Single Mothers – Backbone of Society?
Comment:
Afua Hirsch is a regular commentator on Sky News’ debating segment The Pledge and has recently appeared on other discussion programmes, such as BBC’s Question Time. Liberal? Well, any more “liberal” and the rest of us, with more traditional views (e.g. about marriage and family life), would be in handcuffs before you could say “you’re under arrest…”
Check out the short video clip above, from the most recent edition of The Pledge, and ask yourself if it is a tad worrying that the entire group seem to accept, unquestioningly, that single motherhood is a good thing (not simply an unfortunate aberration to be charitably tolerated). Is that a tad worrying? Or, maybe, like one of the commentators under the video on YouTube, you think that single mothers are the “backbone” of our society? In which case, you may agree with those in the group who argue for IVF for single women who want a child, like some of us want a new car. Let’s hear it!
Comments (36)
The two women in that discussion are so far removed from real life women, it’s not true.
The single mothers I know would LOVE not to be single mothers. One of them said to me that she knew she was doing wrong but that it had become so acceptable in society that she just gave in. In an earlier period of history, she would have said “no” – the best contraceptive out there!
All the studies are showing that children do best when they are raised in a home with a mother and father, married who stay together for life. In every outcome, the children do better than those from single parent homes.
I feel sorry for those who, through no fault of their own, are single parents, or who regret what happened and are making the best of it. However, the idea that this should be encouraged, and even single women allowed to have IVF is offensive to common sense. People – especially women – seem unable to tell the difference between “I need” and “I want”. Just because someone wants something doesn’t mean they must get it, especially if that “something” is a child, who deserves the very best start in life.
We are all compassionate towards those women who made stupid mistakes. But IVF for single mothers is an example of voluntary single motherhood and is very disturbing. Some people believe that motherhood is a right, but it is actually a gift from God. The idea that a single woman has the right to create a test-tube baby is to me profoundly narcissistic. When the potential for human reproduction and the conjugal act are separated, either through artificial contraception or IVF, then human dignity goes in the dustbin. The Catholic Church alone is the only institution in the modern world that still teachers the indivisibility of the reproductive and unitive ends of human sexuality. This is the formula that preserves human dignity and it is written into our nature.
Lily,
Well said. My own first thought on watching the above clip was that here, at last, was a discussion in which Hirsch did not turn the topic around to pronounce us all racists! That is her persistent theme. Being white is now to be racist, according to her confused thinking.
The more I listen to those with legal qualifications (she’s a former barrister), the harder I pray that I’ll never be charged with a crime that requires me to employ a legal defence. I mean, the crime of being slim, glamorous, intelligent, witty, etc. – with that I can cope 😀
I am certain that the architects of the sexual revolution hated women. The contraceptive culture is inherently misogynistic. How can anyone seriously say that contraception had liberated women? We know that it takes both a man and a women to make a baby. But what typically happens is that the woman gets pregnant for whatever reason (e.g. the pill fails or a dose is accidentally missed), and then the man leaves the women and takes no responsibility for the child. The woman is then socially pressured to have an abortion. Contraception has been immensely liberating for male adulterers and fornicators but not to women as far as I can tell. My mother is not Catholic and I was speaking to her recently about the Church’s teaching on artificial contraception. I told her that I felt it was sexist because it allowed men to behave like alley cats and that women were usually the ones to suffer when the contraception failed. My mother told me that she had always intuitively felt this way about contraception even though she is not Catholic.
Miles Immaculatae,
“…the man leaves the women and takes no responsibility for the child.”
That is one phenomenon which seems to keep getting missed by the girls who end up being single mothers – that their handsome, suave, father-to-be is more likely to dump them and disappear from the scene, than propose marriage, once “baby makes three” arrives.
It is a scandal that our society has accepted (not merely “tolerated”) the growth of single-parents trying to raise children. And then they look askance (as does Hirsch in the above video) at the very idea that anyone would blame the rise in violent crime, at least partly on the phenomenon of so many single-parent, usually fatherless, families.
Where are their brains? Strictly rhetorical question, Miles Immaculatae 😀
PS – your mother has a good moral sense. Maybe she will become a Catholic one day.
Miles, men often behaved like alley cats in the past. There were abandoned women and Victorian novels often feature them, from Oliver Twist, by Dickens to Puskin (Onegin), to Anna Karenina by Tolstoy.
What kept men in line in the past was societal pressure. A man who got a woman into trouble had to face the wrath of brothers, fathers and other men with morals in his town who would shun him as a “cad” and a “bounder”. The woman was shamed, but the man was shamed also. He had to leave town or join the Navy to escape the stigma.
Today it is the opposite. MGTOW and other men’s rights groups have almost made a sport out of the science of seducing women, using them for sex and leaving them.
Contraception has been liberating for male adulterers and fornicators, but it has also been liberating for female adulterers and fornicators as well. Don’t you realise that many women are profligate and many like having sex for pleasure. Live in the real world for goodness sake.
My point is, CC, that contraception is liberating to women only up to the point when it doesn’t work, which is when the woman gets pregnant. Men can’t get pregnant. Therein lies the disparity. The man has the option to leave, which he often does. The woman is stuck with the baby.
Miles Immaculatae,
Contraception is NEVER “liberating” for women. They THINK it’s liberating because it has a high “success” rate in preventing pregnancy but what, in fact, they are doing, is doctoring their bodies to allow themselves to be used by men. In fact, they are damaging their bodies although the facts about this are not being publicised. Occasionally, reports hit the headlines of young women, some in their teens, dying suddenly after a blood clot caused by the pill, but the true statistics are probably only available through a freedom of information request and I don’t have a tenner to spare right now, given that the likelihood of receiving a redacted response is very high.
And it’s no coincidence that women in older life wanting to have babies, find they can’t and, having used unnatural means of preventing themselves having children, turn to other unnatural means to try to have their trophy baby or two. Usually, paid for by my unworthy self and other taxpayers.
There is nothing liberating about contraception or abortion. Not a single thing. No question about it.
Yes, I agree. I meant to put liberating in inverted commas in my original post. I think women have gotten a really bad deal from the contraceptive culture. The feminists of the mid 20th century who promoted contraception really were useful idiots.
My mother was a nurse and she told me of a case where a baby was born with an IUD (contraceptive coil) wrapped around one of his digits. You really can’t fool the human body. Medical contraception is stopping a normal biological function of the body and is bound to have harmful consequences. I believe the cause of my sister’s obesity has been the progestogic contraceptive implant.
Miles Immaculatae,
I guessed that you had forgotten the inverted commas – I knew your normally clear mind couldn’t be THAT clouded!
If a scientist invented a technology where he could grow human beings in a home laboratory by taking cells from his own body and incubating them people would be outraged and call for the equipment to be ceased and the man jailed.
Yet this is what single mothers do when they get pregnant in order to have a baby as an accessory or to get welfare and housing from the government. They treat creating a new life like a game.
If “my body my choice” is morally right, then why can’t a scientist (or anyone who bought a cloning kit from eBay), produce a bunch of clones of themselves?
In the future it will be possible for two women to conceive a baby. A woman’s stem cells can be turned into male sex cells (spermatozoa) and these can be used to fertilize a human ovum in a laboratory. Because woman lack a Y chromosome, children conceived in this way would all be girls. Also, it is already possible for a child to have three biological parents, by extracting mitochondrial DNA from one ovum and transplanting it to another. This is done to prevent transmission of genetic diseases.
Human narcissism has no limits. And when the procreative and unitive ends of human sexuality are separated, then monstrosities like this will happen.
This staged TV conversation quickly went from bizarre to absurd. Do people even realize that they are watching a group of freaks whose opinions are based on degeneracy? It’s science fiction come true: the teleprompter readers covered in make-up have taken over the public square. Are there any souls inside these mannequins?
If Satan’s final assault is on the family, then he seems to have developed a multi-faceted strategy. One, the LGBS juggernaut; two, homosexual and lesbian pairs claiming to be moms and dads; three, IVF for women who don’t want a “partner” (God forbid they should call men “husbands”); four, civil divorce; five, Amoris Laetitia, six, the annulment factory within the Church, seven, feminism.
Oh, and which Vatican II document was it that removed child-bearing as the primary duty of marriage?
All very interesting comments – but so few? WOW! Such an important topic, so little interest.
Curious.
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/cd/a1/cd/cda1cdf06f5d2cc35fe44009c443d6c8.jpg
I’m ashamed for taking so long to comment here, as this really is an important topic. I have mostly single mothers in my extended family now and expect no more from their children, and so the problem is being compounded through the generations. It is now unusual to have a family with a married mum and dad living under the same roof, with more than 2.5. children. What this means for the future of our western societies, I shudder to think.
I agree about that woman Afua Hirsch, as I’ve seen her on The Pledge before, always banging the “racist” drum, turning everything into an accusation of racism. All white people are now racist, really, and I can’t help wondering how long it will be before being white is actually a crime, punishable by imprisonment!
I too agree about Afua Hirsch. She rants about Cecil Rhodes, but how many black Africans benefitted from Rhodes Scholarships? If I was black, with an obvious chip on my shoulder, then I would not take a penny from his legacy. Of course, some justify it by saying they are taking back what was taken from them. If colonialism was so bad, why have several Africans told me they are thankful for Europeans bringing Christianity and modern technology to Africa. Using Rhodesia as an example, why, if colonialism was so bad, did many Zambians cross the border into Rhodesia, then under the rule of the late Ian Douglas Smith?
Where I work, I am surrounded by people who seem to be pathologically unable to mind their own business. They persist in involving themselves in my personal life, and actively encourage me to ‘sow my wild oats’, or ‘find a good woman’, etc. When they say a ‘good’ woman, they of course mean a woman who is easy. I am 25 and have a never had a relationship. I do not set myself up as a paragon of virtue, and there are sins which I have committed which I wish I never had, and if I could turn the clock back I would. However, I am sure I annoy these people and their prurient interests when I refuse to sleep around. I think it is beneath the dignity of man (and woman!) to allow oneself to be treated as an object of pleasure for another’s satisfaction, because that is the antithesis of true love. If I love a woman, I am going to vow to forsake all others.
Here is a beautiful quote by His Eminence Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk on matrimony:
That’s matrimony and that’s based just on the, what we, what God reveals Himself in the Bible, it’s a Triune God. And John Paul II, St. John Paul II, explained to us in his theology of the body that there is an analogy between the Triune God and matrimony. He called this a unity of three persons who give themselves totally to one another, and they differ in their relationships. And you know, you see a kind of reflection of this in man, created in image of God and also marriage is created in the image of God. There’s the most intimate relationship we know between two persons and these persons give themselves totally to one another but differ from each other but are complementary to each other. Of course in the field of procreation man cannot procreate alone. The woman cannot procreate alone. They have to procreate together and collaborating with one another in sexual relationships. And in this way they donate themselves totally to one another.
And man is a unity of soul and body. Not only man’s soul, not only body, he is soul and body and he gifts himself totally to somebody else. In this case he marries his wife he gifts himself also at the level of the body. And you know at the level of the body, the most authentic expression of it is sexual relationship in man and wife, between man and wife in matrimony and this has to be a complete donation.
That means that you must be ready, to give, a man must give the motherhood to his wife, and the wife should give the fathershood to her husband, you know. And when we block this by contraception the donation is not complete. In a sexual relationship, always we, always needs to be open to procreation in order to be a reflection of is happening in the Triune God, in this community of the three divine persons. That’s the basis for the church’s doctrine on matrimony and sexual ethics.
Catholic Convert,
I wish I had longer to answer you right now but I just don’t have the time except to say the following:
Avoid Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” like the plague. Focussing on the sexual – as is the way of the world – has NEVER been the Church’s way because it was not Christ’s way.
A very good book on marriage (I’m told by married couples) is Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s “Three to get married” – Google it on Amazon for details. That is much more likely to be in tune with Catholic traditional teaching on marriage, than the so-called “theology of the body”, which has more holes in it than my mantilla.
As for your personal situation – if you think you would like to marry, then pray to St Joseph for starters, and the patron saint of single people (looking to marry) – St Raphael, the Archangel. On this, the Feast of St Michael, Archangel, I’m urging to you pray to another archangel! That’s a first!
https://ucatholic.leadpages.co/saint-raphael-cmt/
With regards to your last paragraph, I simply do not have, and never have had the desire to marry. My entire life has revolved around my parents and paternal grandparents. I have never looked outside that unit. I do not particularly enjoy female company if I am honest. I always feel like I am on edge with women, as if I am treading on egg shells. I have had many bad experiences with women such as teachers and work colleagues and it permanently put me off. My dad always told me to stay single anyway. I do not like being controlled. Human courtship rituals involve the man trying to gain a women’s attention through gifts etc, which is not dissimilar to the courtship rituals of the male Black Widow Spider, who performs intricate dance rituals and then has to scarper before he gets eaten. Sorry if I offend women and the married men on the blog, but that is how I feel.
I have to say I think you have some very unhealthy views. I don’t believe for a minute that because you had bad experiences with female teachers and work colleagues that has caused you not to want to get married, or enjoy the company of women. I’ve had bad experiences with many work colleagues and teachers, of both sexes, but I would never go to the extreme of saying that scarred me for life and made me want to avoid the company of one of the sexes. I find that very extreme and bizarre.
I’m not sure what your experience of human courtship has been like, but mine is nothing like you describe. I’ve always found it very healthy to have friends of both sexes. Indeed, it was out of such a friendship that I married my wife. I’m sure there will be many others on here who agree that friendship between a husband and wife is crucial.
Why not just say you are not called to the married state ? That’s a perfectly acceptable state of life and a path to holiness. Indeed, it is commendable to be close to your family, as you describe. Don’t undo the great witness you are giving!
With regards to single mothers, I don’t have much sympathy with them. I know several women like this, and they all knew what they were doing. Many women behave like alley cats, and as they say, it takes two to tango. I know one woman who has 3 children to 3 men. If I did one bad thing and regretted it or suffered the consequences, I would not do it again. It’s like putting a hot iron on the palm of your hand. You would not do it twice.
Catholic Convert,
That is a very harsh and unjust analysis of single motherhood. They do NOT all “behave like alley cats”. The rise in single motherhood is to a large extent attributable to the rise of atheism in our society, allowed to run rampant due to the shocking crisis in the Church. How many of those young – Catholic – single mothers ever heard a sermon warning of the danger of ending up in Hell, through sins of impurity, or even were taught this at school? Zilch. Trust me. Take it from one who tried hard to teach it and was warned off, e.g. using the example of the lovely little martyr Saint Maria Goretti, in case pupils/students thought they ought to die rather than allow themselves to be sexually assaulted. I remember reading an article in the Catholic Herald to this effect, penned by none other than Joanna Bogle, the darling of the “orthodox” Catholic papolatrist community. I have to admit, right enough, that the Herald at least published my rebuttal. Those were the days…. before I was totally blacklisted.
Most families these days have, unfortunately, had to suffer the disappointment and worry of having their daughters/granddaughters/sisters/nieces – you name it – becoming single mothers.
However, there are instances of girls turning their situation around and returning to the practice of the Faith, so instead of using nasty terms like “alley cats” recall that Our Lord is always waiting to welcome back the repentant sinner. Not so keen on the pharisaical type…
Check out Luke 18:9-14…
I wasn’t issuing a blanket condemnation. I was criticising chiefly the women whom I knew. If a woman has a child out of wedlock, but regrets her decision, but chooses not to have an abortion, then she should be praised for having the courage to keep the baby. I think someone above referred to men as alley cats, and I was pointing out that many women behave like alley cats as well.
I said that the contraceptive culture permits men to behave like alley cats in a way that it doesn’t permit women to behave as alley cats. This is because if a woman gets pregnant she is the one who must be responsible for the child, but the man has the option to leave. So contraception has led to male sexual liberation, to the detriment of women, which I contend is oppressive to women.
I am not denying that some women are irresponsible, promiscuous etc. I am just saying that because men can’t get pregnant it puts them at an advantage in the casual sex culture.
On the contrary, I’ve got every sympathy for them. I would think there are very few who have chosen that path. Either they’ve not been taught the faith or they have been abandoned by useless men who promised them something and then disappeared. Actually, it’s quite often a combination of both these things.
I have to say, Catholic Convert, you seen to have some very odd views regarding women.
I cannot say that it is that these women have been abandoned by ‘useless’ men. As I said above, it takes two, and many single women (not all) are equally as useless as the men you describe. Many of the single mothers I know are to blame for the situation they are in. They willingly had relationships with the equally culpable men, and one woman I know did so three times with three different men. Very few young men and women these days are taught respect, purity and chastity. You can’t dismiss the men as useless. Both are to blame.
I don’t take the chivalric view that all the fault must be laid at the man’s feet. I don’t have rose tinted glasses.
I’ll tell you why I don’t trust women. When I was at school I was relentlessly bullied, and our school had a mentor, and I thought she cracked it by sorting the bullying out. However, with one bully, nothing seemed to be getting done. We later found out that she was sleeping with his father. Let down number one.
Then the equally disgraceful deputy headmistress at school blamed me for getting pelted with food one dinner time when I got my hair off with a dinner lady for not helping me. All she could do was laugh. Let down number two.
Then all my class teachers (all women) at junior school were inept at dealing with bullies and I was defenseless. One even blamed me for it.
I just don’t have time for it.
Catholic Convert,
What about me? You emailed me after seeing me on a TV discussion – did I, or did I not, reply right away and was I, or was I not, very nice to you?
Or was that “Let down number three”?
Catholic Convert,
Without wanting to belittle your experiences of bullying, I have to say that I think you need to get a grip. You don’t trust women because the depute head laughed at you? Come on!
You mentioned that you are close to your parents and grandparents. I wonder what your mother and grandmother would think if they could read your off the wall, misogynistic views!
I don’t know if you were bullied at school, but it’s seemingly minor things like that that also have an effect on you. It is a snowball effect.
I just don’t understand your circumstances Petrus. I just don’t see what I could possibly have in common with women, as you do with your wife.
I get along well enough with my godson’s mother, but I doubt that I’d go out with her on a one to one basis.
Catholic Convert,
I have to say I’m with Petrus on the “gerragrip” front.
When I hear people bemoaning their lot because of something that happened in their childhood or youth, I just groan. Sorry – it’s the equivalent of daft women claiming that Boris Johnson (or any other man) “touched them inappropriately” in a room full of people, twenty years after the incident. Honestly, they really do need to gerragrip. I was touched very inappropriately by a passing stranger in Sauchiehall Street when I was around 18 years of age. No clue who he was / is, but – believe it or not – I didn’t report it to the police and still wouldn’t even if I could identify him today. What I WOULD do, is give him a piece of my mind, probably while placing my favourite silk scarf round his neck. If I had a silk scarf, that is… You’ll get my drift.
Look, we’ve all had difficulties – real or imagined – in our youth, but, frankly, to allow such things (even serious things) to colour your mind to the extent that you seem to have done is definitely in the “gerragrip” category. If you don’t want to marry, fine. Neither do I. But, by the sounds of it, you wouldn’t even survive having a coffee with me, such is your dim view of the female of the species. That’s crackers, CC, and I’m pretty sure you know it.
Cut some slack for those whom you appear to detest. Most people in education want only the best for pupils but even teachers are human and may get it wrong sometimes. What if I were to tarnish all men as horrible bullies because – drum roll – the only teacher ever to give me the belt was a male. And my crime was to finish telling my friend a joke which I’d started telling her in the queue for class before the bell rang. She tormented me, whispering to finish the joke, until eventually I did so and was hauled to the front of my class for my trouble, where I was treated to a decidedly unfunny meeting between my hand and the tawse (belt).
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GxvdhxKePpg/SZSg6Lp8YeI/AAAAAAAAAUw/BgOo1qRFd_I/s320/tawse.jpg
Despite that, and plenty of other unpleasant experiences at Primary School (I loved secondary), I don’t hate all men, and nor would I blame my fragile mental state (even if I had one) on male primary school teachers forever and a day.
So, c’mon, CC – gerragrip.
Exitor,
Male primary school teachers are just the best!
Not that one! HIM, now, I’d report to the cops – for not having a sense of humour!
Please be so kind as to delete my posts on this page and yours and Petrus’s responses.
Catholic Convert,
You perhaps haven’t considered all the circumstances that lead to single motherhood. Here is a typical scenario:
Firstly, it must be remembered that there is a massive societal pressure on young people to be sexually active, to the extent that their sense of self worth depends on the validation they receive through sex. This urge for validation and acceptance is extremely strong. Additionally, society has promised all of us sexual liberation. Of course, there is no such thing as ‘sexual liberation’, it’s a lie. Also, absitence is not encouraged in schools, because it’s considered oppressive.
So a young couple get together. Then for some reason the contraception fails, either because it is used improperly, or malfunctions. Sometimes contraception is used properly but pregnancy still occurs. The man is furious because he was promised sexual liberation without the responsibility of rearing children. So he leaves the woman.
In cases where a woman becomes pregnant a second time out of wedlock, it might be because she believed that her partner loved her and would stand by her if she ever got pregnant. What the man didn’t tell her was that all along he was only interested in sex and didn’t love her enough to be parent to her children. She was a ‘trial run’, someone to keep him company and have sex with him until he met his true love and future spouse.
I am not demonising the man in these situations. In fact I empathise with the man, because men are put under huge societal pressure to be sexually experienced, and in modern times their sense of self-worth depends on it. And this is encouraged through modern parenting and schooling and entertainment. (You will no doubt have heard about Eliot Roger who committed mass murder-suicide because he couldn’t get a girlfriend.)
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