| | On a side note, how people choose to act is their own business anyways. If this is the case, then we ought to:
1. Legalize child pornography
2. Legalize suicide.
3. Legalize drunk driving.
...and more.
GWL complains people are having more children out of wedlock than before, can I proof of that prior to 1940?
I've found data, but not from the U.S.:
"Historically the rate of illegitimacy within Britain and Europe has varied enormously. Evidence based on parish registers, collected by the Cambridge Group, reveal circular trends in England in the level of illegitimacy over time. Such that the illegitimacy ratio (i.e. the proportion of births out of wedlock) fell from 4.4% in the 1540 to a low of 1.0% in the mid-seventeenth century rising to 6.0% in the mid nineteenth century (p. 14). In the 20th century the illegitimacy rate has risen from 4.0% (one in every 20 births) to over 30% (one in every three births) today (p 18)."
-web.staffs.ac.uk/schools/humanities_and_soc_sciences/census/illegit.htm
What I see here is a really just a complaint against people doing what have done in the past, GWL. People weren't chaste back in the "good old days." They were just more discrete about it. Unlikely.
Today, it's almost considered perfectly normal to have affairs, granted I find them problematic as well in that you are breaking a promise that is just as good as breaking a contract with a business partner. But that in itself is not an issue that can be magically resolved by the removal of contraception, rather it must be solved by another set of methods.
The removal of contraception alone obviously wouldn't solve it. It would also be necessary to change the general perception of sex from an act of harmless recreation to an act of love between married couples.
First, make marriage a PRIVATE CONTRACT AGAIN. Yes, GWL, you, The Church, and The State can do one thing: BUTT OUT. Let CONSENTING ADULTS set their own terms, for their own lives. If they snagged in that web of promises, good, that will make people more careful not to get married and to keep the real idiots out of it.
Given that the family is society's most important social unit, it makes sense for society to support and commend the ideal means by which a family is formed: marriage between a man and a woman.
Second, it's not the marriage that counts, but rather the pocket book of the parents that count. Most studies I've read point out that no matter if the child is born out of wedlock or not, if the parents are poor as dirt, their kids will tend to be poor as well. In this case, poverty is also linked to bad habits, drug use, unprotected sex, and general laziness [of thought and action]. Also, smarter parents tend to have successful kids too, and they too tend to be economically well off.
I think it's a mistake to judge the goodness of a person based on his or her income.
Third, if you want to change behavior you have to promote a positive behavior to replace it. Right.
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