The English word bastard became a title for illegitimate children during the 13th century. Its exact legal definition has varied based on the nation and time in which it is used. In less admirable circles, bastard children have been denoted by terms such as the fatherless, by-blow, whoreson, love child, pride child, accident, etc., all terms of defamation used by most to suggest that one's parents, especially their father, cared nothing for them. Unfortunately bastard has also been assigned to those ranks in some vocabularies, giving rise to new legal terms like illegitimate and extramarital in the battle for "political correctness." (As I stand on the issue of politics in language: Creating new words will never remove the fact that there are ill-mannered people in the world. Any new words we create will simply become polluted overtime and new words will have to be invented. It's a never-ending cycle, like an argument with a mountain troll. Take a stand behind something's true meaning, and expect the people around you to be intelligent. That's my opinion.) Anyway, according to the first definition in both the Merriam-Webster and Oxford dictionaries, a "bastard" is any child born to parents who were not married to one another, and that's the only fashion and extent to which I ever use the word. And no, I won't apologize for it; that's what the word means so that is how I will use it. I have no intent to belittle or defame any such children or parents.
That being established, let's move on.
As I've been studying trends in US history over the past few weeks, I've been thinking about three things: 1) how tired I am of hearing that my generation has no understanding of commitment, 2) the continuing increase of bastardy in the country, and 3) the dropping birth rate. Less couples are having kids; and of those couples that are having kids, ever more of them are not married to one another. Here's a few of the resources I've been exploring on that issue:
1- Child Trends Data Bank (July 2013 Report and 2013 Analysis)
2- CDC - National Survey of Family Growth (Published Reports)
3- CDC - National Center for Health Statistics (Data Brief, May 2009)
4- United States Census Bureau (2011 Report)
5- Washington Post (Article by Hope Yen, 07 Jan 2014)
According to Child Trends, the rate of illegitimacy has been increasing between 50-100% every decade since 1960. In 1960, the rate of American births to unwed mothers was 5.3%. By 1970, that number had doubled up to 10.7%. In 1980, it was at 18.4%. In 1990, the year I was born, it was at 28%. At the turn of the millennium, it reached 33.2%. And in 2010 we hit 40.8%. Though the change is truthfully very extreme, to many it comes as no surprise, especially to those who have paid attention to history, both ancient and American.
Two major societal changes have come up with the so-called "Me" Generation (the Baby Boomers), one popularized by the hippies and the other by Veruca Salt-like characters. (Thank you, Mr Dahl.) As the Mes have reproduced, so have these two problems. The first is introduced as "self-realization" or "self-discovery", and the second is a mash up of "something for nothing" and instant gratification. As Robert Downey Jr.'s character Tony Stark said concerning his time as a hostage in Iron Man, "I saw that I had become part of a system that's comfortable with zero-accountability." Tony may have been referring to the weapons industry, but the same thing could be said of our society as a whole. We've been raised to think only of the one, particularly NUMBER one. Everything is about "Me! Me! Me! I want! I want! I want! Now! Now! NOW!" And even though we claim to care about one another, we're more likely to stab someone in the back (figuratively) than we are to hold the door open for them (literally). (Want proof of that? Go observe a major electronics store on Black Friday.) We've been trained up as a society to think firstly of ourselves and what #1 wants or needs.
So, are we surprised that marriage is being thrown to the wind, co-habitation has become "normal", and divorce is commonplace? Not in the slightest bit. Marriage requires more commitment and dedication to another person (and later, people) than any other relationship there is; and in a world of zero-accountability and self-centered focus, commitment to anyone but yourself is absurd. Without a legal attachment, you can just walk away from each other when you get uncomfortable or feel too run-of-the-mill or pinned down. That's why the laws concerning a child's claim to their parents' support have become so complex lately; certain parents think they can just walk away and leave things behind because they have no legal marriage attachment, so the law has had to rein society back in a bit before the whole country goes straight to pieces.
I think the craziest part is the twisted analyses that try to make it look like everything is fine and that nothing has changed. These reports are comical, because everything they use to support their approval stands absolutely against them in the grand scope of history. People say that competition in the business world, collapse of schools, increased crime rates, decreased family commitment, increased divorce, domestic and civil abuse, political involvement, mental and physical health issues, and national stability aren't connected, but if you know the first thing about history you know that they absolutely are. Every major, renown empire or kingdom in the world has passed through the same cycle of descendant generations, collapsed internally, and either dissolved or been conquered. We're no different, and if we don't stop this cycle the USA will come to an end sooner than we like to admit.
Abraham Lincoln's words "A house divided against itself cannot stand" are now legendary; however, while they are quoted left and right in conversations about government, they are often completely shunned in conversations about home and family where they are by far most applicable. Parents that are more focused on their individual successes than their commitment to each other and their kids will raise children that exhibit that behavior to the n-th degree, putting further stress on the parents' relationship. You may think that whether or not you are married is a not big deal, and maybe to you it isn't, but to your kids it will be. I promise it will be. Children develop a good part of their personalities through duplication of parental example. Their brains record and duplicate what they experience and observe most frequently. The environment, particularly the emotional one, in which your children are raised will be imprinted on them forever, and they will replicate it throughout their lives. What's more, children can sight hypocritical behavior in a second, and that second of example will undermine decades of your verbalized instruction on a host of topics. No one trusts a hypocrite, especially not a child. Why? Because a hypocrite is a liar.
I was lucky to be raised in what many today have called an "old-fashioned" family. I had married parents who, though I witnessed them pass through very rough times, showed me by word and deed how dedicated they were to each other. Their marriage and anniversary are sacred to them, and I know that perfectly. They said it often and they live it always. My parents are together on everything they do side-by-side, and they never act until they have come to an agreement about the best way to proceed. And what does all that teach me? It has taught me that relationships are all about commitment. If you're going to start a serious relationship, you put your whole self into it--not just what you're comfortable with giving up. A serious relationship requires a sacrifice from both persons, and sacrifices always require you to be uncomfortable at some point in time, though not permanently. I've learned that if you're not willing to go the distance and give some things up for the other person, you're nothing more than a parasite, leeching away the other person's strength and giving them nothing in return.
I firmly believe that most divorces never need to happen. While divorce can originate from the fact that two people never really loved each other (although I believe this only happens very rarely), divorce never happens because you "fell out of love." Divorce happens because one or both of the spouses killed their love selfishly; they were more willing to sacrifice the other person and their children than their own appetites and desires. I believe this example coupled with the modern age of me-ism is the originator of our explosive marriage decline, co-habitation normality, and the escalation of bastardy.
Whatever way you choose to live your life, in the end the Mes beget the Xs, the Xs beget the Millennials (or Ys), and the Millennials beget the Zs. That's the way it works. As my high school Chemistry teacher once said, "You stand on the shoulders of those who came before you. To a major degree, you are what they showed you to be." Do large parts of my generation loathe or fear commitment? Yes. But it's because the older generation taught them to. And if we don't reverse something soon, it will snowball into a hellish nightmare that will threaten the very survival of the USA and Western culture. That's the fact of it.
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