Prudent, Pragmatic Pluralism

December 18, 2012

Happy Parents, Happy Children

By Don Kirk in Ethics, Life-Flourishing vs Life-Extinguishing, Politics, Prudent, Pragmatic Pluralism, Social Regress & Social Progress

The Washington Post is running another article about the collapse of the middle class today, particularly mentioning the collapse of marriage since the 1960′s. The statistics are deeply worrisome, since family collapse falls upon innocent children. 40% of families have no father in the home, 50% of marriages end in divorce, and fully 70% of black children are born out of wedlock. It’s hard not to conclude that our consumer culture promotes sexuality while it derides family values.

Divorce rates are up, but then, doesn’t that also measure people breaking out of unhappy marriages? So perhaps the growing divorce rate is not the true problem. And children born out of wedlock does not mean that the parents are neglecting to raise the children, although certainly marriage represents a better measure of the commitment by parents.

But the worst problem of the multi-faceted sociology is fatherless families. Why do courts order sole custody to either parent in divorce cases where there is no threat or history of violence or abuse? Why is there no court-mandated counseling of the divorcing parents of the corrosive effect of ‘parental alienation’ upon their children? How many of abandoned children are originally unwanted pregnancies?

It’s not likely that the culture of sexuality is going to change soon. But preventing unwanted children–our prisons are bulging with adults who were unwanted children–should be as much a male responsibility as a female prevention.

Why not have vasectomies subsidized? Any male between the ages of 18 to 48 could have a taxpayer-financed vasectomy at a Planned Parenthood or university medical school clinic. The out-patient facility would have a relationship with a sperm bank which would charge the man $100 a year to maintain his frozen sperm samples, should he decide later to marry and have children. If he declines to pay the annual storage fee or when he reaches age 50, the sperm sample is destroyed.

It costs $1,000 to $1,500 for an out-patient vasectomy. The annual cost to taxpayers of warehousing felons is thirty to fifty times as much. So, for a one-time cost to the taxpayers of $1,500, they save upwards of $600,000 in future costs for each ten-year incarceration.

The man’s sexuality is not impaired in the least, women have confidence that birth-control is more than the ‘forgotten’ condom, the entire pro-abortion and pro-life political movements lose the air out their ideological balloons of bombastic hate, and the taxpayers save a fortune.

Best of all, in the entire culture the American children who are born are wanted. This suggestion will do nothing to solve the problems associated with divorce, yet educating parents about divorce’s dynamic of parental alienation–how about as part of the marriage licensing?–will definitely benefit the children of divorce. But just imagine what our culture would be like if every child was wanted by both loving parents, whether married or not?