Unwed mother
This is a rumor from Johnston side of the family: Bristol Palin & Levi Johnston Break Off Engagement.
I'm definitely not in favor of a shotgun wedding, but, in the party of family values, this has to have some resonance.
(PS. Dear Palin family, I wouldn't get into a media war with the Johnstons. I think they'll go Jerry Springer on your asses.)
I'm definitely not in favor of a shotgun wedding, but, in the party of family values, this has to have some resonance.
(PS. Dear Palin family, I wouldn't get into a media war with the Johnstons. I think they'll go Jerry Springer on your asses.)
posted by mikevotes at
1:57 PM
10 Comments:
"She [Bristol] tells him [Levi] he can't take the baby to our house because she doesn't want him around 'white trash.' "
And in other 'pot calling the kettle black' news...
This whole thing is just sad. Sad and pathetic. I feel sorry for baby Trippppp.
By
-epm, at 2:53 PM
It is a Springer show.
(Don't forget the meth selling grandma.)
By
mikevotes, at 3:35 PM
In the Midwest anymore it's not uncommon for a girl from the decadent lower middle-class to have children from 2 or 3 different men and sometimes not marrying any of them. I don't understand the mindset of this activity but it's fairly common. The men are basically feral parental basement dwellers that have to be sued for child support who kick and scream until the paternity tests comeback.
Some of these girls are 2nd and 3rd generation and it's creating a permanent feral underclass in the town that we currently live in. My wife has been teaching here for 15 years so we've had enough of a time span to see the next generation of offspring appear.
What I'm getting at is that the Palin/Johnson group is just a glimpse of a national trend that isn't going to abate anytime soon. The upper middle-class are aghast at this behavior since they intelligently use birth control but for the folks on the ground in non-gated communities this is pretty much what's going on around us everyday.
In the words of "The Specials", '... ain't he cute, no he ain't he's just another burden on the welfare state!'.
By
matt, at 4:15 AM
Butthese white girls aren't welfare queens in cadillacs, right?
In fact, I'd wager it gets so little coverage because it runs counter to our small town mythology. (Like drugs in small towns.)
And, No birth control because it's not easy to get in the smaller town, stigma etc, no sense of consequences, or what?
By
mikevotes, at 6:57 AM
There is no stigma at this point since the pool of the underclass has grown so large compared to 40 years ago.
When my mother was growing up in a small town in central Iowa 16 of 18 girls in her HS class were pregnant by the time they were seniors. The MAJOR difference is that these kids go married before the baby was born! My mom was not one of this group, she did go on to college.
The fatalistic attitude of growing up in a small town was best portrayed by the movie "Breaking Away". Even though it was set in Evanston the 'townies' have the same attitude towards their lives as anyone in a small town. The hopelessness, unrealized hopes and finally internalized bitterness that eats at the hope which dwells in the heart.
For the girls in the town we live in the motives for their getting pregnant are varied. Some are cautious and have a failure of birth control. Some use getting pregnant to trap their boyfriend into a long-term relationship. Remember these males are uncivilized and have no sense of responsibility except to their immediate needs. I have seen instances where an older sister had a baby out of wedlock and a much younger sister saw how much attention was showered on the older sibling and baby. For the worst of irrational needs this younger sister has a child hoping to attain that amount of attention.
The extremely ironic thing is that the parents are now mad that they are saddled with watching their grandkids and have no free time since they have been raising their own kids since they were 16 and 17yo.
I understand 100% why they do this but still baffled that such a large group of people can be so blind to the consequences, then again for them it's fate, or it's adding a meaning to their lives. Either way it's tough.
By
matt, at 8:36 AM
I think I've said this before, in Texas there's a saying, "the only think to do in that town is f**k and drink." (now days you add drugs.)
And, I don't know about enough about small town culture, to really respond, but I am struck by how similar your description is to what we hear out of inner cities.
By
mikevotes, at 10:46 AM
I grew up in a small town in Montana in the mid-60s, and can support Matt's informal statistics. It was quite common for girls to show up pregnant in the final year of high school or the year after, and in most cases to get married afterwards.
It was considered rare and laudable for girls to head off to college single and non-pregnant after graduation.
From what I can see, the formula is the same in '09, except that marriage after pregnancy is occurring less and less.
By
r8r, at 12:29 PM
Pretty wild. I grew up in upscale suburbia where college was largely the expectation and NOBODY really thought they would marry their high school sweetheart.
By
mikevotes, at 1:40 PM
I tutored a symbolic logic class during my undergrad at Iowa and I had a girl that went to the New Trier HS near Chicago's burbs. Granted this was the 80's but she said everyone there went to college, no one went into the military. It was a 4 year HS with 800 per class. Google that school, some interesting facts.
By
matt, at 3:39 PM
That's pretty much what I grew up in, but in Houston.
By
mikevotes, at 5:29 PM
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