July 25, 2006
WAGES OF TOLERANCE:
On the Benefits of Social Stigmas: REMOVING ROAD SIGNS CAN BE DANGEROUS (David C. Stolinsky, December 1997, Oxford Review)
For a generation now we have been busy removing crucial signs from the winding and dangerous road of life. Hoping to be nonjudgmental, wishing to increase freedom, believing even that we were being compassionate, we have almost systematically deprived the young and inexperienced of much of the benefit of our experience. Life holds as many sharp curves, steep grades, and hazardous intersections as ever, but we have conspired to render them unmarked.For example, we removed most of the signs that warned teenagers of the dangers of premature sex and pregnancy. When I went to school in the 1950s, only one girl became pregnant in six years of junior and senior high. Pregnant girls had to leave school and go live with relatives or attend Continuation School, where returning dropouts went. There was stigma attached to unmarried pregnancy. This was hard on pregnant girls, but because of it there were far fewer of them.
There was little sex education then, but there also was little teenage pregnancy. Pregnancy rates rose as sex education increased, but this unhappy fact has not dampened our enthusiasm for sex education. Indeed, we are convinced that high teen pregnancy rates mean that even more sex education is needed.
Past generations would not have dreamed of rewarding pregnant teenagers with government checks, with which they could afford their own apartments. Pregnant girls had to live with relatives, which was difficult, or at homes for unwed mothers, which was embarrassing. The responsible boy was usually given a very hard time by his family, if not the court. In some states, birth certificates bore a notation that the baby was illegitimate. Stigmatizing a child seems unjust, but the effect was to add to the mother's stigma. There were, in short, penalties rather than rewards.
Moreover, abortion was unsafe, illegal, and rare. Some women were killed or injured by illegal abortions -- a terrible price to pay. But maybe that's one reason why there were so few abortions.
Transgressive behavior has to have consequences. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 25, 2006 10:17 AM
The problem is, having put it into a equation like that, it has been reversed by the Left to mean: No consequences = No transgressive behavior. I think we here know better, but I keep seeing people kick the bottle down the road, to curse God when they get a flat. Why do bad things happen to them? What have They done?.....
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at July 25, 2006 10:45 AMBeing kept ignorant and frightened to death really did focus the mind of most high school kids, but I'm not sure I'd like to see those days return.
What I am sure of is what's happening now can't continue. I used to volunteer at the alternate school in our county and happened to be working in the library when a couple of 15 year old soon-to-be-parents were interviewing school personnel to determine whether they would enter into the program being offered there. The administrators were fawning over them trying to get them to sign on.
None of this was lost on the kids in the library that day. It wasn't lost of me either. That was my last day as a school volunteer.
Posted by: erp at July 25, 2006 12:06 PMerp,
Having attended both jr. and hi school in the 50's, I'm unable to relate to your ignorant and frightened scenario.
Societal condemnation of activities which were negative for the individual was certainly not "ignorant", we all knew sex produced children, but, yes, frightened of the social approbation societally negative behaviour would produce.
The more that is socially acceptable to a society, the more incoherent the society's reason for existence becomes.
Mike
The destigmatization of illegitamacy has had dire consequences for our civilization. Even now the masses of fatherless boys are coming of age and engaging in gang warfare. The liberals felt sorry for the poor bastards, never thinking that there was a reason to discourage such births, beyond the shameful stigma. They forgot the reasoning and concentrated on eliminating "bad feelings." God forbid that anyone, anywhere should ever be made to feel bad, even for commiting a heinous crime, much less bringing a child into a difficult situation. Liberals sure like to make conservatives feel bad though. They think we should be made to feel bad about our illiberal thoughts.
Posted by: Miss Carnivorous at July 26, 2006 12:09 AMMike, we all may have known that sex produced children, but we girls, at least the ones I knew, were woefully ignorant of the details.
Posted by: erp at July 26, 2006 12:35 PM