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severus68
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Just ones not fitting the criteria - sad.
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BarbG
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When I go downtown I see many young women, probably in their early 20’s with a “toddler” in a stroller, and it seems to me that ,amy of them are not married because they don’t wear a wedding ring. Now I’m sure if they were married, they would wear a ring. I truly give them a great deal of credit because they had their baby and are doing their best to raise the child – they are truly in my prayers.
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JimG
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First, the mother needs to consider that it’s not all about her or her feelings. It’s about what’s best for the child. Does she choose to deprive the child of a father, and perhaps relegate the both of them to poverty if she can instead place the child with a good mom and dad for adoption? I can’t make that decision for anyone, but first priority ought to be given to what’s best for the child.
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severus68
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Good points. I think the push for unmarried mothers to give up their children is honestly, a punishment and to remove signs of the sin.
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EasterJoy
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Excepting the demands of charity, who is forcing you? If you are confident you will not find yourself saying to the Lord, “When did I see you in need and fail to see to you?”, then leave her to her consequences, and let both take what Heaven deems is deserved in the end.
Tell me this, though: you don’t think that pregnancy and child-rearing is a “consequence”? It isn’t enough she will be responsible for a child that, let us be blunt, she could have killed without looking at? What consequences do you think she should get, a good-old fashioned stoning? Forgive me if I misunderstand your point entirely and please clarify, because as I’m hearing you, you sound more uncaring than if this hypothetical woman were standing at water’s edge, holding a bag of unwanted puppies. You can’t mean that?
These mothers don’t deserve support for their irresponsible actions. They deserve support because they and their children are fellow human beings without the means to live. Surely it is better that adults support themselves when it is possible, but childbearing and childrearin ought not be made into a crime, especially not when refusing to do it is being treated as a right.
Offer abortion and contraception with no consequences, but impose consequences for those who are actually willing to take the natural consequeces of their actions? I don’t think so.
The Father chose that His Son be borne to a woman who was obviously going to be wrongly accused of fornication. That is something to consider, too.
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JimG
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Back in the '60’s when the feminist movement was first getting started, the argument was that women needed to have sexual freedom equal to men. Women argued and lobbied for contraception, abortion rights, and the ability to be just as sexually irresponsible as men could be. To a large extent, they got their wish, and considered it a victory. Men considered it a victory too, because now, responsibility for avoiding pregnancy became even more a woman’s responsibility instead of theirs. The losers, of course, were the children, as they still are.
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JimG
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But of course, both the mother and the father have chosen to punish the child by depriving him of the benefits of a two parent family. It’s a sad situation. It’s not about punishing anyone. It’s about doing what’s best for the child.
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EasterJoy
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I say this from the perspective of the child: If my mother wants me, I want her, and I’ll take her station in life over anything anyone else could offer. If she perceives that I ought to be with another family, yes, I’ll accept that, I would see she suffered the separation out of love for me, and because of her great trust in how my adoptive parents would love me, but I wouldn’t abide anyone forcing her.
I mean I’m sticking up for what the child would choose, even as an adult, what I would want if I were adopting a child. I’d want to know I was a mother with the blessings of the child’s mother, that she had given me the child freely as an act of trust in me, and unless she had abused or neglected the child, unless she had tried and failed or failed to try, I’d need that.
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JimG
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I agree with everything you say. But a newborn is, of course, completely dependent on others. It cannot make this decision nor even evaluate it for years to come. Giving up a child for adoption could never be easy, always heartwrenching. Any adoptive child, I hope, would realize that he or she only has the family he is in because of the love of his mother, and that love cost her dearly.
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BlueEyedLady
Guest
Yeah…shotgun weddings are grounds for an annulment.
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BlueEyedLady
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Are you kidding me? I have a lot of things to say to that but they would get me banned. My mom was married when she conceived me but left my father while she was pregnant because he was an abusive alcoholic.
I had a one parent household. We did live in poverty, frequently without utilities. But I had a great childhood, I don’t know anyone who had it better. My mom was an amazing mom, my older brother is one of the best men in the world, and if I believed in angels I would be sure that my grandma was one. I never knew my dad or his side of the family, but the idea that I would be better off with another family because they had more money and a father is appalling, offensive, and completely wrong.
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JimG
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True, it’s pretty easy to argue that there was never true consent when daddy had a shotgun to the boy’s back! And yet I knew several such couples where there was never an annulment, never a divorce. There were some more kids, and a good marriage. Because, faced with a child on the way, for which they were both responsible, they decided to love each other. And that was the right decision.
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PRmerger
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I don’t doubt that you grew up in a wonderful home, BEL.
The point is this, and it is irrefutable: there is no better way to raise a baby than to have a mom and a dad, together, in the same home, married, and in love with each other, who worship God together.
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BlueEyedLady
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I’d take my family, which is clearly not up to snuff for some of you over a family with workaholic parents, abusive parents, alcoholic parents, etc. Sorry, but a lot of people with married parents had it a lot worse than me.
Also, the FRC is a despicable organization and I consider it a badge of honor that they have an issue with my upbringing.
No, I should not have been given up for adoption.
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PRmerger
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No doubt.
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BlueEyedLady
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I definitely should not have been given to another family is the point I’m making.No doubt.
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PRmerger
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No, you shouldn’t have.
But that’s like saying, “I know someone who smoked every single day of his life and lived to the ripe old age of 105!” as an example of: therefore, smoking isn’t bad for your health.
Not very good logic. Not very good science.
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JimG
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I don’t doubt anything you say. My comments were general and certainly not applicable to any or to every individual family.
Your mom sounds wonderful. She was right to leave an abusive husband, and obviously she made the decision she considered best. There are some adopted children who could tell similar stories. Every adoptive family is not rich, nor do they need to be. They just need to love their children.
But obviously, the newborns won’t be making that decision. I don’t think they should attribute a bad motive to their birth mothers whichever decision she made. But neither do I think it ought to be a foregone conclusion that every single mother with an out of wedlock birth must keep the child and never think of adoption. My whole point is that she must consider the child’s best welfare, and that’s not just limited to money.
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PRmerger
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Really? I don’t know much about them.
What makes them despicable?
Are they racist or something?
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EasterJoy
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I think you misunderstand the point we’re trying to make. I don’t think anyone is arguing that a child wouldn’t prefer to grow up watching his or her dad and his or her own mother taking care of each other in a healthy relationship with each other, with the child, and with God and neighbor. This doesn’t compare to a case where the child has parents in strife or a neighborhood in chaos or only one biological parent or who is without religion or charity or the basic necessities for life in the home. Of course all those things matter very much.
A person who chooses to have a child with anyone else than his or her own spouse is denying the child a parent. That’s wrong, even if it is possible that a parent might ignorantly make that choice wishing no harm on the child.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that a parent who is alone should be held to keep the child at all costs, as if adoptive parents weren’t wonderful parents. That is also quite far from what I meant, and far from the truth.
My point is that I don’t know anyone with a capable parent who wouldn’t prefer his or her own parent to anyone else on the planet, even if the parents were not going to be living together. In the child’s mind, and rightly so, his or her own parent is special over anyone else, and that only changes by reason of a very great trauma in the relationship between parent and child. A mother faced with such a decision knows this. A child entrusted to others will feel abandoned unless it was done for a grave reason–I mean this is on an emotional level; I don’t mean that adoption is at all anything like abandonment. Therefore, it is only reasonable that a parent not proven incapable ought to have the duty and obligation of discerning his or her own capacity to parent alone or to entrust a child to others. The choice to trust that child to anyone else belongs to the parent of the child alone, just as the obligation to parent as well as one can do it exists simply from the nature of being a parent.
In any event, the parent courageous enough to allow their child the right to live, even when it is clear that both parent and child will suffer hardships as a result, acts in keeping with the will of God. It is far better to protect a child from damaging hardship, but even a life with suffering is better than usurping the decision that is God’s alone: that is, whose life ought to be lived and whose should not.
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