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PRmerger
Guest
Fair enough.
- Status
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JaneGrey
Guest
Understood. I still think commentary should move away from the children, who should stop being labeled ‘consequences’ of bad behaviour.
Well meaning people might think they are helping the children, but trust me, as someone who has actually lived through it, the stigma is ridiculous, unnecessary and harmful.
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4Squarebaby
Guest
So why is the rate relatively low in Japan, China, and Korea, when only South Korea has a significantly large enough Christian community who are supposed to believe that fornication is a sin to move the birth to single parent rate? It can’t be all abortion, can it. I would theorize that it is pubic stigma and the shame brought upon the families which enable the shotgun to work
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EasterJoy
Guest
I was referring to the comments about the consequences of being attracted to men with high testosterone. High testosterone may predispose someone to this sin instead of that one, but I don’t think that the decision-making that lead to the phenomenon in question has much to do with testosterone levels. I do think it has everything to do with expectations.
I don’t just mean that there is some simple connection, that this is all about women not expecting much of men. That is only one aspect. I’m also struck by how many young people fear marriage in the present moral climate the way they fear moving into a hurricane zone because of the current weather climate, only more so.
The unforeseen result of no-fault divorce is that people see divorce as something that can strike without warning, no matter what you do. Staying in a difficult marriage is not valued much…a very good thing when it comes to getting people away from spouses who abuse them, but not so great when the problem is more like a fanatic attachment to cats or ESPN. Let us also not forget the strains of astronomical student debt and a self-image that depends on the consumption of luxuries. The list goes on and on, and when the strain gets to be too much, the collapse is too often taken as a foregone conclusion.
Contraception and in vitro methods of conception, meanwhile, have made conception something that has no necessary connection to sexual intercourse. You can have sex without expecting to conceive, and you can expect to be able to conceive without even finding a sexual partner, let alone a spouse. No wonder so many rank-and-file Catholics have no idea why gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry!
The result of this “perfect storm” assaulting marriage is a moral climate unlike anything in the past, but the parallels to the “great” civilizations during their decline is hard to miss.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Can you please leave off with the assertion that anyone somehow commended high testosterone levels? I never said it. The articles I cited never said it. The only comments I have seen in here are contrary to the assertion that I never made and that the articles never made! Since the dead horse was never really alive, can we now let its battered bones rest in peace?
I agree with you that many young women expect little of men, and with good reason to some degree, though not completely. Many, though fewer young men have the same expectation of women, and with good reason to some degree, though not completely.
I agree with you entirely that the current moral climate is not conducive to marriage or, for that matter, to anything but consumerism.
But I have not yet seen any poster advance any good evidence that what I and the articles REALLY said was inaccurate. I am not saying it’s every piece in the puzzle, nor did I ever. But we would be foolish not to at least tentatively accept that it might be one piece.
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EasterJoy
Guest
Life can be brutal for single mothers in Asia, but in China it is the worst. Financial security is difficult for unmarried women there, even without children, of course women who get pregnant before marriage face huge stigmas, but in China abortions can be forced on anyone who does not have a “birth permit”.
*Chai Ling, former student leader at Tiananmen Square, founder of All Girls Allowed, decried the brutal population control methods the government imposes on women, especially single pregnant women.
“It is an insidious policy causing the society to immediately demand an abortion for any woman without a birth permit, married or not,” Chai said. “To refuse would be illegal but most unmarried women like me don’t even dare to ask and certainly don’t tell others about it but silently suffer in a country with the highest female suicide rate in the world, 500 women a day every day…” *foreignaffairs.house.gov/news/blog/?1990
To say we wouldn’t have this problem if our women were treated like urban Chinese women is a little like saying that a debilitating mildew allergy could be avoided by moving to Hell.
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EasterJoy
Guest
I was referring to this post:
As to whether we ought to be concerned that there are too many female pregnancy hormones getting into the water supply–not to mention Prozac and who knows what else–you’ll not get any arguments from me on that! I don’t think that is why we have a high birth rate among unmarried women, that’s all, and that’s the topic of the thread, to be narrow about it. I will admit that I may be guilty of a gross over-application of Occam’s Razor, you’d have me on that one, but I think there are likelier suspects.
Wow, this is a depressing topic.
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JimG
Guest
It is indeed a depressing topic. What amazes and depresses me at the same time is that books as disparate as Mary Eberstadt’s recent “Adam and Eve After the Pill,” and Carle Zimmerman’s 1940’s book “Family and Civilization” reach similar conclusions to yours in post #363 from entirely separate lines of research: “The result of this “perfect storm” assaulting marriage is a moral climate unlike anything in the past, but the parallels to the “great” civilizations during their decline is hard to miss.”
Makes me almost glad I’m getting old. I feel rather like a citizen of Rome a few years before the fall.
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4Squarebaby
Guest
The last numbers I google had China’s rate five times higher then Japan’s. And South Korea is in that mix also if we keep North Korea out. Now Japan and South Korea don’t have China’s policies. What is the difference, besides public stigma and shame, between Japan and most American and European cultures?
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EasterJoy
Guest
Public stigma and shame translate to social isolation and financial struggle, if not financial ruin. There isn’t any pressure to have children unless someone in your circle other than you think it is a good idea. In this country, you’re more likely to be stigmatized by your female friends because you* aren’t* sexually active (in the right amount according to these ‘friends’ of yours, mind you) than because you are. Have a baby, and it is considered wrong to judge you. Stay a virgin or avoid dressing in a way that is sexually provocative, and if you are not merely written off as being socially backward and incompetent in matters romantic, you can even be accused of judging everyone else!
It’s one extreme or the other, it seems. One might almost think there is evil at work.
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severus68
Guest
What good or grace is there in doing or not doing anything because of shame or fear of punishment ? I am sure Saudi Arabia, Iran would have 0%. So, I disagree strongly that this is a good thing. Shame and stigmas may well result in aborting babies, killing new born.
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4Squarebaby
Guest
And a lack of stigma and shame has stopped marriages and resulted in a single diget rate of live births to unmarried women to spike to almost a 50% rate in two generations. Where stigma and social shame still exist the rate is still in the single digets.[SIGN][/SIGN]
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Sarcelle
Guest
I refrained from premarital sex even when I was an atheist because I could see that it brought more problems in a relationship. I was accused by men of being gay. Now my friends who did engage in premarital sex were also accused by these same men of being whores. So if you practiced chastity as a single, you were gay and if you did not you were a whore. It’s damn if you do and damn if you don’t.
Disclaimer: I did not say all men did this but some men I knew.
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EasterJoy
Guest
There is a positive good in avoiding sin and performing virtuous acts, even when your motives are less than pure. After all, it is not as if those who avoided sin in the past because they feared punishment had no other motive than that.
It is not just that there is no shame. There is not even any guilt at falling, because the entire concept of sexual sin is being rejected! If anything, those who maintain virtue are vilified, because they are implying that sin is a real thing! I agree that it is morally wrong to demean the sinner, but God’s law isn’t arbitrary. People are suffering very much from being taught that it is arbitrary, though. You may not be culpable if you’ve been taught lies and believed them, it may even have been a good thing to cut out the high-and-mighty arbitrary consequences against sin, but you aren’t spared the *natural *consequences of not knowing the true consequences of your actions. Those who avoid sin for the wrong reasons don’t avoid the consequences of acting with a bad motive, but at least they avoid the consequences that make the action morally forbidden in the first place, if nothing else.
I mean to say that it is not as if lacking fear of the consequence keeps the consequence from happening. We ought not whack others when they sin, and God doesn’t whack us when we sin. The sin itself still whacks us, though, and that is the worst punishment of all!
Yep. There are places where a woman who has a child outside of wedlock will suffer less stigma than a woman who keeps her virginity and wants to marry a man who has done the same. The woman who has the child without having the husband does not escape the consequences of raising a child who knows his or her father had no interest in staying around, though.
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Shin
Guest
If there’s no social stigma against sin, then that means sin is acceptable socially.
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Walking_Home
Guest
If there’s no social stigma against sin, then that means sin is acceptable socially.
How many bags of stones – are you down for.
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Shin
Guest
There certainly is a social stigma against Christian morality however.
Hmm.
Hmm.
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LightBound
Guest
Is it any wonder why women get abortions instead of keeping the baby. Even with a lesser amount of social stigma in general, it’s still alive, well, and flourishing here on CAF.If there’s no social stigma against sin, then that means sin is acceptable socially.
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4Squarebaby
Guest
Yes because the society puts no stigma on a boy who has a child and runs out. They cheer him on the sporting fields they pass him on employment interviews even though he left his family. It is so there some w[SIGN][/SIGN]omen may decide to get an abortion rather then have her parents throw a baby shower for her
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LightBound
Guest
I got the first part but what are you saying about a woman having an abortion so she doesn’t have to have a baby shower? Can you try that one again?- Status