Again, I don’t mean to pick on poor Bristol but her breakup is one of those moments that catalyze important debates. In another post, I probed under what circumstances an unmarried, teen mother ought to consider putting a baby up for adoption.
Here, I want to ask a different question: how hard should Bristol and Levi have tried to stay together? Should they have gotten married?
On the one hand, we have a father who may well be a lovely guy but has no high school degree and described himself as a “fuckin’ redneck” on his MySpace page. The would-be mother-in-law fighting charges of drug dealing. I think we can all see why, if you were Bristol’s mom, you might secretly hope this marriage doesn’t happen.
On the other hand, Levi is the father of Tripp Palin.
Most social scientists and religious leaders argue that children do best when they have two parents. Bristol and Levi dated for several years so this isn’t a one-night stand accident, or, as far as we know, an abuse situation.
One premise of the shot-gun wedding had been that even if you ideally don’t want to get married — too bad, you’ve now created a life and the best thing for the baby is to have two parents, married. Some religious leaders have asserted that, while the grandparents shouldn’t necessarily force a wedding under threat of gunfire, they should do everything short of that. Prod the kids into counseling. Get them to spend time with a minister. Be submerged in discussion about what’s likely to be best for the baby.
For all we know, the Palins went through all those steps. But so far there’s no evidence of that and, indeed, a “source close to the couple” told People magazine: “It kind of just happened. I thought they would stick it out. But I think they can work together to raise Tripp.”
My fear is that in America — where the 36.9 percent of all children are now born to single mom — there’s a growing assumption that while having a married couple raise a child is certainly the first choice, being a single mom with a visiting, child-support-paying dad, is a perfectly fine second choice. And in fact, if you “don’t love” the person, it’s the preferred option.
We’ve gone from avoiding marriage when the relationship is abusive to avoiding it because the girl suspects she can do better.
(As David Frum points out, there’s a huge class factor: single parenthood is rare among college educated white women, increasingly the norm among those without high school degrees.)
Do you think they were wiser in the olden days? Or are we better off with what we have now: fewer bad relationships, and more kids raised by single teenage moms?