Sad news, but not surprising.

I work with young, single mothers every day.


This is the truth. I have been aware of this for a long time now.
Seeing it in print makes it very difficult to get up and go to work in the morning...




Wednesday, January 27, 2010



Teen Pregnancy: Bogus Problem, Bogus Solution [Robert Rector]


The Guttmacher Institute recently released a report raising alarm over a one-year increase in teen pregnancy. “Safe sex” experts quickly pinned the blame on abstinence education.

This is a bit hypocritical. In the decade after the federal government began its meager funding of abstinence education, teen pregnancy fell steadily. Safe-sex experts never linked that decline to abstinence education. But when the news went bad, they swiftly identified abstinence programs as the culprit.

But did teen pregnancy actually rise in 2006, as Guttmacher claims? It depends on what you mean by “teen.” For most people, “teen pregnancy” implies pregnancy among high-schoolers, girls under age 18. According to Guttmacher’s own data, the pregnancy rate for 15- to 17-year-old girls barely changed, and the rate for girls 14 and under (the group most affected by abstinence programs) actually dropped.

By contrast, the pregnancy and birth rates for young adult women aged 18 and 19 rose sharply.

The rise in pregnancies and births in this age range is part of a much larger story: the collapse of marriage and explosive growth of out-of-wedlock births in lower income communities.

Between 1997 and 2007, the percentage of births outside of marriage rose from 32.4 percent to 39.7 percent of all births in the U.S. Very few of these non-marital births occurred to minor girls; most were to less-educated young adult women aged 18 to 26. Since non-married moms are less likely to postpone childbearing than those who patiently wait for marriage, it should be no surprise that the ongoing collapse of marriage in low-income communities would lead to a bump in the birth rate among 18- and 19-year-olds.

In the grand scheme of things, the issue of “teen” pregnancy is dwarfed by its much larger cousin, the disintegration of marriage. Marital collapse is a catastrophe for taxpayers and society; the welfare costs alone exceed $250 billion per year. As noted, little of this problem results from teenagers getting pregnant in high school. Of the 1.7 million children born out of wedlock in 2007 only 136,000 (or 7 percent) had mothers under age 18.

“Teen pregnancy” is largely a red herring, hyped by the Left because it supports their agenda of condom promotion and permissive sex ed in the schools. Of course, condom proselytizing is a bogus answer to real social problems. Contrary to conventional wisdom, lack of access to birth control is not a significant factor contributing to non-marital pregnancy among teens or non-teens.

Harvard sociologist Kathryn Edin recently conducted a survey of lower income men and women who had experienced (or, in the case of men, caused) one or more non-marital pregnancies. The survey asked whether the individuals had, ever in their lives, been in a situation where they wanted to use birth control, but could not afford it or could not obtain it. All answered no.

Many laughed at the suggestion that their pregnancies had been caused by a lack of access to contraceptives, noting that contraceptives are abundant and aggressively promoted by schools and clinics in their communities. Of all the non-marital pregnancies reported in the study, not one was caused by lack of availability of contraceptives.

The explosive rise in out-of-wedlock births is due not to a lack of contraceptives, but to a crisis in the relationships of young adult men and women in lower income communities. Couples no longer see the need to be married before having children, and they lack the skills to form stable relationships. Ironically, young non-married parents yearn for eventual stable marriages and healthy families, but they utterly lack the skills and understanding to fulfill their aspirations.

Another irony: One of the greatest sins of abstinence-education programs (in the Left’s view) has been their effort to teach low-income youth that it is best to marry before having children. This affront to political correctness has outraged the Left and has been a principal motivator behind the drive to remove abstinence education from the classroom.

Next year we can expect the out-of-wedlock childbearing rate to top 40 percent. A chilling number, but one which won’t affect the Left’s campaign to promote bogus issues and bogus solutions.

— Robert Rector is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.


01/27 11:10 AMShare

Pants on Fire

Biden, hope,
Watching the president's state of the union address.
Will he ever stop blaming Bush for everything?
We should all blame Bush... for keeping us safe for years after 9-11.
We should all blame Bush for keeping our taxes low.

Right now he's talking about "doing it together" as far as the Dems and Republicans. But even in this speech he has blamed the Republicans for all the ills of this country. He's right now saying he's not interested in blaming the other guy, as he has just blamed the other guy at least 6 or 7 times in the last 20 minutes. He's making no friends on the other side of the aisle. He's blowing smoke...cause his pants are on fire...as in liar, liar...

Now he's going to make lots of buddies in the military. We need all the resources we can get, Michelle and Biden are going to support military families. Did he tell you his health care plan will cut military health care and raise premiums and co pays. Limits will be placed on physical therapy for veterans and their dependents. So if you are a vet who has a stroke and need months of physical therapy...oh well, You really don't need to use both hands, do you? These cuts to retired military who have served many years and were promised benefits that are eroding like the beaches in California.
Pants on fire!
60 minutes of I, I, I, me, me, me...and he's still going.

"Values that built our nation..." How about One Nation under God, In God We Trust. He didn't mention those values.

Now he's whining about how we have all misunderstood. The Hope and Change he promised...remember that? Well, he can't do it alone. So it's our fault that he is not successful. Well now, that is a blame I will gladly accept. There is a change. People are becoming more aware, more involved, more vocal. People who up until now have sat back quietly and watched the political process from the sidelines. These people are saying NO...No...No. We won't quit, we will fight to keep our country from the change Obama hopes for.
Lets see how well he and the Dems work with the Republicans in the next few weeks, if it happens, how long it lasts. I don't believe it for a minute.
Pant on fire!!!

ENOUGH!!!!!

These were taken a couple of days ago. Before todays snow storm. Oh yes, 4 more inches at least today. Tomorrow, high winds, temps barely reaching 0 and wind chills in the negative teens and/or twenties.

Lessons (for Obama) from Flight 253

Read this, I couldn"t have said it any better.



Lessons (for Obama) from Flight 253

Just read a story about choosing the gender of a child. We now have the science available to allow prospective parents the opportunity to decide if they want a boy or girl while they are undergoing invitro fertilization.The science has been around for about 20 years, but now is going mainstream.

We are able to take an egg from a woman, sperm from a man, mix it all together and make a baby. But that's not enough, we also want to make sure we have the correct gender to make sure the annual Christmas card(oops, I mean "Holiday card")looks just like we have imagined. God forbid we let nature take it's course. Oh...that's right, God has nothing to do with it. It's all about what we want, right now. It's not the future, it's the present.
What the average person doesn't want to think about and acknowledge, is that it's never just one baby in one test tube. For each and every invitro, there are many eggs and sperm mixed, many babies made. Girl??? I didn't want a girl!!! They're all girls? Have to try again. Throwing out the baby with the bath water, literally!

How many babies are you willing to discard ( read,throw in the garbage) before you get the one you want?

We are in the midst of controversy regarding "man made climate change".
Where's the controversy about man made gender change?
Do we really believe there will be no consequences?
Diversity will be a word you have to make children look up in the dictionary, they will read about it in history books. All those blond, blue eyed boys who reach a height of 6ft. All those blond, blue eyed girls who will always be thin. How many girls? How many boys?

Do you really believe it will all be ok? Do you really believe it's no big deal? Do you really believe you would have been selected and allowed to be born?

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh...

Nuff said!

Gooooooooo Big Red!!!!!

I LOVE Alex Henry! I love Ndamukong Suh! I Love Prince Amukamura!!! I love Niles Paul!!7 years ago we moved to Nebraska. I thought people here were insane in their passion and love of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. I vowed never to become one of them...

But here I sit watching my beloved Huskers vie for the Big 12 championship. I have become one of them...the children of the corn.

Check out Joj and Ndamukong...BFF