In 1968 Diana Ross and The Supremes had a hit with Love Child. Forty-six years later I have to wonder if we’ve done the right thing for children conceived outside of marriage.
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In the world where this song ran to the top of the charts, it was not the norm, or even acceptable, to have a child out of wedlock. It unfortunately wound up hurting a lot of kids when they were viewed as “Love Children” who didn’t have the same status as other kids with two parents. Listen to the words of the song. They speak of poverty, shame, isolation, and loss.
Four decades and change later, chronologically only, we’ve made a societal decision to accept this as part of who we are in the United States. I would beg to differ, and point out that it’s a detriment to everyone involved to allow this to be an honorable, and financially subsidized, part of our culture.
One of the reasons that illegitimate births (yes, I know, stigma, cruel, etc… hear me out) were so frowned upon had nothing to do with our puritanical heritage. Most people, deep in their hearts, understood that premarital sex was more common than discussion around the donut table at church might indicate. What it did indicate, and still does, is a lack of maturity and love to create a child and then flee the scene as though it were a traffic accident.
Yes, young men and women have sex out of wedlock. But they move to the level of acceptance if they provide for those children as a couple. Providing two parents rather than one. Two incomes (or a shared one with one spouse staying at home) is a far better situation than being cast into the thrall of the government and the welfare system. Does anyone truly want their young girl aspiring to “baby-momma” as her identity? It turns her into a throw-away vessel used for one purpose only. No engineers, bus-drivers, doctors, technicians in that description – chattel only. Not a very pretty term, but accurate.
I don’t agree that it takes a village to raise a child. Speaking as the village idiot, do you want me raising your child? My views, my rules, my program? No? Well then, please do not expect subsidies from me either. Will I help you if you’re in a jam? Yes. But when we allow the negative to become neutral, we do the same to the positive. Not judging means everything is of equal value. That’s a concept so wrong that we reject it in our every day lives hundreds of times a week. Is steak better than ground chuck? Are fresh beets better than ones in the can for a year? Is a 2011 Maybach more comfortable to drive than a 2011 Focus?
I’m not advocating a return to calling illegitimate children by a name to demean them – it’s not their fault and that is just wrong.. But I see so many young women in my universe giving birth with no father in sight. The struggles, degradation, and misery that brings into her young life are enormous. The child suffers as well. We may have officially removed the stigma by not talking about it, but the inky tendrils of poverty and lack of upward mobility associated with no father in the household have taken hold of our hearts and hardened them.
Worst of all, for many the solution to a love child is an abortion. No worse solution exists to a child conceived by a boy and a girl with hormone issues. But it is viewed as a form of birth control by all too many. Give that some thought – killing a baby to keep it from being born is as acceptable to some as a condom or a hormone pill. That’s the ultimate fate for many children hastily conceived when no stigma is attached.
Was a pop singer from nearly half-a-century ago telling the truth, or are we living in a fools paradise? Do we love children, or just love making them. And, in all honesty, do we really love making children when abortion is so widely used to end their lives?
No final answer here, just a question.
