National Public Radio recently ran a story called "Kids First, Marriage Later - If Ever." As its title suggests, the story revolved around the increasingly common practice of adults mutually involved in relationships with one another opting to have children before – or without ever considering – tying the marital knot.
According to recent governmental data, these days approximately 40 percent of children in America are born to unmarried women. In the black community, the numbers skew much higher, to the tune of somewhere between 70-80 percent, depending on the source.
Now I know we all have freedom of choice but I'm starting to wonder if people who have kids first are actually choosing to do so rather than oops the condom broke or better yet we don't use condoms or birth control so now we're going to be parents. People seem to think that having a child is not as much of an eternal commitment as marriage when it comes to defending their choices. How can you be ready to rear a child and not ready for marriage?
My question is: Since when did having kids together become less of a commitment than getting married?
One couple profiled in the NPR story - Nathan Garland and Brianne Zimmerman - says they decided to have a baby together a few years after entering into a relationship, but shared the same disinterest in marrying on another: "We didn't feel we were ready for it at that time," Zimmerman says. "We just thought it was a piece of paper and it wasn't that big a deal to us. We lived like we were married already. So we split bills and took care of each other."
"Just because you have a child, why do you have to get married, too?" Garland says. "They're almost two different questions."
I do agree that because you want to have a child with someone doesn't mean you want to marry that person and no everyone doesn't desire to be married but what about the child's needs? I'm not saying you can't raise a responsible adult in a situation like Garland and Zimmerman but as I've heard when the kids starts school they are going to start asking questions in comparing you to their friends parents with rings.
The reasons for this vary. Among them, many a baby momma has too late seen the utility of that "little piece of paper" in the event that children are involved and the relationship sours and disintegrates, or if the father one day leaves the cow he's milked for years and then goes on the marry someone else, or if he dies unexpectedly and the children have not been legitimated in any way. The woman with whom he has been involved usually has no stake or claim to his property, and this is where things can get very dicey, as his immediate family butts heads with the mother(s) of his children, if adequate legal provisions have not been made.
Moreover, parenting is, at a minimum, an 18-year agreement or contract. Obviously, it's really a lifetime obligation. Even if the financial cord is cut when the children become of legal age, they still need and count on their parents – assuming the relationship has been at least relatively positive – for advice, support and all sorts of unquantifiable help (child care, an errand here or there, what have you).
This said, how in the world is having children less of a commitment than getting married? In fact, the actuality is the converse. Parenting is a perpetual assignment. Marriages, if need be, can take a break via a separation or be severed completely through divorce.
Here are a few of the 200-plus comments posted in response to the NPR story on its website:
"Art Aficionado" writes:
An overrated institution? Out-of-wedlock births is [sic] perhaps the most debilitating social phenomenon of American black culture in post civil rights America. Children born out of wedlock in the United States tend to have poorer health and educational outcomes than those born to married women.
And "D. Scully" says:
Whenever I hear of single people having children, I always wonder, "Is anyone practicing safe sex anymore?"
I don't really understand the rate of unplanned pregnancies at a time, when there are diseases that will kill you. So, the kid first thing...well, I don't get it.
Since it costs about $250,000 to raise a child in America now, you'd figure that people wouldn't be so casual about it.
Also, why date someone that you wouldn't want to marry? I don't get that either. When you figure out that they aren't marriage material...move on. If you like dating unmariageable people, then use protection. Why drag a child into that mess? Most of the time, it is a real mess. It's not the rosy pictures presented in articles.
So what are your thoughts on the topic? Do you think it should be marriage first and children second or do you think we all have the right to choose our paths suitably?
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