In yesterday’s piece, I wrote about out of wedlock births and what the effects of this are. In this article, I’m going to try to explain my set of solutions to this problem. As you’ll see, these are pretty controversial for both political parties and for the interest groups that are subsumed within them. Both political parties know that this is a devastating situation for our nation; if it could be solved by just attacking one point of view, it would be.

I think that much of the state of affairs could be mitigated by a national change in attitude. I’ll now present three things that could be accomplished:

GLAMOUR – This is one of the biggest problems right now. Movie stars and other celebrities are continually bragging about how they are pregnant and that the daddy is nowhere in the picture. Well, I’m glad for them. They have their media apostles clamor around them, seeking any nugget that will permit them to justify this aberrant behavior. This media may seem unlikely to change their fawning attitude, but let me give you a couple of examples of when this occurred:

• A while ago, there was a comedian named Foster Brooks, whose entire act was to pretend to be drunk. In that same era, Dean Martin had a television program where he was either drunk, or appeared to be. Before that, there was a movie series called ‘The Thin Man’, where the stars constantly drank martinis to, I assume, the unrelenting amusement of viewers. How often do you see alcohol overconsumption glamourized now on tv or in movies. I’m guessing that drunken driving was exposed enough that attitudes changed.
• More recently, people smoked cigarettes all over movies and television. When was the last time you saw this? Now, smoking has gone from a semi-normal behavior to one that is outlawed on many college campuses and other building areas.
So, the media must be convinced to just ask a few questions every time a starlet brags about her impending childbirth. ‘What would you say to a young girl who thinks of you as a role model?’ ‘How much money do you believe it takes to adequately raise a child?’ are two that come to mind.

BABY MAMA – These are the young poor girls who begin having babies at an obscene age, and continue breeding until their bodies can’t take it any longer. Generally, they lack any real type of education, and are barely literate. They pass these traits to their offspring, making their sons likely to end up in prison at an early age. Their daughters get to continue having kids when they reach 14 or so, breeding generational societal uselessness. They end up dependent upon welfare and we all know how lucrative an existence that can be. Even better, when their kids often have physical, behavioral or emotional problems, they get to receive the jackpot of SSI, becoming a major support for their family. In effect, their chance for a productive life is over when they reach 8 or 9 years old.

What can we do? Once a girl/woman gets on welfare with her first baby, offer her some pittance, like $50 per month, if she takes the birth control shot. I don’t actually care about how often she has sex; if that’s what she needs to have some positive sense of self-identity, go for it. Just don’t make the rest of us pay for your lack of self-respect and self-control. Not many women will reject this offer; those that do will find themselves objects of scorn in their communities.

JOHNNY APPLESEED – These are the guys who find their masculinity enhanced by impregnating these clueless females. These guys have no merit at all to society. Since their self-image is solely located in their groin, they are unable to provide a positive role image, even if they maintain some type of contact with their offspring.

Obviously, I hold these guys in complete disdain, so it’s a little hard for me to solve this. My thought is to give them a choice, a vasectomy or send them to prison for a few years. If they are somehow able to provide enough child support to keep them off welfare, and pay their medical costs, I’m willing to keep allowing them to spread their seed across the landscape.

So there are my solutions. We have to remember that the reason neither political party talks about this issue with anything other than platitudes is that any real solution entails upsetting interest groups that they count upon. My own religion, I assume, finds the birth control shot immoral. Forcing poor people to mitigate their behavior would alienate Democrats (unless Clinton supported it). But if this plague is not controlled somehow, our nation will soon become bifurcated even more. Our nation values individualism more than any other major nation; we can’t afford to allow much of a younger generation to depend upon the kindness of strangers.