SFASDFGDSGS DGSDG JANET SMITH
Much of what I have to say here about premarital sex is
drawn from studies done in the United States. I suspect the
US is fairly representative of Western, industrialized
nations. And since most the world seems eventually to
"catch up" with the United States, what I have to say is
likely more broadly applicable.
The recent attempts at Cairo, Beijing, and Istanbul of the United Nations, the US and
other Western European countries to export western sexual mores to third world
countries through population control programs, suggest that we have reason to fear that
what is true in the US may soon become true everywhere.
In the United States, the media and opinion makers have finally come to recognize that
unwed pregnancy is a major source of social chaos in our culture. Every few weeks,
some columnist in the newspaper or news journal writes an editorial bemoaning the
Janet E.
problem of unwed parenthood. The evidence is overwhelming that children raised in
Smith
households headed by a single parent are much more prone to sexual abuse, drug abuse,
crime, and divorce, for instance. Their health is poorer; their academic achievement is
poorer; their economic well-being is less than that of children who are raised in two-parent
households. In every way, children raised in single parent households seem to have a few strikes
against them as they forge their way through life. (I do not want to suggest, of course, that all
children raised in single parenthood households are doomed. I simply want to report that
Catholic Church teaching, the teaching of most religions, sociological research, and perhaps
common sense are at one in recognizing that children fare better when raised in a household with
two parents.) The number of single-parenthood households has risen dramatically, due, of course,
largely to unwed pregnancy and divorce.
The dimensions of the problem of unwed pregnancy are very serious, indeed. In the early
nineteen sixties, some 3% of white babies were born out of wedlock, some 22% of black babies
and as a whole, 6% of the babies born in the United States were born to unwed parents. Now
some 22% of white babies, 68% of black babies and as an aggregate in the United States some
31% of babies are born to unwed parents. [1] One out of four to one out of three pregnancies in
the United States are ended through abortion, the vast majority performed on unmarried women.
Nearly every one of these births and abortions represent a failed relationship, a relationship that
was not committed to the caring for any children that may be conceived through the relationship.
Certainly, sex outside of wedlock is not a new phenomenon. Certainly there is a tendency among
many to think that things are worse than they are and always getting worse. But the common
view that things are quite out of control now in a new way is confirmed by statistics. [2]
Consider that:
1. In the 1960s, 25 percent of young men and 45 percent of young women were virgins at
age 19; by the 1980s, fewer than 20 percent of males and females were.
2. In the 1950s, roughly 9 in 10 young women got married without living with their partner,
compared with 1 in 3 in the early 1990s.
3. The percentage of white women married from 1960-65 who were virgins was 43; from
1980-85 it was 14.
What is also important to note is that much of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and abortion is not the
result of teenage hormones gone wild or of "puppy love" the infatuation or first love of young
people. It has come as a surprise to many to learn in recent years that teen pregnancy is largely a
result of older males preying on young girls. A study done in 1990 of teen pregnancy in
California found that 77% of all births to high school age girls (ages 16-18) and 51% of births to
junior high school age girls (15 and younger) were fathered by men older than high school age.
[3] Men over age 25 fathered twice as many teenage births
