40% Of US Births Now Occur Outside Of Marriage

[Vern Humphrey]

Interesting. 40%. Thats about the same as during the colonial period. Not a new issue. Surprise, surprise Gomer sometimes men and women have sex and they aren't married. Sometimes that results in a child and the daddy disappears for one reason or another.
So to me the REAL problem is we now have yet ANOTHER excuse to blame the problems of society - the job market, cost of health care, cost of day care, etc. on. Now we get to blame the fatherless child.
Marriage will fix it all? Seriously? Divorce rates are through the roof.

No, we DON'T blame the fatherless child. We blame the parents who fail to live up to their responsibility.

[Vern Humphrey]

Here's an example:

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- A Memphis man with at least 25 kids by 15 different mothers is at it again.
More women claim he's fathered children, and he's still not paying up.
We first told you about Terry Turnage two years ago.
They called him the worst deadbeat dad ever. As we've found out since then, he's wanted in another state by more women.

[Jiminvirginia]

No, we DON'T blame the fatherless child. We blame the parents who fail to live up to their responsibility.

Yet we do nothing for the one parent child.

[Vern Humphrey]

Yet we do nothing for the one parent child.

What!

What do you think welfare is for? What do you think the WIC program is for? What do you think Head Start is for?

All of those are predominantly oriented on poor, single parent families.

Now are they effective? Not if your aim is to ensure all children are raised in two-parent families -- in fact, the effect is just the contrary. But that's government for you.

[clintonhater]

That decision was based on junk science--something Holmes was prone to do.

The decision was 8-1, so don't blame it on Holmes. The lone dissenter was a Catholic who opposed it for the same reason Catholics oppose birth control. Holmes & the others based their decision on a mountain of statistics gathered by professional scientists researching human breeding.

So are you saying that the same proven laws of heredity that livestock breeders have used for generations to produce desired characteristics in animals don't apply to humans? How could that be biologically possible, without resorting to some supernatural explanation that exempted those laws from applying to humans?

Smearing eugenics because the Nazis perverted it to justify what they were planning to do anyway is not a respectable argument.

[Vern Humphrey]

The decision was 8-1, so don't blame it on Holmes. The lone dissenter was a Catholic who opposed it for the same reason Catholics oppose birth control. Holmes & the others based their decision on a mountain of statistics gathered by professional scientists researching human breeding.

No, they based it on slip-shod "studies" that were thoroughly discredited. The Jukes and the Kallikacks (the families that were supposedly studied) never actually existed.

So are you saying that the same proven laws of heredity that livestock breeders have used for generations to produce desired characteristics in animals don't apply to humans? How could that be biologically possible, without resorting to some supernatural explanation that exempted those laws from applying to humans?

No, I say you cannot apply selective breeding to humans. Suppose YOU should not match the "ideal" for the species? Would you quietly submit to castration?

Smearing eugenics because the Nazis perverted it to justify what they were planning to do anyway is not a respectable argument.

How do you make racism respectable? Are you prepared to castrate or spay "undesirables?"

Let me go a little farther here -- I've raised cattle and horses. For those animals, we have objective criteria -- beef production (for cattle), and speed (for horses.) But we do NOT have objective criteria for humans.

To understand the flaw in that, look at the American Kennel Club. When a particular breed of dog becomes popular, breeders start selectively breeding for the AKCs standards. And what do we get? Saint Bernards with hereditary hip dysplasia, Doberman Pinschers with skulls too narrow for their brains, Cocker Spaniels that are snappish and vicious.

If that's what we do to mere dogs, imagine what we'd do to humans!!

[Jiminvirginia]

What!

What do you think welfare is for? What do you think the WIC program is for? What do you think Head Start is for?

All of those are predominantly oriented on poor, single parent families.

Now are they effective? Not if your aim is to ensure all children are raised in two-parent families -- in fact, the effect is just the contrary. But that's government for you.

Great programs. Except they don't work. I have some personal experience here. For the single parent in the ackward spot of making just a little too much money the programs are not available and their entire paycheck is eaten up by housing, food and child care.
As others have implied the solution is to not just keep feeding them but to get them some useful job skills and the jobs to use them. Childcare costs are impossible for most single parents. Without a solid support network of family or friends they simply cannot work and pay for childcare. So they dont work and collect welfare, WIC, etc. and the problem perpetuates itself.

[Vern Humphrey]

Great programs. Except they don't work. I have some personal experience here. For the single parent in the ackward spot of making just a little too much money the programs are not available and their entire paycheck is eaten up by housing, food and child care.
As others have implied the solution is to not just keep feeding them but to get them some useful job skills and the jobs to use them. Childcare costs are impossible for most single parents. Without a solid support network of family or friends they simply cannot work and pay for childcare. So they dont work and collect welfare, WIC, etc. and the problem perpetuates itself.

I agree with you 100%. I'm old enough to remember the origin of the Great Society and how it was all "for the children." There are now many more children living in poverty than there were in the 1960s. Government, on the pretext of helping the children, created the situation we're now in.

[Jiminvirginia]

I agree with you 100%. I'm old enough to remember the origin of the Great Society and how it was all "for the children." There are now many more children living in poverty than there were in the 1960s. Government, on the pretext of helping the children, created the situation we're now in.

And just between me and you Vern I'm thinking it was Goverment of a Democratic liberal slant.

[Vern Humphrey]

And just between me and you Vern I'm thinking it was Goverment of a Democratic liberal slant.

It was Lyndon Butthead Johnson!

[clintonhater]

No, I say you cannot apply selective breeding to humans. Suppose YOU should not match the "ideal" for the species? Would you quietly submit to castration?

Not breeding equals castration? That's absurd, & you know it is. Except for those too irresponsible, or too feeble-minded, to practice birth control; for them, why should society pick up the tab to care for the social parasites they produce?

As for "objective criteria," what's more objective than an intelligence test? Better than that would be some reliable test for "social responsibility," to identify potential psychopaths.

And what does race have to do with it? Most of the "prime examples" such as the Kallikak family were white. It's true "Kallikak" was a pseudonym, but the case study was based on real individuals, the Wolverton family.

[blackhawknj]

"Most men pay more attention to the breeding of their dogs and their horses than to their children." William Penn.
Forced sterilization was seen as a way to prevent hereditary diseases.
The Spanish Habsburgs killed themselves off through inbreeding.
The point is we are finding out what many other societies have found out over the centuries is that illegitimate children-and their mothers-are a burden on the community.

[S.A. Boggs]

Those anti-abortion folks only care about kids until they're born.

Why are pro against capital punishment for convicted murders? What "crime" did the baby do? To make the "pro" people happy how about "aborting" the convicted murders the same way the child is murdered...or is that considered too inhumane?
Sam

[Roadkingtrax]

Why are pro against capital punishment for convicted murders? What "crime" did the baby do? To make the "pro" people happy how about "aborting" the convicted murders the same way the child is murdered...or is that considered too inhumane?
Sam

I'm all for capital punishment.

[Vern Humphrey]

Not breeding equals castration? That's absurd, & you know it is. Except for those too irresponsible, or too feeble-minded, to practice birth control; for them, why should society pick up the tab to care for the social parasites they produce?

Okay, tell me how you would absolutely prevent breeding.

Remember, in the case Holmes wrote on, the solution WAS surgical sterilization.

As for "objective criteria," what's more objective than an intelligence test? Better than that would be some reliable test for "social responsibility," to identify potential psychopaths.

Just because they use numbers, that doesn't make it objective. In fact, psychologists can't even agree on WHAT intelligence is. And there is no reliable test for "social responsibility."

And what does race have to do with it? Most of the "prime examples" such as the Kallikak family were white. It's true "Kallikak" was a pseudonym, but the case study was based on real individuals, the Wolverton family.

Once more, the Kallikaks did not exist. The "case study" is an extremely flaky method of research -- basically it's anecdotal evidence.