Marry the Father? ROFL!

The first thing I ask a student of mine who tells me she’s pregnant is, “Are you going to marry the father?” The kids laugh hard when I bring up the concept. And yet: weak, broken or non-existent family structures are among the major reasons for failed schools.

The first thing I ask a student of mine who tells me she’s pregnant is, “Are you going to marry the father?” Traditional me thinks that’s the solid and most focused reaction. The kids, however, laugh at me and they laugh hard when I bring up the concept. For all but a couple of my many students who have become pregnant, marriage isn’t in the equation with the baby’s father. When one of my shot put and discus throwers was walking his two lap warm-up at a track meet last spring, hundreds of meters behind the rest of the team, I knew something was wrong. While the rest of the team stretched, he told me the girl he was fooling around with had missed her period; his jaw was on the track – he had no idea what to do. Traditional me told him to man up. I told him his life wasn’t all about him anymore - that his responsibilities were to the girl and the baby. He mentioned abortion as a solid option. I asked him what the girl would think about that. He didn’t know what she’d say. Exactly, I told him. It’s not about what’s easy for you now. You do what’s right for the girl and the baby. He mentioned not being able to buy new shoes or jeans. I told him that was a good place to start cutting back. A few days later, he told me it was all a scare and she wasn’t pregnant after all. I asked if he’d learned his lesson. He mentioned something about being lucky and using condoms. I told him he hadn’t learned anything at all from the experience if that was all he was thinking about. That marriage is in decline in our country is no shocker. It’s frequently cited that about 40-50% of marriages end in divorce. The average age at first divorce is 30.5 for males and 29 for females, so even those taking the nuptial challenge early on aren’t necessarily sticking with it. By taking marriage out of the equation, or putting it off until the “right time, as many of my peers say they want to do, our society is losing an important part of life’s “script.” It’s this script, says Kay Hymowitz, a City Journal editor and prominent writer on the topic of marital decline, which focuses people and gets them planning and saving for the future. Hymowitz has written that a caste system has formed in our country between the middle and upper classes, which have higher rates of marriage, and the lower classes, which tend to have much lower rates of marriage. Committed and strong marriages are a foundation for society, and as they decline the society slips. Weak, broken or non-existent family structures are among the major reasons for failed schools. In the last two years, our school held parent/teacher conferences three times per year. Teachers had to stay until 7 p.m. The same two or three parents would visit me each time. I had well over 100 students. Strong schools and parental involvement go hand in hand; parents hold students, teachers and administrators accountable in these environments. Lacking parental involvement, students lose what should be their biggest advocacy group. Bad schools are great places for bad teachers to hide out in and it’s made all the easier when strong families aren’t demanding excellence for their students. Hymowitz explained that the collapse of marriage creates a sense of drift, especially among low-income kids. The script that leads to a middle class life in this country is “increasingly lost,” for these kids, she says.  Every disruption in a low-income child’s life – every time the pantry is empty or there’s no parent around to support them at an after school activity – chips away at the middle class script. Marriage used to be a way to “keep your eyes on the future,” says Hymowitz. Lower income folks are making what she calls “the accidental family - where you’re stumbling into making a baby. The whole idea of a planned pregnancy is a middle class concept.” It isn’t just book knowledge that’s creating an achievement gap between lower income and upper income students. The consistency of a middle class lifestyle brings planning and goals for the future. That consistency is given a major boost when parents are married and involved in every aspect of their child’s life. Hymowitz says middle class parents are often “obsessed with their child’s achievement.” Lower income kids, on the other hand, can often “grow into an adult and not have a tremendous amount of socializing or shaping.” The childhood of a middle class child is geared towards going to college. The childhood of a lower class child is more geared towards survival.