Either pregnant with child or pregnant with hubris
Peculiar problems arise when government thinks itself all knowing and prescient. Call it Murphy’s Law or the law of unintended consequences. Either way, Greek mythology is full of people laid low by hubris.
As Prometheus was wont to say: “those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”
I write this because the House of Representatives recently seem to have acquired a mania for pushing legislation that are quite detached from reality. As well as insisting in measures repeatedly tried in the past and, repeatedly as well, proven wrong.
So, Albert Einstein: “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.
Which aptly can be said of the House’s stance toward marriage and the family: churning out bills on same-sex unions, divorce, SOGI, and — of course — to fully fund the actually operational Reproductive Health Law.
The problem is, we know that the stable family, composed not only of a man and woman and children but rather the biological father and mother of the children in permanent union, is the foundation for a stable and dynamic society.
“We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it.”
That was Barack Obama, speaking on Father’s Day 2008. He should know, himself being a product of a single parent household.
The problem with encouraging legislation on divorce, for example, is that it leads to the weakening of the family.
Studies show that divorce laws (particularly “no-fault divorce”) historically contribute in encouraging the breakup of marriages exponentially through time (with US studies indicating increases of 10% annually, with one giving a high rate of 88%).
The hostility towards marriage and the family extends beyond mere lawmaking, what with the present administration’s utter aversion towards organized religion.
And yet studies show that religion goes a long way in protecting the family: Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found in 2013 that, even in “divorce-is-completely-acceptable-US,” Catholics have way lower divorce rates: “Catholics stand out with only 28% of the ever-married having divorced at some point.”
Compare this with a divorce rate of 40% for those with no religious affiliation.
Which is tragic when you consider that, according to research cited by The Federalists’ Mollie Hemingway, “compared to those continuously married, those who never marry have a reduction in wealth of 75%, and those who divorced and didn’t remarry have a reduction of 73%.”
Furthermore, “research has consistently shown that both divorce and non-marital childbearing increase child poverty. In recent years, the majority of children who grow up outside of married families have experienced at least one year of dire poverty. According to one study, if family structure had not changed between 1960 and 1998, the black child poverty rate in 1998 would have been 28.4% rather than 45.6%, and the white child poverty rate would have been 11.4% rather than 15.4%. The rise in child poverty, of course, generates significant public costs in health and welfare programs.”
So here’s the punchline, “marriages that end in divorce also are very costly to the public.”
And the costs are not only in financial terms: Heritage Foundation’s Patrick Fagan points out that “children whose parents have divorced are increasingly the victims of abuse. They exhibit more health, behavioral, and emotional problems, are involved more frequently in and drug abuse, and have higher rates of suicide.”
If that weren’t enough, our officials (the Executive and the House) went double down: normalizing the contraceptive mentality and a tax reform program that removed exclusive benefits normally given to the family. Both policies are hardly encouraging of the young to establish families of their own.
But aging populations have been confirmed as a real problem, particularly for Asia: ADB’s report “Impact of Population Aging on Asia’s Future Growth” found that “declining birth rates and increasing life expectancies — will increasingly shape the economic direction of developing countries in Asia. The favorable demographics that have driven high economic growth in the region are likely to reverse.”
This was backed by the IMF, “the population growth rate is projected to fall to zero for Asia by 2050 and the share of working-age people — now at its peak — will decline over the coming decades.”
Or stated more bluntly, “some countries in Asia are getting old before becoming rich.”
It is probable that some members of the House hate their personal lives utterly. Such is undoubtedly unfortunate and deserve our sympathies. But that hardly warrants their dragging the entire country down the gutter.
To access the ADB report on population aging, please visit the link http://bit.ly/adbrept.
Jemy Gatdula is a Senior Fellow of the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations and a Philippine Judicial Academy law lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence.
Twitter @jemygatdula
