Discussion: Jeb Bush’s Solution To Unwed Pregnancies: ‘Ridicule’ Young Mothers

[joelopines]

“raising a wild oat”

I’m appropriating that.

[parent55]

The GOP loves to ridicule women and focus on unborn children. The GOP seems to have forgotten there is another person involved in this matter. The GOP should give the men involved just as hard a time as they do the women, but they never do.

The GOP does not care at all about the child after it is born. GOP family values seem to end at birth. GOP is not interested in day care, sick day care, early childhood education, children’s nutrition, children’s health care, good schools for children, common core education standards, college for children. The GOP makes cuts to all of these attempts to help children be productive working members of our society.

Yet when a woman says I can’t earn enough or get enough benefits to have a child, the GOP treats them like dirt for trying to be responsible. Then if they have the child, the GOP treats them like dirt for having the child. Nothing at all said about or expected from the men involved.

[joelopines]

what would Jesus think

He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone?

(have to say that in the Long Island accent)

That’s lun-GUY-lund.

[joelopines]

[Shame] doesn’t address the underlying issues nor does it help singles mothers, and it’s especially damaging to their children because that shame is often extended to the child.

It’s also incredibly misogynistic in that it’s the women and girls who face the stigma of shame, while the boy escapes all judgement. The shaming also tends to be a whole lot more about a single woman/girl having sex than it is the actual pregnancy. All too often the very same people who want to shame the hell out of a woman for having sex and getting pregnant, a burden only women bear, are also the very same people who would high five a man for “getting some”. And, let’s not forget, the person being shamed for her pregnancy may very well be a rape or incest victim

Condew should write that 500 times on the chalkboard.

Would a scarlet letter be sufficient or do you think she should have her head shaved by her father and the video posted on Youtube?

Chilling. Just chilling.

No its not. Not even remotely. COMPASSION is what permits those things. Shame is a useless, destructive, debilitating emotional interaction that is more about the petty, regressive needs of the people doing the shaming…which generally include establishing superiority and control…than it is about the needs of the person being shamed. It shuts people down, shuts people out and shuts people away. It does none of what you say.

Did shame stop LGBT people from existing? Did shame stop suffrage? Did shame stop the civil rights movement? Did shame stop the sexual revolution? Shame never works. Oh sure, it may delay the inevitable by freezing those who might otherwise act in an emotional timewarp, but its scars run deep, are slow to heal and, generally, come with their own problems to supplant the ones you thought to fix in the first place, deterring self actualization and progress.

There is no question to which shame is an answer.

This.

The most immediate and long term result of public shaming pregnant unwed mothers will be to greatly increase abortions.

And this.

[pshah]

Shaming people? Really? Hasn’t worked on Wall Street CEOs or those who lied us into Iraq.

[ljb860]

Talking about campaign related money nothing about speaking fees.

[eve]

What a mean, mean person. Worse than GW.

Should we be shaming his wife and children for their arrest records?

And seriously he has to be dumber than Rick Perry to wear those ugly glasses.

[teenlaqueefa]

Conservatives are incapable of feeling shame.

If you haven’t been paying attention.

[underdog]

How about some shame for corporate wrongdoers, like Halliburton, BP, Chevron, GE, coal companies, fracking companies, and on and on. Conservatives only look at individual behavior, while ignoring for-profit crimes that hurt us all.

[fiftygigs]

…condemnation was enough of a stimulus to be careful…

Careful, my ass. Bush proposes no sex before marriage with government just the folks to make sure we all obey that law.

Further, Bush’ plan to stop unwed pregnancies is to undercut the self-esteem of new mothers. In other words, punish the infant.

[zlohcuc]

Someone should just come out and ask…are you now or have you ever been fucking brain dead and are the people who are about to waste billions of dollars on your “campaign” aware that you have the IQ of a pin~ata? Please do us a solid and bow out.

[wordnut]

Have you run this by Sarah Palin yet?

[pjcamp]

Single moms everywhere: Show up en masse to Bush’s campaign events and just point and laugh.

[ratesanalyst]

I was going to make those points myself, but then noticed that you had, once again, made them all and made them better than I likely could have.

@Condew would be wise to consider whether the mother in question was actually provided the resources she needed by society to begin with, by which I mean education and access to birth control… Obviously that’s more applicable to teen mothers than to unwed mothers as a whole, but the two overlap significantly.

[kitty]

That’s because the use of shame isn’t really about preventing unwanted teen pregnancies, and Jeb Bush knew it. It’s about blaming teen mothers for broad, systemic problems, rather than the politicians who enact those policies.

This would have been a great article is the above had been presented as the thesis statement and the rest of the article written in support of it. TPM needs an editor

[clauscph]

Please keep talking, Gov.Bush, it is so fascinating to hear you talk…

[mrf]

Yet he sent his daughter off to rehab when she had her issues. Wonder if she was ridiculed?

[trippin]

If we want to deal with genuine threats, and if ridicule is indeed an effective strategy, then it makes much more sense to ridicule the Bush crime syndicate and their Saudi pals.

[trippin]

In any other case, single and pregnant is stupid and irresponsible and worthy of shame.

Not as worthy of shame as making blanket statements out of willing ignorance of specific circumstances and sympathy with a filthy politician’s desire to enrage those who are vulnerable to bigoted codespeak.

[amherstma]

Assume your talking about her having sex as a young person. It is a force of life, it feels good, it happens. I really think one of the solutions of the worlds problem is to do more of it, if the human race all became brownish then “that difference” would be solved.