State

It's buried in this Detroit Free Press article.

Staggering.

As a whole, 40% of the babies are born to unwed single mothers. Just a recipe for disaster.

The women aren't marrying men. But they are marrying the state. And the social-welfare services are delighted. There'll be work for legions of social workers.

This runaway illegitimacy is creating a new U.S. underclass.

IcyPatriot

Get pregnant - have the baby - get section 8, WIC, energy assistance, food stamps ... etc. It's a way of living on your own in some parts of the country. We'll just raise taxes on the rich so more of these teen girls can go pole dancing.

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

Also buried in this article:

The greatest percentage increase of births to unmarried mothers was among white women – a 27% jump, compared to a 23% increase among African Americans and 6% increase among Hispanic women.

And that fact that not all of these mothers, white, black or Hispanic, are "marrying the state," nor is everyone eligible for welfare unmarried as about half of all births from 2000-09 were to mothers eligible for Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income people,

Mrs.PatsFanInVa

Ummmm...small detail.

They're not all teens.

The percentage of babies born in Michigan to unmarried mothers rose significantly during the last decade, but fewer teens are giving birth, a new study shows.

• Michigan had a smaller percentage of new mothers without a high school diploma or GED – 17% -- than the national average of 22%.

And, interestingly enough, there's a solution.

• About 80% of teens who gave birth during 2000-10 did not intend to become pregnant, according to a state survey, which signals a need for more education about sexual activity and contraception.

Go figure.

chicowalker

Absolutely crazy, and for once I agree with State that this is both a recipe for disaster and creating (or perpetuating) an underclass.

What especially saddens me is that so many people would look at this data and still think that actually educating teens about sex and how to prevent pregnancy (which includes abstinence but also includes birth control) is a bad idea.

patsfan13

Children in 2 parent households are far less likely to live in poverty.

The presence of an underclass is a voting block of people for advocates of the welfare state. The advocates of the welfare depend on poverty as a source of their power. If everyone were wealthy we would need all the programs with their fiefdoms of bureaucrats, and $$$ being doled out by politicians.

A form of political enslavement.

__________________
"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."

chicowalker

And?

If you want to look at causation, which is all that really matters, education is the key.


You sound like Adrian Peterson or some other athlete.

Enslavement means there's no choice. Using that term because you want to demonize those with whom you disagree is, well, typical, actually...

DarrylS

Classic straw man idiocy, who advocates for a welfare state???

Political enslavement, sounds like another right wing talking point with no veracity or substantiation.

I would have suspected that you thought that this may be a good thing, as the baby was carried to term instead of other alternatives.. isn't that the ideal of the right?? To keep producing more and more children, so on our next crusade we have enough cannon fodder for our armies.

__________________
"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

DarrylS

The intellectually curious may want to look at the whole article.. instead of relying on a captioned news report.. believe it or not things are better than they were, but there is a need for huge improvement...

What concerns me is the increase of problem births, particularly amongst white and hispanic women..

http://www.milhs.org/wp-content/uplo...rtJuly2011.pdf

__________________
"Being the best doesn't mean you always win. It just means you win more than anyone else".. tweet from Kurt Warner to Tom Brady.

PatsWSB47

I also agree. Aside from the obvious attempt from the OP of blaming the situation on race(and the single-unwed redundancy from Mr. Vocabulary) there is a real problem here to be addressed that goes way beyond sex education. I think you hit the nail on the head. It's been a perpetuating problem for more than a generation and it's spreading across all racial demographics. I think that all the lifelines made available do tend to create a vision that single motherhood for many is a perfectly acceptable life choice to make.....or at least if it wasn't intended it isn't too much of a concern because they know the rescue is always there.

I don't know exactly what the solution is for this but I know that its not as simple as cutting them off from these programs. It's the solutions we should be working on though, not racial or political one upsmanships.