The article I chose is titled “Motherhood Before Marriage: An American credo to ponder”, written by Kate O’beirne in the National Review.
Question #2 How does your article relate to the way we discussed the topic in class? The article I have chosen relates to how we talked about the topic of marriage in class in the sense that O’beirne talks about the necessity of marriage, and when Kathyrn Edin and Maria Kefalas try to understand why the women they studied chose not to get married. In class, we discussed that marriage in the old days was often motivated by things like the tax break you get, financial gain, and even further back, the motivation to start a family …show more content…
O’beirne kick starts her article with statistics on why children from unwed parents are less likely to succeed, she lists things like they have a higher chance of failing out of school, having emotional problems, and ending up on welfare themselves. Her article continues with thrown out ideas of what the causes for these pregnancies could really be. She starts by suggesting it could be the money they receive when they are on welfare and considered unmarried. O’beirne begins to assess the opinions of liberals however throws their suggestions for birth control and more job training under the bus and begins to question why women who are “extremely disadvantaged” are having children in the first place. Edin and Kefalas discuss in their article that the reason these women have these children is because they are able to provide love and care for them. These two articles are examples of two completely different …show more content…
Rosenhan’s article “On Being Sane in Insane Places” assesses people in completely different circumstances I believe that O’beirne could enhance her article if she had some understanding of the points Rosenhan makes in his writing. Rosenhan talks about deviant behavior and how a person being labelled deviant only makes the person more deviant because they are being told that is what they are. When O’beirne labels the women, she’s discussing in her article as “extremely disadvantaged”, and “one of the largest problems in America” I believe it shuts down the people she’s trying to speak to, it makes people immediately defensive while reading her article and unreceptive to what she’s trying to say. I think if she rewrote the article with a stance on how can we help these women become successful and how can we help these women raise their children, this could fix the concern of the wellbeing of the children. If O’beirne is so concerned with these children not being raised around fathers, we should start a program like “Big Brother, Big Sisters” where these children can be surrounded by father figures. Instead of suggesting removal of the welfare program, make available more job training opportunities so these women can get a job that can support a family. Labeling does not fix anything, it does not motivate, it does not create, it just starts