Jackson Jambalaya

My plan is to ensure that my kids do not move back here after college. I plan to follow that and move out of state upon retiring. This ain't changing.

Are the births for non-whites divided out to include the number of Hispanic births in MS?

It's a nation-wide trend. No matter where one goes, unwed mothers are now the majority.

For some reason many women believe every man that looks at them wants then to have his baby. Got news for them, that is not true. One look at these numbers should show them that.
Birth control is free. There is no excuse for having a child out of wedlock.

Your federal government at work folks.

it may be a 'nationwide trend', like TANF and crime, but for some reason Mississippi's stats exceed most every other state's stats.

The 'It's no big deal....It's everywhere' crowd is full of shit.

I really can not believe those stats. 80% is Unbelievable.

Ahh, we will never face the truth of the situation, so it will never change. Blacks had a 75% in marriage birth rate before the great society. now it has flipped (and has been for quite some time).

If you give a man a fish....and then give them more fish if they fish alone, you get the destruction of the family. Democrats have always loved to abuse the black man. It is just a damn shame that they don't see it. The ones who figured it out, moved to Madison.

Ingenious Idea: Allow benefits for only one out of wedlock child, unless a reported rape is the cause of the second pregnancy.

Funny how none of the stats said anything about government benefits, yet there's always the replies that blame this stat on benefits.

It's not a welfare problem, people! It's a marriage problem. People slowly but surely are deciding not to marry. Everyone wants to be like the tv characters on Seinfeld and Friends and Sex in the City - in their 30s and 40s, live in a nice apartment in the city, date someone new every week, and not be tied down to anyone.

Sure this pathology shows up in the poor first, but even the middle class has the same situation brewing. Coupled with the fact that married middle class people wait forever to have kids, results in these stats.

It is the direct opposite now 1:44pm. I will never forget the tv interview with about a 40 year old mother calling her 20ish year old "her little money maker" for the kids she had out of wedlock, bumping up the monthly pay from uncle sam. i think she had just had twins or something and already had 3 kids.

It has become a way of life for a massive chunk of the population. My grandkids (which are still hopefully several years away) are on the hook to pay for the kids these people can't afford to pay for now. It is a sick, twisted web the democrats have weaved at the expense of us all. The worse part is that anyone who would attempt to fix it would be labeled as racist and cruel and wanting to kill women and children.

I should have moved to New Zealand when I had the chance. At least it is socialism light that actually works bc the vast majority actually contribute. We have passed the tipping point in this country.

This nightmare has indeed spiraled out of control, with no foreseeable solution in sight. But, 1:44, your modest proposal punishes the innocent little ones born to these sloppy mothers. Would they chose to be the fourth, fifth, god-only-knows, offspring of such a reproductive animal? Of course not. The solution isn't to make their little lives harder, hungrier, and poorer, but to prevent their existing at all, in such an abyss of poverty, neglect, ignorance, and scanty government help. There but for the grace of God might you and I have been conceived and born. I hate to say it, but mandatory birth control looks like the only way to stop the cycle. Any better ideas?

Nice try 1:40.

According to the following data, which only starts in 1979, the non-Hispanic black trend line is fairly flat. Meanwhile, the unwed white girls are dropping little b....ds like crazy. Up a full 20 points.

http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/75_fig1.jpg

The Catastrophe of Unwed Motherhood and Teenage Pregnancy




Unwed motherhood at any age is an economic, cultural and medical disaster for the United States,1 but especially for the state of Mississippi. Governor Phil Bryant2 has been the first recent governor to name unwed pregnancy and unwed motherhood as extremely serious problems for our state’s economic progress, and has requested solutions from political, religious, educational, medical and social services professionals. It is refreshing that a leader finally has spoken of the 500-pound gorilla in our room.

By ignoring this problem for nearly thirty years, we’ve allowed the beast to homestead in our living room for generations, ransacking and destroying stability, prosperity, and sanity, and holding our families and state hostage. It is well past the time for Mississippi’s physicians, as frontline professionals intimately involved in health care and reproduction, to throw down the gauntlet and lead the charge to expose the medical, psychological, economic, educational and cultural malevolence caused by unwed motherhood. It is high time for drastic measures.

Unwed motherhood, at any age, has direct correlations to increasing levels of poverty, substance abuse, sub-par education, prison, unemployment, crime, government dependence, poor medical and psychiatric health, physical and psychological abuse, child neglect, STIs (sexually transmitted infections), violence and generational dysfunction.3 The teenage pregnancy rate has fallen somewhat in the US in the last decade.4 But older, never-married or presently unwed women now constitute the overwhelming majority of out-of-wedlock births. These births have helped raise to 41% the total number of out-of-wedlock births in the US, the highest rate to date. Of political and cultural importance, statistics demonstrate that 73% of black, 53% of Latino, and 29% of white infants are born to unmarried mothers.5 These numbers portend significant political and cultural importance to the future of the United States.

The causes of this tsunami of unwed births are myriad. They include poverty, lack of education, unemployment, government subsidies, feminism and the sexual revolution, and, most importantly, a complete reversal and ambivalence of social attitudes toward unwed motherhood.6 During the last thirty years working women have become less dependent on financial support from men and marriage, while during this same period non-working women have found it easier to receive government assistance, thereby making marriage and its resultant economic stability unnecessary for survival.

One group of women remains committed to marriage before childbirth--those earning at least a four-year college degree; although their age of first marriage is higher than their less educated cohorts, their divorce rate, once married, is lower and their ability to pass capital to their children is much higher.16 Despite early feminism’s push for women to declare their independence from and reliance on men, college-educated women, at the end of the 1980s, realized that marriage resulted in superior economic stability for their children, and they returned to its fold. Marriage, with its two wage-earning parents, can weather the storms of illness, a recession, and temporary unemployment better than a single-parent family.8 A recent article in the New York Times has labeled marriage a “luxury good” belonging to the highly educated and economically advantaged.9 As marriage generally confers more economic and psychological stability to its children, these families will turn out better educated and higher earning children. Married families will beget richer offspring, thereby creating a class more elite than President Obama’s “1%.”

Of interest from a large, comprehensive study of unwed motherhood in highly developed countries is the fact that although teens and older women in Sweden and France, for example, have higher access to sex education, medical care, and birth control, their rates of unwed pregnancy are lower than those in the US. The Alan Guttmacher Institute’s crossnational study “Teenage Sexual and Reproductive Behavior in Developed Countries” found that “in France and Sweden, there appears to be a strong and universal perception that having a child during adolescence is undesirable, while in the United States, this attitude is much less strong and much more variable across groups and areas of the country.” 10

In Sweden, there is no attempt to prohibit adolescents and others from having sex (as if that is possible), but there is pressure to use birth control, prevent STIs and pregnancy, to receive reproductive health care and testing, and to remain monogamous during a relationship. In Sweden and France, having children is considered an adult activity after the completion of advanced education, employment, and a committed relationship. US teenagers have the highest rates of pregnancy, childbearing and abortion when compared to the UK, Canada, France, and Sweden, although the levels of sexual activity are the same.11

It is clear that US teenagers have sex with more partners than those in other developed countries, placing them at higher risk of STIs, pregnancy, and abortion. US teenagers are less likely to use long-acting methods of birth control, such as IUDs and hormonal implants, than their European counterparts.12 They are also much less likely to take advantage of health clinics for reproductive counseling, SDI testing and prevention, and pregnancy avoidance as European girls because access to these clinics is difficult.

Although some states prohibit it, Mississippi law allows prescribing birth control to girls less than 18 without parental permission. If a teenage girl is motivated and knowledgeable, she may, often with great effort, get herself with regularity to a public health clinic in Mississippi that can counsel and provide her with birth control, although the logistics of transportation to a distant clinic during clinic hours (school hours) may prove problematic, decreasing the likelihood of its use.

Some states locate these clinics in middle and high schools in order to provide easy access to male and female teenagers. These clinics provide childhood healthcare for routine illnesses, and they also provide adolescent health care, including reproductive services. A plethora of studies of these school-based clinics throughout the US have repeatedly shown that school-based and school-linked clinics do not increase the proportion of teens who are sexually experienced.,10, 11 In other words, access to reproductive clinics does not increase the sexual activity of teenagers. Their activity is high and remains that way, leading to unplanned, unwed pregnancies to teen girls and the transmission of STIs.

Of interest from a large, comprehensive study of unwed motherhood in highly developed countries is the fact that although teens and older women in Sweden and France, for example, have higher access to sex education, medical care, and birth control, their rates of unwed pregnancy are lower than those in the US. The Alan Guttmacher Institute’s crossnational study “Teenage Sexual and Reproductive Behavior in Developed Countries” found that “in France and Sweden, there appears to be a strong and universal perception that having a child during adolescence is undesirable, while in the United States, this attitude is much less strong and much more variable across groups and areas of the country.” 10

In Sweden, there is no attempt to prohibit adolescents and others from having sex (as if that is possible), but there is pressure to use birth control, prevent STIs and pregnancy, to receive reproductive health care and testing, and to remain monogamous during a relationship. In Sweden and France, having children is considered an adult activity after the completion of advanced education, employment, and a committed relationship. US teenagers have the highest rates of pregnancy, childbearing and abortion when compared to the UK, Canada, France, and Sweden, although the levels of sexual activity are the same.11

It is clear that US teenagers have sex with more partners than those in other developed countries, placing them at higher risk of STIs, pregnancy, and abortion. US teenagers are less likely to use long-acting methods of birth control, such as IUDs and hormonal implants, than their European counterparts.12 They are also much less likely to take advantage of health clinics for reproductive counseling, SDI testing and prevention, and pregnancy avoidance as European girls because access to these clinics is difficult.

Although some states prohibit it, Mississippi law allows prescribing birth control to girls less than 18 without parental permission. If a teenage girl is motivated and knowledgeable, she may, often with great effort, get herself with regularity to a public health clinic in Mississippi that can counsel and provide her with birth control, although the logistics of transportation to a distant clinic during clinic hours (school hours) may prove problematic, decreasing the likelihood of its use.

Some states locate these clinics in middle and high schools in order to provide easy access to male and female teenagers. These clinics provide childhood healthcare for routine illnesses, and they also provide adolescent health care, including reproductive services. A plethora of studies of these school-based clinics throughout the US have repeatedly shown that school-based and school-linked clinics do not increase the proportion of teens who are sexually experienced.,10, 11 In other words, access to reproductive clinics does not increase the sexual activity of teenagers. Their activity is high and remains that way, leading to unplanned, unwed pregnancies to teen girls and the transmission of STIs.

Mississippi faces two major problems in this regard, and although they appear to be the same problem with the same solutions, they are quite different. The first problem is accidental pregnancy in teenagers, and its attendant exposure to STIs. Sadly, experts agree that adult (parental) supervision, moral teachings, and religious acculturation do not prevent teenage sexual activity. Easy (school) access to birth control lowers the rate of pregnancy, abortion, and STIs.12

Therefore, if prevention of teenage pregnancy is of paramount importance for the emotional, psychological and physical health of our adolescents, teenage sexual education and contraception (for boys and girls) are mandatory. The Society for Adolescent Medicine supports confidential and easy access to birth control for adolescents.13 Groups adamant against comprehensive school-based adolescent sexual education (biological, psychological, moral, economic, and cultural) and easy access to birth control and STI prevention are a major impediment to lowering teen pregnancy.

The second problem is that of unwed pregnancy and motherhood of non-teenage women, and it has no easy solutions. If US culture has lost shame and disapproval of unwed pregnancy, how can this thirty-year trend be reversed? There are many who believe that a paradigm shift in marriage has occurred, both in the US and other Westernized countries, and that a return to our previous two-parent family tradition is impossible. If the trend is non-reversible in the US, which it appears to be, then disparity between the rich and the highly educated will continue to grow. If Americans desire that outcome, they will do nothing to alter our course.

If Mississippi wishes to attack the belief that having a baby without benefit of marriage is advantageous for women and their children, then we physicians must take radical steps. To start, we must convince young girls and women that having a baby without marriage will prevent them from fulfilling most of their dreams. We must convince them that they will live a life of economic insecurity, un(der)-employment, poor(er) health, governmental dependence, less education, more violence and substance abuse, and that they will bestow these evil bedevilments upon their children.

We physicians must convince girls and women that they must not settle for less, and that accidental or purposeful unwed motherhood is a disaster they can choose, or avoid. Cultural, religious, educational, medical, political, and educational leaders must actively prove to women that purposeful, unwed motherhood is an economic, personal, and cultural disaster. By idly standing by for three decades, by remaining silent from our medical clinics as single motherhood became the norm, we gave overwhelming approval to women to believe that unwed motherhood was synonymous with emancipation, with empowerment, with equality, when it has led to poverty, instability, poor health, and economic slavery.14,15

Perhaps it is too late to reverse the shift and Western cultures are destined to become female-centered and socialist (government-dependent), with serial, unwed relationships as the norm. It is inevitable that other cultures with more stable familial and reproductive strategies will find they have an economic advantage over single parent Western arrangements. Only then will Western political, religious, and cultural institutions understand the gravity of the loss of the stable two-parent family to our civilization.

Society has conferred on physicians the privilege of “doctoring.” Our goals are to improve our patients’ lives, if possible. If we agree that unwed motherhood has a profoundly deleterious effect on the health of our patients, we are required to do everything within our power to help women avoid this tragic outcome. We must stand front and center and speak loudly. It is, after all, our duty as physicians.

Heddy-Dale Matthias, MD
One Roses Bluff Drive
Madison, MS 39110
601-856-7074 W
601-331-6060 C



References:

1. Kearney MS, Levine PB. “Income Inequality and Early Non-Marital Childbearing: An Economic Exploration of the "Culture of Despair.” NBER Working Paper No. 17157, June 2011.

2. Governor Phil Bryant, State of the State Address. January 24, 2012.

3. McLanahan S. “Children in Fragile Families.” Published in Changing Families in an Unequal Society, England P, and Carlson M. Stanford University Press. Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study: Fact Sheet 2011. www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu.

4. Klein JD & Committee on Adolescence. Adolescent pregnancy: current trends and issues. Pediatrics 2005; 116(1):281-286.
5. Centers for Disease Control. “Unmarried Childbearing.” FastStats. Births: Final Data for 2009, Table C. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/unmarry.htm.

6. JE, Frost JJ, Singh S, and the Study Team. Teenage Sexual and Reproductive Behavior in Developed Countries: Can More Progress Be Made? New York, NY: Alan Guttmacher Institute; 2001.

7. McLanahan S and Percheski C. “Family Structure and the Reproduction of Inequalities.” Annual Review of Sociology. 2008;34(8)257-276.

8. DeParle J. and Tavernise S. “For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage.” NYT February 17, 2012.

9. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Changing Patterns of Non-marital Childbearing in the United States.” NCHS Data Brief No. 18, May 2008.


10. Kirby, D. “The impact of schools and school programs upon adolescent sexual behavior.” J Sex Res. 2002.;39(1):27-33.

11. Ricketts, S., & Guernsey, B. (2006). “School-based health centers and the decline in Black teen fertility during the 1990’s in Denver, Colorado.” American Journal of Public Health, 96(9);1588-1592.

12. Society for Adolescent Medicine. Confidential health care for adolescents: Position paper. J Adolesc Health 2004;35:1-8.

13. Fothergill, K., & Feijoo, A. (2000). “Family planning services at school-based health centers: findings from a national survey.” Journal of Adolescent Health, 27(3), 166 – 169.

14. Sawhill I, Thomas A, and Monea E. “An Ounce of Prevention: Policy Prescriptions to Reduce the Prevalence of Fragile Families.” The Future of Children. Volume 20, No. 2: pp. 133-155 (Fall 2010).

15. Williams K, Sassler S, Frech A, Addo F. and and Cooksey E. “Nonmarital Childbearing, Union History, and Women’s Health at Midlife.” American Sociological Review. Volume 76 number 3: p. 465. (june 2011).

4:03pm... nice try at what? In 1964, 75% of black babies were born into a two parent home. It rose dramatically until 1994 and we got a brief respite and even lowering for a bit. Now it is rising again. HMMM. what happened in 1964? What happened in 1994? I have no desire to write a thesis such as the above, so look into for yourself. Whites followed the same pattern, so stick your implied racism up your ass.

I am sure you can find all sorts of liberal papers blaming racism (in about a million different forms) for the problem. Perhaps that is why it is still a problem. The first rule in fixing a problem is actually identifying and being honest. The fed tit is the problem and will continue to be bc your ilk will blame everything but the actual source.

A few years ago, the Clarion Ledger had a cover story on a white girl from Richland that had gotten pregnant, had her baby and went back to school and was leading a normal life - college prep classes, she was a cheerleader and basketball player, etc.

The article, which I cannot find, basically said to the reader that the stigma of getting pregnant and having a child out of wedlock was over. The girl's mother (who was taking care of her grand baby while mom went to high school) called her "courageous" and a "hero."

The disappearance of marriage is merely a symptom, Pitt. This type of behavior, the breakdown of the family, started going into overdrive in the late 60s when the government began to pay poor people and others without means to reproduce. The seeds were planted even further back than that, during the Depression with the introduction of Social Security. The sitcoms you mention didn't come around until much later.

It's not a pathology, as you may have read somewhere, it's a breakdown of the family that the far left has been advocating for decades.

Breakdown the family, breakdown religion, breakdown the individual and what you have left are people reliant on an all-powerful, one party government for everything.

In other words, "Keep voting the correct way - for us - and we'll keep you barely fed, barely housed, barely educated, and barely alive."

It's a very dangerous, radical, far left problem.

3:34, do you actually think the mother who has kids just for the govt. benefits isn't at fault for making their life harder, hungrier, and poorer?

Good to see that the state mandated abstinence program is working so well.

I read somewhere all of this is the fault of Andy Griffith.
Also said much of the gun ownership problems was also his fault.
Personally I think it is Barney's fault.

With shows like mtv's "teen mom" and "16 and pregnant" it's obvious that this is a nationwide problem.

6:40 PM the national rate is quite high but Mississippi leads the nation with numbers twice as high as is the case with most statistics.

How about if we try a valid sex education program and scrap the abstinence idea? We can pray to whichever god we like that teens won't have sex and we will be praying in vain. Let's be honest here and with our teens and teach them what they need to know to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy.

This is not a new problem...just one that was put on steroids by the "Great Society" programs of LBJ. To his credit a liberal sociologist turned US Senator identified the problem long before others. He was the Assistant Secretary of Labor when the report was authored by him - Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The report was released in 1965:

The Negro Family: The Case For National Action
Office of Policy Planning and Research
United States Department of Labor
March 1965

You can find the report by merely searching the internet. This report was BEFORE the Great Society entitlement programs kicked in.

He went on to release a much discussed at the time article in American Scholar in 1993 called 'Defining Deviancy Down'.

Take a look at both. As I stated this is NOT a new problem, just one we refuse to address. I admire Moynihan - he at least had the courage as a liberal to admit when he was wrong.

Thanks, Dr. Matthias, for trying to provide reliable, accurate information.
Unfortunately, few will actually bother to read it as they prefer to believe what they want to believe rather than the facts.
They believe their anecdotal experiences, people and stories on television picked for their sensational impact rather than as a typical example, intuition, and the gossip from their friends to be more reliable than experts who engage in a lifetime of research and study.

I would add only to your excellent post that parenting/marriage and the family classes in the ninth grade, would be money well spent. It is a parent's job to teach life skills .

Even college educated parents these days are woefully undereducated in life skills as higher education has become more specialized and less concerned with general enlightenment as a basis of all knowledge.

An excerpt from 'Defining Deviancy Down' - let it sink in...

...the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can "afford to recognize" and that, accordingly, we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the "normal" level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard...

Yes,7:52 am and that applies to measures as well as behaviors.
The 40+% of white births out of wedlock should have been noticed by some commenters as well.
But, what has always been true is that teens are hormonal and will be sexually more active.
Protecting the institution of the family begins and ends with protecting the future of children!
It's not just out of wedlock mothers but single mothers who are divorced and our legal system's inability and too often unwillingness to protect the financial stability of the family created.
Our legal system has made it easy to divorce with or without children even though Margaret Mead warned us decades ago that this would be disastrous!

here is again another story about unwed mothers, teen unwed mothers, and their responsibility for having babies out of wedlock. why does no one talk about the unwed fathers? it still takes two to make a baby, but society demands the woman shoulder the responsibility to prevent pregnancy, to care for the child, to provide for the child and the sperm donor is off to impregnate another, never looking back to care for the child he helped make.

We could cut entitlement programs by a large margin if only we made the sperm donor responsible for the support, insurance, and life of his offspring. Mississippi wants to ban all abortions, but they don't make women's birth control easily available or inexpensive. School based programs need to be in place to help educate and to make access to birth control easier. Those of you who scream, "we shouldn't have to pay for a women's birth control" only end up paying more for the result of unprotected sex during the life span of the child.

9:07, the woman is the person who chooses to get pregnant. The woman is the one who chooses to have sex. Lets put the blame where it belongs. Women have all of the choices.
The sperm donor is responsible for the child. The woman has to, at least, know the name of the man she is having sex with. If the man does not pay child support he can be put in jail.
I don't think it is asking too much of a woman to get the name of the man she is having sex with. It is up to her to put a name on the birth certificate.

9:07 - we are constantly reminded by the left that a woman's body is her own. Why should we pay for her birth control? She owns her body let her pay for it.

We have tried:

1. Sex education - failed
2. Ready availability of birth control - failed
3. Abortion on demand - failed
4. Deadbeat dad legislation - failed

What worked:

Stigmatizing the behavior. Hard but effective. Maybe our ancestors were a little smarter than we give them credit

10:03
In order for the father's name to be put on the birth certificate he has to sign it. Not going to happen if he's not around and if it is not signed by the father his name is omitted. Can't take the mother's word for it.

Deadbeat father's being put in jail....laughable. DHS doesn't have the manpower to enforce this. I was in court one day when a judge ordered a father (who of course was not present)to pay $15,000 for back support, the ex-wife's legal fees and the father was to have evidence of medical insurance on his children. He was to be picked up and jailed until he met those orders. All of this was in place in case he retuned to the county the court was in. What are the chances he would be coming back to that county and the SO would know to pick him up?

10:58
You will pay for the result of unprotected sex. It's up to us as taxpayers....do we pay for the contraception or the child, many of whom end up in foster care and poverty. We pay...

When a woman with a child signs up for any benefits for that child she is asked the name of the father. If she knows the fathers name and if she will give the fathers name the law will collect child support from him. Failure to pay and he will be in jail, loose his license, and several other things the govt. is involved in. If the father has a job they will with hold child support from his pay. If the father files income tax the govt. will send any return he has to the mother of his child.
All of this depends on the woman giving a name of the father. If the father's name is on the birth certificate it is easier but if it isn't he can be ordered to take a paternity test. Again, the woman has to give a name.
Many women who apply for benefits for their bastard child will not give a name. That leaves the tax payers to pay for raising the kid. Many times the father still lives with the mother but the woman will not tell who the father is.
It is up to the woman. From the time the child is conceived and even before, it is the mother's choice.

There's a reason signs are posted in many State and National Forests that read: "Don't Feed the Bears"

40% of white babies are NOT born out of wedlock.

The learned Doctor Mathias surely knows that blog visitors are not going to read a textbook here....even when presented chapter by chapter in different posts.

Bork was right, in his book. And his logic and wisdom far exceeds that contained in any medical journal full of supposition and theory.

When we constantly lower our expectations to the point where anything is acceptable and nothing is unacceptable, what can be the result other than Gomorrah?

When no planes are restricted, what's the purpose of radar? When all are welcomed, what's the purpose of a border checkpoint? When all answers are correct, what's the point of studying for the test. When there are no standards why are we pretending they exist?

Actually, when you think about it, marriage and a baby having two married parents are deviant behavior now.

10:03 am Is the poster child for sexual ignorance!

A human female cannot " just decide to get pregnant"!

A female can only get pregnant a few days each month when she is ovulating( releasing eggs). Those days are not obvious or predictable, and are dependent on menstrual cycles . Ovulation can vary from female to female and in an individual female. While there are females whose cycles is every 28 days, health, stress and other factors can cause them still not to be fertile.

A female has to have eggs to release that are viable, has to have clear fallopian tubes for the eggs to get to her uterus and even after being fertilized by a sperm, the egg has to be able to attach and stay attached to the wall of the uterus. If the uterus is tipped, pregnancy can be a problem.

Even if the conditions are all perfect, about 40% of first pregnancies end in miscarriage in the first trimester.

To become a parent from one sexual intercourse is very rare! Multiple intercourse in one encounter , of course, increases the odds!

For a male's sperm to fertilize an egg, a male has to be fertile enough to produce sperm ( mumps can leave a boy infertile as can exposures to some toxic chemicals) and he has to have sperm that are sufficiently mobile and in sufficient quantity.

But , before all of the above can take place, the male has to be aroused!

Arousal starts between the ears not between the legs! Males are not at the mercy of their hormones!

The culture of a society and/or family very much programs a males neural pathways to be aroused or not aroused by certain female characteristics. There are still societies ( tribes in Africa and South America) in which breast exposure is not a " turn on" and there are societies where a woman's long hair is " turn on" and not to be seen by males for that reason. Seeing a glimpse of an ankle made the male Victorians go wild with passion!

Males have options for birth control as well as do females and those options have far fewer side effects or complications than does birth control for females!

You old boys should have learned that in school. Don't blame your Daddy or your friends or your preacher. They didn't likely know either.

But, there is zero excuse if you are literate for YOU not to know how the human body works and to learn how to inform your children as they ask questions in an age appropriate way so that by the time they are sexuality active, they are not ignorant!

6:19 pm Please read more carefully.
You will see than more than a few MS counties have unwed pregnancy rates of 40+%.

Even in the '60's there was a book called AND THE POOR GET CHILDREN. You might should see if there's a copy available on Amazon. It's a thin book and written for the general public who do not like to read academic research.

Poverty and the decimation of the middle class as well as problems in education are playing a role or haven't you heard about the current distribution of wealth?

The percentages we are seeing now were then and are now predictable.

You just didn't want to believe it then or now. You wanted to believe in myths passed down to you.

8:01, A woman knows if she has sex continually and does not use birth control she is very likely to become pregnant. Sort of a miracle how the women on govt. benefits seem to have much more success at becoming pregnant than women who work for a living.
With free birth control available everywhere it is the woman's fault if she decides to have sex and not use birth control. I do hope that women realize how they become pregnant. From some of the posts on here some seem to find it puzzling how they end up pregnant.
It is the woman who chooses to have sex. If she doesn't want to have sex it is called rape. It is the woman who chooses whether she uses birth control. Men cannot force a woman to use birth control.
In the case of Jackson, most of the women in the city become pregnant for extra benefits. Stop paying for all of the babies they have and Jackson will soon be a place where people could visit safely.

9:45 am many of the women to whom you refer are as ignorant about how the system works as well as how the human body works as you are!

There is also a thing called condoms! There is something called spermicide. A male can also get a vasectomy when he's had as many kids as he can afford!

And, having worked with unwed teen mothers unlike YOU, you'd be surprised how many think that their body works like their pets or farm animals bodies when it comes to pregnancy! And, you'd be surprised how many believe stories males make up to " get lucky".

That is it financially advantageous to be on social welfare is an ignorant myth as well! Please look up how much money you get for each child. Look up the maximum housing costs or see the sec 8 housing. Look up how much it costs to adequately feed a human vs food stamps.

You probably think the " well dressed" women at the grocery went to Maison Weiss instead of Good Will or their church ! I've donated designer apparel!

Sure, some teen mothers don't know any better than to believe the myth you help spread or even what their alternative life choices !

But, we COULD teach them these things BEFORE they reach puberty if it weren't for the politics of the uninformed!

Ignorance is the problem. And, your ignorance is right up there with those who think having a child out of wedlock and receiving welfare is a good plan!

God help us!

10:44, you seem to have a hard time understanding. I don't think having a child and receiving welfare is a good plan. From your posts I think you are defending those who do believe that.
You have worked with unwed teen mothers. I have worked with men who have to pay child support to a mother who decided they wanted to have a baby and set at home collecting money. It is very hard for a man to get the child when the mothers decides to use it as a cash cow.
Recently I was involved with a case of a man who was forced to pay 21 years of child support to a child that wasn't his. The same woman was collecting social security and child support for 6 kids. Having babies was her job.
Sex education should be something that parents teach a child. It isn't a teacher's job to teach sex ed. Some people thing schools are there to feed, baby set, teach morals, and do all of the other jobs when the parents do not raise the kids. This just shows not very many people having babies were taught morals by anyone.

Mo Babies Mo Money ! ! !

Until the govt. revamps the welfare system it will be this way. I firmly believe that if they would cap the number of children that are eligible for welfare/food stamps and make it retro active you would see SHARP decrease in the number of unwed births. I know its a draconian measure but something should be done.....In this day and age there is zero excuse for an unwanted pregnancy. A .50 cent gas station rubber is better and safer than nothing.

11:45

Lady, you need to turn your high-and-mighty ARROGANT indignation around to those who tell you all these silly reasons which you seem to buy into.

The few here that you want to correct and lecture are way out in front of you.

this is !:42

I indicated my response to 11:45... wrong. I meant to say 11:44. Most of you got it, i'm sure.

2:18pm....no correction needed. it was obvious that you were talking about the condescending, enabling numb nut. it is her ilk that perpetuates the problem. Blame anyone but the actual actor is the mantra of the moronic left. that is why nothing ever gets solved. well, that and the fact that they love creating more democratic voters for the plantation. if black america ever woke up to the reality of what the democrats have done to them, there would be blood in the streets. i guess republicans are culpable as well for being afraid to speak the truth and do something about it. oh wait, it would be racist to actually address the issues and the cultural rot that is the root of the cause. we will never pull the band aid off and the wound will continue to fester and get worse and worse.

So the state that only teaches abstinence before marriage has the highest out of wedlock birth rate. Shocking.