Autumnesque

Watching Ann Coulter on her press tour is torture.  Her newest book is a diatribe against the evil, greedy, bad parent single mother (who counts her welfare checks with an evil laugh) and the criminal spawn she creates.  On one hand, Ann Coulter has some valid points.  Children who grow up to be criminals have a higher probability of growing up in a home that has problems – an absent father, drug or alcohol abuse, poverty among others…  Ann has taken the statistics and made a fun little thesis out of them – preaching the evils of the single mom and how the “left” has deified them or made them the innocent victim in pop culture and beyond.   

Everything she says has a motive, and that motive is to frame liberals as liars who are bringing down the wrath of god and out to destroy the traditional family.  The other side to her argument (which incidentally agrees with the outcomes she discusses) is in Freakonomics, the economist’s book that takes a look at social issues.  In freakonomics, the author tracks the heavy reduction in young criminal activity in the mid 90′s to Roe vs Wade, and the generation of unwanted/born to poverty children that did not exist.  Regardless of your personal stance on abortion, you have to admit that this finding is incredibly interesting.  Abortion reduces crime by eliminating a high risk portion of the population.   The other  thing that strikes me is that the African American population, certainly a segment of the population with high numbers of single mothers, is also demographically very religious.  So one could pose the idea that because they may not believe in abortion, there is a disproportionate amount of unwanted/born to poverty/single mother black youth growing up in this country…   

I know that this is all opinion – just food for thought…  I grew up in the most wonderful single mother home you can imagine – so I take all of this very personally.  There are too many exceptions to ignore – so the single parent argument that Coulter is selling, to me, ignore many other factors that contribute to bad results.  She is also trying to make a case against any alternative form of parenting – i.e. gay parents.  To me, the things that are necessary for a happy childhood are enough time and money to make the relationship of the family relatively stable.   The financial/time strain on a single parent is formidable unless they are in a unique situation.  The lack of those resources are what, to me, make the children suffer.

here’s that horrible interview with Ann Coulter on the View:  http://perezhilton.com/2009-01-12-mann-coulter-vs-the-ladies-of-the-view-today