Of course we were all surprised — “amazed” might be a better word for it — at the apparent looming marriage of Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston. Who would have thought that the country’s No. 1 Unwed Mother and its No. 1 Big Mouth would ever get together again?
It is easy to look at the two of them, both handsome, publicly ambitious crazy kids who didn’t seem to know where to stop, and think, well, they’re sui generis. They represent only themselves. Sociologically, they’re null. They don’t represent anything special in American life.
But when you dig a little deeper into the entire syndrome of sexual “expression,” if you will, of kids their age — 17 when she got pregnant, actually — you find that Bristol and Levi do indeed represent something to America; and, baby doll, it ain’t good.
One can laugh at and with them, if only because the American “celebrity” that surrounds them like smothering arms at times is so patently absurd and even pitiful, as proud unwed mothers and unwed fathers display their children before the world. But in the final laugh, it isn’t very funny at all. Unwed mother spokeswoman Bristol and Playgirl centerfold Levi are the most disastrous examples the U.S. could provide for young people today — and the problems have only begun.
By chance, in the weeks that preceded the renewal of the Great Wasilla Love Affair, just as this couple was getting together again, several highly respected polling organizations came out with new facts that ought seriously to jog our suppositions about the sexuality of young Americans today.
In 2002, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Survey of Family Growth, 50 percent of 15- to 19-year-old boys said childbearing outside of marriage is OK. Today, 64 percent of those boys take that position, up a disturbing 14 percentage points in only eight years.
The Washington Times recently reported that one of the great success stories of the past decade was the decline in teenage pregnancies and births, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. But now that success story is no more. A spokesman for the group says that “that success story is unraveling.”
The big change — the serious transformation — lies in the sharp increase in male teens’ attitudes about having babies out of wedlock. Between 2002 and 2007, for instance, the percentage of boys who did not have sexual relations with girls because of fear of pregnancy fell by half, to 12 percent from 25 percent, indicating, the spokesman said, a newly “cavalier attitude” about unwed pregnancy on the part of young males.
Nor are the indications positive for girls. Journalist and TV hostess Bonnie Erbe revealed recently that 17 percent of young American women depend upon the famously undependable rhythm method (the Vatican’s favorite), which fails 25 percent of the time.
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So, what we are seeing across the board is a landslide of irresponsibility that is worst among young males, but is certainly not limited to them. What we are seeing is a world without shame.
It would be interesting if Bristol and Levi could tell us sometime what exactly it was that made them — a couple who obviously had every capacity for exploring and using any kind of birth control — so careless about their and others’ lives. Bristol has talked publicly about how difficult it was being a single mother, but she did not, so far as I have seen, address the more sobering initial problem. As for Levi, he was so busy showing off his body and thinking up insulting zingers to get Sarah Palin that he said nothing at all about what he had so carelessly done.
They are going to have a formal wedding, albeit small. They are not going to live together until the wedding, nor sleep together. The Little Event will doubtless be present at The Big Event. There is something oddly redeeming about this, for it shows the degree to which young couples, and probably especially women, in their heart of hearts want to belong to the traditional world of white wedding gowns, saving oneself for marriage and happily forever after.
The great anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote that the one thing that characterized advanced societies was when males gave up their freedom to devote themselves to their families, but she was writing then about the South Sea islanders. Today, the problem ironically is right here in River City. There is little question that unwed pregnancies are becoming one of the major indicators of our decline. According to federal data from 2006, among female high school dropouts, 67 percent of their births are out of wedlock, in contrast to only 8 percent of births to women who are college graduates. We are clearly seeing a breakdown of cultural values according to education and other social levels.
Universal Press Syndicate
Georgie Anne Geyer is a syndicated columnist based in Washington.