More than 72 percent of children in the African-American community are born out of wedlock. That means absent fathers.
I think that for a child to be in a household... with a situation where the parents are not married, as in being one man and one woman, is not the best household for a child.
The illegitimacy rate is going up every year. If you expect a government program to change that, you know more about government programs than I do.
Labeling people single parents, for example, when they may in fact be co-parenting - either with an unmarried other parent in the home or with an ex-spouse in a joint custody situation - stigmatizes their children as the products of 'single parenthood' and makes the uncounted parent invisible to society.
The number one cause of poverty in the United States is kids having children before they are married.
Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.
I'm just curious, who's more fit to raise a child? A loving committed same-sex couple or an unmarried 15-year-old with no income and really no skills to parent?
I was 21 and had been going out with my boyfriend for two years when I found out I was pregnant - despite being told by doctors that I was sterile. Jamie's father and I hadn't discussed marriage, and to me, it wasn't something to be entered into just to stop gossip.
My older brother, Jake, and I had a bohemian childhood. My parents are deeply unconventional people from the beatnik generation. They weren't married, and I thought that was normal. We called them by their first names.
