but try to guess my meaning)
Don
Br. Michael wrote: “Progressives want government to regulate everything except sex and drugs.”
Well, that is the objective of Anarchists. Does that mean Progressives are Anarchists?
It does seem to me that at the end of the day that “Revisionists”, Modern Liberals”, Progressives”, Anarchists”, “Extreme Libertarians”, and more all seem to end up at the same end-game.
Don
It’s an insightful article. I do think the consequences of abortion have not been fully understood.
I am continually surprised by the way all progressives are grouped together. It’s kind of like saying, conservatives want the state out of everything except the bedroom and the military.
Personally, I would not mind paying higher taxes for policies that encouraged women to have children. Children and poverty are deeply linked. If people really want to diminish abortion rates, confronting poverty might be a good place to start. Alas, the cult of tax-cuts is a bit stronger than the belief in supporting the lives of mothers and their babies.
“Alas, the cult of tax-cuts is a bit stronger than the belief in supporting the lives of mothers and their babies.”
John,
Linking tax-cuts to the problems of mothers is simplistic.
It is the children whom we should worry about. Too often, they are the product of an irresponsible sexual act and the child is left to be raised by ‘half-of-a-family.’
Children require both their mother and their father in their lives in ordcer to have the best chance of healthy maturation and a heralthy and successful adult life.
No amount of nanny-state financial assistance is going to replace an absentee siring father or compensate for the inadequacy of a sometimes-father/part-time-father.
The problems of unwed/abandoned mothers and their children are not going to be solved just by the injection of taxpayer’s money.
Chastity before marriage and the institution of marriage will do far far more for those children than money can ever do.
But, of course, by mentioning such things as chastity and marriage, I have committed the great sin of political incorrectness.
Perhaps the book is a lot clearer on this than the review — but it seems there is a complete conflation of class and politics here.
The EDUCATED CLASS (as very clearly defined by the authors as those having graduate degrees) marries late, tends not to divorce, and has few children, according to this. They also tend to vote “blue.”
The UNEDUCATED CLASS (high school or less) marries early, divorces a lot, has a lot of kids, and a lot of out-of-wedlock kids. They also tend to be “red” voters.
Now the question of abortion is brought up. But there is no comparison betwen the EDUCATED and UNEDUCATED classes now. There is only a VERY ROUGH comparison between the RED and BLUE VOTERS (and only as grouped by states i.e. Mass. vs. Utah.)
Uh…gosh….Mass has a LOT of “uneducated” people who nonetheless vote “blue” (e.g., union members.) And I would guess that Utah, a very conservative state, has a LOT of “educated” people (doctors, lawyers, etc.) who are Mormons and vote “red.”
So how does telling me that the abortion rate is higher in Mass than in Utah remotely imply that the “EDUCATED” class is using abortion to avoid out-of-wedlock or teen childbirth???? It totally doesn’t tell me a thing about the relationship of education to abortion, which must not be that hard of a statistic to find!
Go and get the actual statistic and then this could be an interesting discussion.
If one looks at This report from Alan Guttmacher (whence came, one suspects, the data for the book), there are a number of interesting details to be found. For me the most striking is the shift in rates. From 1986 to 2006 the overall teen pregnancy rate itself dropped by about a third. If girls are more sexually active, then they are doing a much better job of contraception. The birth rate, however, didn’t drop nearly as much, because the abortion ratio also dropped. When it is broken down by race, the numbers are more curious. Non-Hispanic whites were lower on every point, though their abortion ratio was only a little lower than the total. Hispanics were about what you might have guessed: a high rate of pregnancies and a low abortion ratio, leading to a high birth rate. Blacks, however, also had a high pregnancy rate, and a high abortion ratio; the combination produced a birth rate considerably higher than whites but not as high as Hispanics. What’s even more striking is that, while the Hispanic abortion ratio also shows a decline over time, the black abortion ratio hardly changes: 40% of black teen pregnancies end in abortion, from one year to the next.
The other story is how far DC is an outlier: it has the highest values of everything except the abortion ratio, where it is third. The missing factor is the socio-economic, of course: to the degree that blue vs. red means upper vs. lower class, we can’t see it here.
RE: “If people really want to diminish abortion rates, confronting poverty might be a good place to start.”
I agree — what taxes and the State has to do with confronting poverty I don’t know except that Gawain likes collectivization and central control, which is inherently unable to “confront poverty” well at all.
RE: “Alas, the cult of tax-cuts is a bit stronger than the belief in supporting the lives of mothers and their babies.”
Not at all. The cult of collectivization and central planning is more important to Gawain than supporting the lives of mothers and their babies. Those of us who have money and time are more than capable of supporting the lives of mothers and their babies — something which the State cannot do.
But hey — if one values a bloated central planning and control unit as Gawain does, anything for the cause, eh? Even using mothers and their babies as a means of acquiring more money, just as Judas did.