Unmarried Women and Elections in the USA

This was originally published in September 2012. It still holds up, I think. In 2026, there are multiple “Democratic Socialists” who might win major and prominent local offices.

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Married women are more likely to vote Republican, unmarried women are more likely to vote Democrat.

Why?

Different people have different explanations, because even asking female voters why they vote the way they do won't necessarily get you the truth.

One explanation I think holds a lot of water is that while many unmarried women see themselves as independent, they want someone to promise them security, and they are very much dependent - on taxpayers they don't even know. Another way of putting it is some some women who say, "I don't need a man!" are counting on men (and women) who pay the taxes that fund the government programs on which these women depend. Democrats promise larger (and supposedly bringing more goodies) government. Republicans promise... to slow the rate of increase in expanding of government. So someone who wants the government to take care of them (as opposed to simply protect them from invading armies, terrorists, and criminals) is much more likely to vote Democrat.

Of course there are unmarried women who are successful and are part of the 53% paying federal income taxes to support those other women who claim to be independent. One big reason many of them are unmarried is because they will only marry a man who will earn more than they do and will promise them additional financial security. The more successful a woman is, the fewer men there will be who are more successful than she is. (Isn't Oprah still unmarried?) If she has been focused on her education and career and growing her business or climbing the corporate ladder, she may not have had the time or interest in building personal relationship with a marriage-minded, marriage-material man. And, by the time she feels like she has arrived at a level where she feels successful, the men in her age range are married, or divorced with children and nasty ex-wives, and/or dating younger women.

On the other hand, someone could argue that the kind of women more likely to vote Republican are also the kind of women more likely to be married. Not sure how that works, though, given that statistically, almost everyone gets married.

I've also noticed that Democrat operatives, academics, and leaders tend to classify people by their sex, sexual orientation, skin color, religion, income level, etc. and then tell them that if they are Latino, black, homosexual, non-Christian, lower-income, or female they then are victims of hate coming from white, heterosexual, Christian, wealthy men and the only or best way to mitgate such injustice, or course, is new or expanded federal programs and protections. Yes, unless they make the system bigger and more powerful and put the "right" people in charge of it, rich male breeder Bible-thumpin' whitey will deviously take any income, food, or home they arrange for themselves, and force them to be incubators for the new supply of child labor. Well, I'm a white, male, heterosexual, Christian, and my income is higher than average. I want people to have whatever they've earned. I want every person's rights protected. I don't want to oppress anyone. I don't want big corporations or the wealthies to manipulate the system unjustly. That's why I believe in Constitutionally-limited government and, as much as possible, power being decentralized. Congress can't give out corporate welfare if Congress sticks to the Constitution.


There other other explanations, too, as to why there is such a split between unmarried and married women, but I think the dependency/security or "I want someone take care of me but not tell me what to do or hold me accountable" thing makes the most sense, based on what I've heard from the very women in question.

Yes, there are exceptions and outliers and I'm generalizing. Of course I am. And I welcome your disagreement or agreement or citing of exceptions.

Oh No! Not Lower Fertility Rates!

If you don't know what "fertility rates" are, it refers to the average number of children born to a group.

There are people freaking out that certain populations are having fewer children. Who? Well:

• People who want more taxpayers around to support the government-run ponzi schemes like Social Security
• Government agencies (and their unions) that rely on saying they need to serve children in order to keep their funding
• Businesses that sell a lot of overpriced, quickly consumed or outgrown stuff for children
• Businesses that "serve" children, such as day orphanages
• Racists who are afraid the "wrong" people will outnumber their descendants

Now why are people having fewer children? Here are the reasons I can think of right now, in no particular order:

What a Woman Can Do With Your DNA

There are some simple facts of biology. Men usually produce millions of viable sperm cells on an ongoing basis. A man is able to do so starting in puberty and lasting most of the rest of his life. Sperm cells can leave his body while he's asleep. He doesn't have to have an orgasm to expel sperm cells.  New human life takes place inside women. Women get pregnant, men do not.

There are some basic realities of current law. Once a woman has possession of a man's sperm cells, he has lost any control, legally, he has over them.

When a sperm cell leaves a man's body, he loses all control of his own DNA.

Here are the things a woman can do with YOUR sperm cells, men:

March Madness

People have the right to protest, not riot, and not litter. And we all have a right to analyze their protests to see if what they're saying is true and what they want is a good thing. A lot of people have spread this essay by Dina Leygerman. Let's take a look at it. After that, I'll link to some coherent and reality-based stuff.

It has the headline, "You Are Not Equal. I’m Sorry."

A post is making rounds on social media, in response to the Women’s March on Saturday, January 21, 2017. It starts with “I am not a “disgrace to women” because I don’t support the women’s march. I do not feel I am a “second class citizen” because I am a woman….”

This is my response to that post.

Because, if you don't think you're a victim, by golly you're wrong!

Woman Attempts to Abort Famous Person's Grandchild, Then Goes Public

Pro-life LifeSiteNews.com has a headline invoking "Star Wars" and Mark Hamill because, like so many millions of other people, he apparently encouraged a woman knocked up by his son to kill off his grandchild before that child could be born.

The lie behind the abortion movement's slogan, "a woman’s right to choose," is known to the women who have experienced heavy pressure - and often outright coercion - to abort their babies.

Yeah, it's funny how so many people who say "It should be her choice" whenever anyone says elective abortion is a bad thing 1) want strangers to be forced pay to have her child killed, and 2) speak out against women who CHOOSE to deliver their children, especially if they already have more than a couple.

Indeed, as countless testimonies from post-abortive women attest, the pressure exerted on women to kill their children - by husbands or boyfriends, and even their own families - is often so extreme as to make the word "choice" a mockery.

Most of the boyfriends would drop the pressure entirely if they could unilaterally choose a "financial abortion" the way women can unilaterally choose an actual abortion. Now this is where someone will say, "If he doesn't want to pay, he should keep it in his pants!" but many of the same people will be enraged if someone else says that if she doesn't want to be pregnant she should keep her legs together. He's expected to "live up to his responsibilities" when his choice in the matter literally ends as soon as his cells leave his body but her choices continue for 9+ months. So much for equality.

This experience of pressure when she was at her most vulnerable played itself out recently in the life of Maegan Chen, a Los Angeles model who was seeing Nathan Hamill, son of Mark Hamill, best known for his portrayal of Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies.

I wonder how many guys she's dated who aren't wealthy or don't have rich parents? Not that the answer has anything to do with anything.

Adoption is a Beautiful Thing

Do you know where your children are?

DEADLOCKED IN NEW JERSEY wrote in to Dear Abby:

My husband and I have been married 11 years.

So far, so good.

We went through eight years of fertility treatments before having our twins.

Hmmm.

When they were a year old, we discovered I was pregnant with our third child.

Surprise!

We have two embryos left and need to decide what to do. We either use them or destroy them.

Those embryos are human beings. Think about it this way: "We have two toddlers left. Do we raise them, or do we destroy them?" Fortunately, adoption is a more realistic option when it comes to children who are still embryos.

I think we need to give the embryos the chance they were meant to have. However, my husband is concerned only with the financial side of it as we have been living on one salary and things are tight.

Gee, better hope you don't get sick, if your husband puts money ahead of human life.

My heart aches over this.

If only there was some way people having trouble conceiving becoming parents that didn't involve creating more embryos than they were both willing to give a reasonable chance at living.

Do I do what I believe is right and stand by my religious and moral beliefs, and take the chance my husband will resent me for the rest of our marriage?

Guys, think about this. She can go ahead and have those children implanted whether he likes it (or knows about it) or not, and he can be held financially responsible for them. She can adopt them out, and he can still end up financially responsible for them. I say men should not donate sperm and should be very cautious about banking it for themselves, and that applies here as well. He needed to give his sperm (unless they used donor sperm) for this to happen. Which also brings up the point that even if they did use donated sperm (or some creep at the lab decided to secretly use his own sperm) and her husband doesn't want more children, he can still be held financially accountable by a court. All it takes is one judge.

But I digressed. What she is apparently talking about is going ahead and having them implanted over his objections. She should not do that. What she should do is donate them. I was happy to see Dear Abby give information about doing just that:

Your embryos could be donated for embryo adoption by a couple who have been unable to conceive, and who would love to raise them. For more information, you should contact an attorney who specializes in family formation, or contact the Snowflakes Frozen Embryo Adoption and Donation Program. Its phone number is 714-693-5437 and its website is www.nightlight.org.

Thank you, Dear Abby!

Unfortunately, it seems that some people in the fertility/reproductive assistance business want to increase their "success" rates, and so they will create more children than will be given a reasonable chance at life, pick the most promising embryos (discarding or experimenting on the others - killing them either way), implant multiple embryos, and selectively kill any that make it to the fetal stage that might have a medical problem or are the weakest if "too many" of them have made it to that stage. Too many parents don't need much arm twisting to go along with any of that. The result? Innocent human beings are being killed by other human beings, and even those who aren't killed are being treated like commodities.

Ladies, if you spend your twenties and early thirties partying and having sex with bad boys you wouldn't want to be the (financial) father of your children, or you spend that time getting graduate degrees and climbing the corporate ladder... rather than learning what kind of man would make a good husband and dating and then marrying such a man... so that you find yourself marrying in your mid or late thirties, expect that your're going to have trouble conceiving.

I realize it is emotionally easy for me to discourage or be cautious about fertility treatments, IVF, third-party reproduction, etc., since my wife and I conceived the children we wanted to have, without aid, in two months and in three months, and those children have survived. But that it is easy for me to write does not make what I write false or wrong. I value human life. I also appreciate that I was conceived in a loving act of passion rather than in lab equipment and stuck in a freezer. Even if a child was conceived in rape, it is better for an adoptive set of parents to give someone else's biological offspring a good life rather than killing their own biological children in an attempt to have a biological connection to the children they end up raising.

More Childless Women

Amanda Marcotte, who blogs at pandagon.net and rhrealitycheck.org and identifies as a "progressive" said she was surprised by a recent Pew Research Center study showing that the share of American women who are not becoming mothers has nearly doubled since 1976, from 10 percent of the population to 18 percent. She writes in "The Real Reason More Women Are Childless"…

Personally, I was happy to see that more women feel free to forgo childbearing.

Why? You don’t want new labor, inventors, investors, managers, artists, engineers, taxpayers, and soldiers to keep things going? You'd rather American culture be replaced? Yes, it is nice for them to know they have the choice not to become mothers. But that fewer Americans with the capabilities to be good parents are having children is not a good thing.

But there seems to be a pushback...

According to Pew, 38 percent of Americans now denounce childlessness as bad for society. That's up from 29 percent just two years ago.

That some people never have children is fine. If just about everyone didn't have children, isn't it self-evident that it would be bad for society? It isn't good for a team if most of the team dies off and isn't replaced.

So what's behind the increase in women choosing the non-mom route? According to social conservatives, legal abortions are to blame for declining birth rates.

Somewhat, sure. Unless you believe that, even with contraception around, women are getting pregnant at such higher rates than when abortion rates were much lower (say, 40 year ago) that the increase in abortions among previously childless women can't offset that increase. Abortion is the symptom, though – it doesn't explain why women don't want a child (except when abortion damages her emotionally, or physically, so she can't).

My guess is that 1) we've turned children into more of a liability instead of an asset, and 2) women are now more self-centered.

However, that doesn't mean that the passage of Roe v. Wade had no impact on the upturn in childless women. Defense of legal abortion led feminists to create a national discourse around the concept of "choice," which helped legitimize the decision to remain childless. This created a space for women who never wanted children to embrace their true desires.

Yes, talking about what a horrible drag children are – so much of a drag that dismembering them is the best option in millions of cases - can have that effect.

Part of this new self-awareness might mean that women are forsaking motherhood because we're finally admitting that it isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Maybe it isn't, if you're bad at it, or you're bad at picking a father for your kids - or you were delusional about what it was going to be like. Your parents downplay the "negatives" of having children until after they are born, because they want grandchildren. Then once they have their grandchildren, they respond to your complaints about what you don't like about how your life has changed with "Oh.... yeah... well, that happens when you have kids."

As last week's New York magazine cover story documented, parenthood is becoming increasingly miserable because of the exploding expectations placed on mothers—making the child-free lifestyle seem all the more attractive.

Motherhood has always been hard and consuming. Where are these new expectations coming from? Ah, that's right. Feministas who tell mothers they need to have careers, too, and the people who encourage women to raise children without a man, drive husbands away, neglect husbands, or divorce good husbands. That brings on more obligations for a mother.

In 1988, only 39 percent of Americans disagreed with the notion that the childless "lead empty lives." Now a majority-59 percent-disagree that childlessness automatically means you're unfulfilled.

I do agree that someone can be fulfilled without ever raising children. But as Dennis Prager points out, they haven't experienced the most they can. That's true about a lot of things in life, but parenting is a much bigger thing.

Still, a woman who chooses to remain childless continues to face a series of negative stereotypes, from claims that she's selfish to implications that she's too career-minded and self-centered to remember to breed before it's too late.

There are people who have children for selfish reasons as well as people who don't for selfish reasons. And some people have children because they are lazy and had sex without caring enough to do something to avoid conception. That's just reality.

But clearly there are upsides to childlessness. Just looking around my own apartment, I can see the value in furniture that's gone unruined, cats that have gone unbothered, and a distinct lack of toys cluttering up my floor.

That's it? Can’t you come up with more? I sure can. More free time and money, more freedom in general/fewer obligations. Everything is a trade off, though. I'll take my son's laugh over preserved furniture any day.

Gayle, age 30, drolly observed, "My ovaries do not stir when I see a baby."

I hope for her sake she feels the same way when it is too late. Even if she regrets not having kids, it will be better than if she had kids and then neglected them. But I'd prefer everyone be happy with not having had kids if they didn't, and having kids if they did.

Most believed that it wasn't harmful to society and could, in fact, be beneficial. But few spoke about benefits to the environment or women's pocketbooks. Instead, childless women argued that increasing childlessness is good … for the children.

"Honey, me not giving you a diamond engagement ring is good for the ring." How can it be good for a kid for the kid to be aborted, or for the kid to not exist in the first place?

Dana, age 34, made this case forcefully. "Many children are treated bad or abandoned. Some live their entire lives in foster care."

But this doesn't explain why Dana chooses to be childless, unless she's saying she would be abusive or neglectful.

Natalie agreed that her attachment to her disposable income could be considered selfish but said, on the other hand, "When I ask friends of mine who have/want kids what their reasons are, the answers range from 'I don't know' to 'I want someone to love me' to 'I want someone to take care of me in my old age,' which are not only also selfish but poorly reasoned."

I agree. Like I said, some people have selfish motivations either way. However, whether from a Darwinian or a theistic paradigm, having children is not inherently selfish. It is how we continue our society.

Could these childless women be harbingers of a new world, one in which parenthood is considered an active choice and not simply the default state of adulthood?

Uhm, hasn't it been that way for decades now? I chose to have kids. I actively made that choice. There was a time when I considered not ever becoming a father.

Cindy Krischer Goodman also wrote about this. She is CEO of BalanceGal LLC, "a provider of news and advice on how to balance work and life."

A look behind the numbers reveals more of what this trend reflects - a generation of women who are not necessarily choosing career over kids but rather finding that time has passed and their focus has been elsewhere. Women are starting businesses in record numbers, advancing in corporate arenas, and blazing career trails in male-dominated industries. They are the bulk of people getting advanced degrees, and they are getting married later in life.

That’s all fine. I'd rather a woman not have a children only to have that child raised by strangers and MTV.

Many of these women say they are happy and fulfilled.

Good for the ones who are.

Some have made work a priority, but others discovered by the time they found the right mate and decided to have children, they couldn't.

And a lot of those women were playing around with guys who weren't "the right mate" for a good chunk of the time, and a many of those could have found the right mate if they’d really wanted to... they probably even rejected him or he avoided her because she was with some jerk.

At the same time, childless people in today's workplace often feel their personal time is less valued. "If you have a pet in distress and need time off, it's not viewed the same as a child who needs to go to doctor," Lauby said.

Nor should it be. I'm a pet owner, but pets are not humans.

I'm encouraged that women are increasingly exercising their right to choose the circumstances under which they have children.

Who isn't?

While I am a father and enjoy my kids, I'm not one of those "everyone should have kids" people, nor someone who thinks women shouldn't have careers. No woman (or man, for that matter) should have children unless they want to and prepared to be good parents. In fact, I think that women who do get pregnant and don't want to be mothers should give their child up for adoption. I don't want to "punish them with a child" as some would way. Let someone else be blessed by being able to raise that child.

Did You Knock Up Juana Perez Valencia?

Nineteen-year-old Juana Perez Valencia, of Anaheim, has been charged with one felony count of murder after her newborn baby girl was found dead. Gerrick Kennedy reports in this LATimes.com blog entry.

Valencia is believed to have given birth to the infant Dec. 22 in the restroom of Sombrero’s Mexican restaurant in Stanton. The baby, apparently healthy at birth and weighing 6.3 pounds, was found in a plastic bag in a trash bin behind the restaurant.

So very sad.

Under California’s "safe surrender" law, a parent or legal guardian can confidentially surrender an infant 3 days old or younger to any hospital emergency room or fire station. No prosecution is sought against those who safely surrender a newborn.

And, I'll add - there are no strings attached. You don't even have to answer questions or identify yourself.

Women have more choices than ever before to avoid being responsible for a living baby:

--Various kinds of adoption
--Safe Surrender
--Various forms of abortion, including pills that induce early abortions
--Many different contraceptive pharmaceuticals and devices
--Tubal ligation
--Hysterectomy
--Oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries)
--Choosing not to engage in intercourse at any given moment

Yet, this stuff is still happening all of the time. It just goes to show you that no matter how many options there are (not all of which I think are okay, but they are there and legal), some people will still choose to do the wrong thing and the illegal thing.

We can't excuse this behavior based on hormones, unless we are prepared to grant men with high testosterone levels passes on rape. That babies can't speak up for themselves like rape victims should not make a difference. In both cases, we are talking about violating someone else's rights. Clearly, she was desperate – but only because of her prior choices. She had many months to deal with this situation.

With more choices comes more responsibility. I say we should be even harder on this sort of crime given the legality of abortion (which I consider murder in most cases). Sadly, the opposite tends to be true. Thanks in part to the "right" to abortion, some people don't see post-partum infanticide the same as murder of say, a 15-year-old.

I know women who fume with rage when they here stories like this one, because they would love to be able to experience pregnancy and childbirth, and have been unable to do so, some of them even with expensive and troublesome treatments and procedures.

But regardless of what anyone else wants – that was an innocent human being that was murdered.

Finally – as my title suggests – I want to know what waste of human potential, what sorry example of manhood, figured it was a good idea to impregnate a young woman who was not suitable to be a mother and had not taken enough precaution to avoid pregnancy? Let's not forget there is some guy out there who messed up big time. Yes, guys lose a lot of power once the sperm leaves their body, and almost all subsequent choices are up to the female from that point on – but he did have that choice. For decency's sake – if you won't stop fornicating, at least try to choose a woman who can handle the situation, and wear a good condom – better yet, get a vasectomy.

Leykis on Abortion and Fornication

The hour of the Tom Leykis Show that is on right now as I type features Leykis claiming that anyone who fornicates should be willing to have/encourage someone to have an abortion. He ridicules people who disagree. He maintains that any opposition to abortion must be based on the Bible, and since the Bible also warns against fornication (sex outside of marriage), anyone who would not have an abortion or encourage their partner to have an abortion should also be against fornication and not engage in it.

Granting his assertions, hasn't he ever heard the commonsense "Two wrongs do not make a right?" I can understand the frustration he has in the concept that there could be a woman who would be willing to fornicate with him, but wouldn't be willing to have an abortion if she subsequently became pregnant, thereby legally obligating Leykis (or any other guy) to financial fatherhood when he doesn't want that nor social fatherhood. But sometimes, people do things they believe are wrong - like the person who fornicates even though they don't think it is really moral to do so. It does not follow that they should then engage in what they consider to be another wrong, especially one that they consider much more serious - abortion. Abortion also brings certain risks for women.

So he maintains that people who go against their beliefs once, should go ahead and go against their beliefs again with a completely different action. He makes no distinction between the severity of the wrongs. It's like saying that someone who lies about being rich should then go out and rob a bank so they will be rich, since they lied about being rich, and lying is wrong.

But it is also possible that there are people out there who do not think fornication is wrong at all, or wrong in all circumstances, and still would not have an abortion - for moral reasons or any number of other reasons.

There are people out there who get their morality apart from the Bible. There are people out there, even atheists (like Leykis) who would not have an abortion.

It is absurd to chalk it all up to the Bible.

It is also absurd insist that people can never ever violate their own beliefs without completely forsaking them in every area. People violate their beliefs all of the time without abandoning their belief system entirely.

A Jerk Walks Into Dr. Laura’s Den

Today, Dr. Laura was talking with a guy who was angry because he and his wife had agreed (according to him, anyway) to wait until they'd been married five years before having children, and that she agreed to have an abortion if she got pregnant "too early".

She got pregnant "too early" and decided against abortion, and so this guy was taking it out by not being the father he should be to his kid.

Dr. Laura told him - like she tells women - to pretend to be happy for the sake of his child. She told him to stop thinking of himself as the center of the universe, and to love his wife and child, and he’ll feel like the center of their universe.

She also asked why a woman would stay with a man who wanted her to kill her baby, which is a really good point. That woman should have taken off before conceiving a baby with him.

Like me, Dr. Laura recognizes killing babies to be wrong. She did bring that up with the caller, but he thinks that somehow, the baby only becomes a baby when he or she makes it to the second trimester. Which brings up the question... what was growing inside his wife before that?

Anyway, it is possible that the woman agreed to his conditions, but any guy with a brain recognizes that women change their minds, especially after eating wedding cake and even more so when they have a baby growing inside them and their hormones are runnin’ wild. There is also a chance the woman got pregnant on purpose, knowing the law would hold this guy to his financial obligations, if not his emotional ones. But like Dr. Laura said, she should have left the guy before that could happen.

The guy has serious problems, and he needs to get over them. He’s made a baby with his wife and he needs to give that child his all. If he doesn't want another kid, he should undergo the snip-snip. But there’s a woman out there who married him and stayed with him, and kept having sex with him, and made a baby with him.

When I was a shy, introverted teen, I actually used to worry that I'd never have a serious girlfriend. I should have looked around and realized that even serial killers stuck on Death Row get chicks throwing themselves at them.