Whatever Happened to Shotgun Weddings?

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Excellent article at Touchstone by W. Bradford Wilcox discussing the overwhelming evidence in support of Pope Paul VI arguments against contraception in Humanae Vitae (HV).

One prediction In HV that struck me as counterintuitive was the increased in out of wedlock births. A decrease in out of wedlock births seemed to be a plausible argument by contraceptive proponents. Yet, through-out the Western world out of wedlock births have increased exponentially.

What’s the link between contraception and out of wedlock births? Wilcox at Touchstone provides the following analysis:

“Boyfriends, of course, could say that pregnancy was their girlfriends’ choice. So men were less likely to agree to a shotgun marriage in the event of a pregnancy than they would have been before the arrival of the pill and abortion.

Thus, many traditional women ended up having sex and having children out of wedlock…. This explains in large part why the contraceptive revolution was associated with an increase in both abortion and illegitimacy.”

I don’t buy it. I think that Wilcox misses the point. Fathers and the community held the shotgun to a young man’s head. Why did parents and society give up on shot gun weddings?
touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=18-01-038-f
 
Was that banjo music I heard playing in the background of your post?
 
Island Oak:
Was that banjo music I heard playing in the background of your post?
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Of course, the shot gun is the most extreme example. Appalachia has a out of wedlock birth rate that rivals the inner city these days.

The point of the post and the article is that contraception changed the push for marriage among those couple who are not married. Why?
 
shotgun weddings still occur, even thought the gun is not always present in a literal representation.
 
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TCB:
The point of the post and the article is that contraception changed the push for marriage among those couple who are not married. Why?
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Quite simply it was not contraception but the “contraceptive mentality” that did it. Reverance for sex was lost, thus reverance for the Sacrament of Marriage was lost, and society no longer viewed marriage as a pre-requisite for children. Children out of wedlock are no longer taboo, so those who wish to have children no longer need to have the corollary wish for marriage.
 
Dr. Colossus:
Quite simply it was not contraception but the “contraceptive mentality” that did it. Reverance for sex was lost, thus reverance for the Sacrament of Marriage was lost, and society no longer viewed marriage as a pre-requisite for children. Children out of wedlock are no longer taboo, so those who wish to have children no longer need to have the corollary wish for marriage.
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Why has the taboo disappeared? I think that the taboo had a firm foundation and still does. The feminization of poverty due to single mothers is at least economic evidence in support of the taboo. why should the contraceptive mentality be a license to abandon children?
 
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serendipity:
shotgun weddings still occur, even thought the gun is not always present in a literal representation.
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I am 43 and have yet to meet anyone who felt the least pressure to marry their girlfriend because she was pregnant. In fact, women (at least on TV), seem to say, “Don’t marry me just because I’m pregnant.”
 
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TCB:
Why has the taboo disappeared? I think that the taboo had a firm foundation and still does. The feminization of poverty due to single mothers is at least economic evidence in support of the taboo. why should the contraceptive mentality be a license to abandon children?
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I have no real answer for that. Sin by its very nature is irrational.
 
Dr. Colossus:
I have no real answer for that. Sin by its very nature is irrational.
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You don’t get off that easy. St. Thomas says that sinful behavior is evil under the appearence of good.
 
Dr. Colossus:
…society no longer viewed marriage as a pre-requisite for children…
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Correction…society no longer viewed marriage as a pre-requisite for SEX. Once women could assure themselves that they could have sex and reliably avoid the consequences (of pregnancy)…poof…taboo shattered. The children who were conceived were merely unintended accidents of inattentive contrceptive use. When that became a too-common occurrence and an inconvenience (after all even if you have no shame to deal with it still takes 9 months out of your life to have a baby and does a real number on your figure), we saw the rise of abortion on demand.

More recently, the fear and shame of out-of-wedlock pregnancy has not only diminished but, in some sectors of society, seems to have become a rite of passage.
 
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TCB:
Of course, the shot gun is the most extreme example. Appalachia has a out of wedlock birth rate that rivals the inner city these days.

The point of the post and the article is that contraception changed the push for marriage among those couple who are not married. Why?
Click to expand...
Really quite simple. Contraception made sex “safe”, which caused a great increase in the availability of sex outside of marriage, which led to a more obvious expression on the part of males that marriage was a trap, and now also unnecessary. Contraception led to later and later childbirths (in or out of marriage), which reduced the “need” to get married.
 
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TCB:
Why has the taboo disappeared? I think that the taboo had a firm foundation and still does. The feminization of poverty due to single mothers is at least economic evidence in support of the taboo. why should the contraceptive mentality be a license to abandon children?
Click to expand...
I don’t think the tabo has disappeared; it is now “safe” to get an abortion, which takes care of the taboo. No kid, no problem (or so the sloppy thinking goes).
 
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TCB:
Excellent article at Touchstone by W. Bradford Wilcox discussing the overwhelming evidence in support of Pope Paul VI arguments against contraception in Humanae Vitae (HV).

One prediction In HV that struck me as counterintuitive was the increased in out of wedlock births. A decrease in out of wedlock births seemed to be a plausible argument by contraceptive proponents. Yet, through-out the Western world out of wedlock births have increased exponentially.

What’s the link between contraception and out of wedlock births? Wilcox at Touchstone provides the following analysis:

“Boyfriends, of course, could say that pregnancy was their girlfriends’ choice. So men were less likely to agree to a shotgun marriage in the event of a pregnancy than they would have been before the arrival of the pill and abortion.

Thus, many traditional women ended up having sex and having children out of wedlock…. This explains in large part why the contraceptive revolution was associated with an increase in both abortion and illegitimacy.”

I don’t buy it. I think that Wilcox misses the point. Fathers and the community held the shotgun to a young man’s head. Why did parents and society give up on shot gun weddings?
touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=18-01-038-f
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I’m not sure why you don’t buy it. Our society has been sold on “it’s a woman’s choice” or “it’s between a woman and her doctor”.

Have you heard anyone on the “liberal” side of the aisle say “it’s between a woman and her husband”? Sorry, it seems quite obvious to me that “empowering” women in the sexual regard has negated the responsibility of men for the consequences. And men have run away from the requisite commitment.

I think Wilcox is right on.
 
No one but me seems to remember this, but prior to the Pill there were quite a few embittered men who felt roped into marriage because of their “fiancé’s” pregnancy, when they thought the woman was contracepting by IUD or rhythm what have you. (My mother swore by the rhythm method.) It became a sneaky way to snag a husband–“accidentally” get pregnant and he’ll do the honorable thing. Plenty of men did (then griped about it later), but there was a bit of a revolt in the early 60s. Then when the Pill came along a lot of men had the attitude, now you don’t have any excuse for getting PG. Then when abortion became legal, it was you have no excuse to not GET RID OF IT.

Of course, through all this the man gets his way and expects no consequences. Now it seems like we’ve come to the point where it is a point of pride with many women to raise kids without a father. Like, who needs 'em. Lots of blame to go around, going way back before the 1960s. Whose fault, I don’t know.

That’s one reason I find the doctrine of Original Sin so compelling.
 
Island Oak:
Correction…society no longer viewed marriage as a pre-requisite for SEX.
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First, society viewed sex as free from procreation.
Island Oak:
The children who were conceived were merely unintended accidents of inattentive contraceptive use.
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Children were unintended accidents before the Pill as well.
Island Oak:
When that became a too-common occurrence and an inconvenience (after all even if you have no shame to deal with it still takes 9 months out of your life to have a baby and does a real number on your figure), we saw the rise of abortion on demand.
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Still, why did men no longer feel compelled to do the honorable thing?
 
We can also ask ourselves if a couple married in a Shotgun wedding is validly married according to the Church’s law. I have the understanding that a couple is supposed to give free consent to the marriage for it to be a valid and sacramental marriage.

I guess that many people who were married under such circumstances went down the aisle just as unmarried as they went up the aisle.
 
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Sunniva:
We can also ask ourselves if a couple married in a Shotgun wedding is validly married according to the Church’s law. I have the understanding that a couple is supposed to give free consent to the marriage for it to be a valid and sacramental marriage.

I guess that many people who were married under such circumstances went down the aisle just as unmarried as they went up the aisle.
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Especially consideringthe annulments given out these days.
 
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otm:
I don’t think the tabo has disappeared; it is now “safe” to get an abortion, which takes care of the taboo. No kid, no problem (or so the sloppy thinking goes).
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From that same article:
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Touchstone:
In his first article, published in the* Quarterly Journal of Economics* in 1996, Akerlof began by asking why the United States witnessed such a dramatic increase in illegitimacy from 1965 to 1990—from 24 percent to 64 percent among African-Americans, and from 3 percent to 18 percent among whites.
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If not gone, that taboo seems to be on life support.
 
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