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rfmcdonaldDavid Frum, Canada's most famous ideologue export to the United States, briefly became popular early when he pointed out that the United States' Republican Party was being taken over by "movement conservatives," by people whose conservatism isn't informed by experience or pragmatism but rather by blindness. Joe. My. God. has pointed out that Frum is back at it with his latest essay over at CNN, "Bristol Palin and future of marriage", wherein the decision of Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol to--it seems--finally break with her on-again, off-again boyfriend Levi Johnston, the father of her child, takes on great significance.
I agree that this is an important decision; I think that it shows how Bristol values marriage. Levi, by all accounts, is a feckless media-hungry idiot who precipitated the most recent breakup by starring in a music video that mocked her family. Why would she want to debase the institution of marriage--for her community, very importantly for herself--by marrying the guy?
The problem with Frum's analysis of the importance of marriage is that, besides not bothering to note the effect that the non-recognition of same-sex couples and families on the same terms as their opposite-sex counterparts, he assumes that the institution of marriage is inevitably positive. He's not speaking about "educated" women (not men?), though, but only the less-educated.
Nice to know that American socioeconomic structures linked to diminished interclass mobility has nothing to do with this. Nice to know, too, that assuming that an idealized conservative version of the institution of marriage would help everyone, by locking some parents--we can imagine some hypothetical shotgun couples, right?--who'd be locked into unsuitable relationships. Nice to know that an institution shouldn't be functional, but should in fact be a sort of a straitjacket, stiff and insensitive and ultimately unresponsive yet charged with such supreme important.
Me, I think it's nice to know that Bristol Palin has taken charge of her life. Let Levi try to become mayor of Wasilla for some misbegotten reality TV show; let Bristol do something else with someone who respects her. Let marriage mean something for both of them, and for us.
Bristol Palin is exactly the type of girl who would have been pushed into a "shotgun marriage" in 1964: Her parents were leading citizens first of their town, then their state, now the nation. Their position and reputation would have absolutely precluded an unwed mother in the family.
Their friends and neighbors (and maybe more important, their daughter's friends and neighbors) would have enforced the expectation: marriage first, children second.
Not any more. Today, nobody expects it -- quite the contrary, when Levi reveals himself to be a jerk again, every People magazine reader in the country fully sympathizes with Bristol chucking him out, again. Get married for the sake of the children? Unwed motherhood as a disgrace? What is this, the Middle Ages?
I agree that this is an important decision; I think that it shows how Bristol values marriage. Levi, by all accounts, is a feckless media-hungry idiot who precipitated the most recent breakup by starring in a music video that mocked her family. Why would she want to debase the institution of marriage--for her community, very importantly for herself--by marrying the guy?
The problem with Frum's analysis of the importance of marriage is that, besides not bothering to note the effect that the non-recognition of same-sex couples and families on the same terms as their opposite-sex counterparts, he assumes that the institution of marriage is inevitably positive. He's not speaking about "educated" women (not men?), though, but only the less-educated.
Better educated Americans have discovered and absorbed these facts and altered their choices accordingly. College-educated women who married in the 1990s are much less likely to get divorced than were college-educated women who married in the 1970s. As ever, only a comparative handful of college-educated women give birth unwed: under 5 percent.
But more vulnerable Americans have not heard the message.
As of 2007, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the National Center for Health Statistics, almost 40 percent of America's children were born outside marriage. If you are wondering why children born poor are having so much more trouble escaping poverty today than a generation ago, that statistic holds a big part of the answer.
Nice to know that American socioeconomic structures linked to diminished interclass mobility has nothing to do with this. Nice to know, too, that assuming that an idealized conservative version of the institution of marriage would help everyone, by locking some parents--we can imagine some hypothetical shotgun couples, right?--who'd be locked into unsuitable relationships. Nice to know that an institution shouldn't be functional, but should in fact be a sort of a straitjacket, stiff and insensitive and ultimately unresponsive yet charged with such supreme important.
Me, I think it's nice to know that Bristol Palin has taken charge of her life. Let Levi try to become mayor of Wasilla for some misbegotten reality TV show; let Bristol do something else with someone who respects her. Let marriage mean something for both of them, and for us.
