The highest rates of white teenage pregnancy in the 30 states with available data are in red states. While the national white teenage pregnancy rate in 2010 was 38 per 1,000, white rates were at least 10 points higher in nine states: Oklahoma (59), West Virginia (64), Arkansas (63), South Carolina (51), Alabama (49), Mississippi (55), Tennessee (51), Kentucky (59) and Louisiana (51). Each of these states cast decisive majorities for Romney in 2012.s.
.. Regions as diverse as Europe, Japan, South America, Canada and the United States are undergoing a profound shift in fertility, reproductive attitudes and behavior. The changes include rejection of premarital virginity, social acceptance of single parenting, and the replacement of values stressing family obligation with values stressing personal autonomy.
.. The result, he said, is that “the moral control that calls for people to get married and not to live in sin ends in society as a whole, that moral control weakens and ends. There is no moral stigma, it becomes destigmatized.”
The destigmatization of once-disapproved-of behavior can be seen in the rapid growth of cohabiting couples, which, according to the census, went from 3.8 million in 2004 to 7.9 million in 2014,
.. The violent crime rate in both cities has fallen over the past decade, just as it has nationwide, although the 22.3 percent drop in Baltimore is four times as large as the 5.6 percent decline in Muskogee.
Pursuing ‘Purpose’ at the Expense of Family
Consequentialists determine whether a decision is right not by the motivations we bring to it or the duties we have, but by its overall outcomes. If a decision ultimately helps more people than it harms, then that was a good moral decision.
.. As he develops as a character, Kyle realizes that the moral dilemma he thought he had is no longer a dilemma at all. The duty he has to his family is stronger than the duty that he has to his country because as a father and husband, he has a core obligation to take care of his wife and kids, and no one else can satisfy that obligation. Protecting others in war, on the other hand, is a responsibility he can pass along to someone else. “In the end,” he writes, “I decided [Taya] was right: others could do my job protecting the country, but no one could truly take my place with my family.”
When Liberals Blew It: Pat Moynihan and Single-Parent Families
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, at the time a federal official, wrote a famous report in March 1965 on family breakdown among African-Americans. He argued presciently and powerfully that the rise of single-parent households would make poverty more intractable.