Politics (run away!)

[sapote]

My mother and I were talking about Governor Palin this morning and I realized something: one of the reasons she gives me the huge heebie-jeebies is that to me, it's no more appropriate to shotgun marry your seventeen-year-old daughter off than it is to forcibly marry off your eleven-year-old daughter. In both cases, it is your minor child, who hasn't finished high school, who hasn't gone to college*, who is largely dependent on you and is now being forced into a "permanent" domestic relationship with a seventeen-year-old boy, who - what? Will get a job at a car parts place? Or something?

Seriously, what would she have done if Bristol was twelve and pregnant? Now, of course, having sex with a twelve-year-old is illegal, and I believe in the inalienable right of seventeen-year-olds to get it on with people who want to get it on with them. But what if Bristol was fourteen? Fifteen? To me the whole thing still smacks unreasonably of child bride.

I said this to my mother, who pointed out that she was the oldest person in her family to get married - at the age of 20 - and that her mother, and her mother's siblings, all married between sixteen and eighteen. To a lot of voters in those demographics, she added, this possibly looks like the good old days.

I realize that 1) Bristol Palin has shown no signs of not wanting to get married, 2) *that my argument here smacks of classism, 3) that if I believe in a teenager's right to decide whether to give birth, and whether to raise a child, then I guess I believe in that teenager's right to form a child-raising unit with whoever she wants. It's just - if my teenage daughter was pregnant, marrying another teenager - on short notice, with no thinking-it-over time - would be so far down my list of ideal options for her that it would be somewhere near "reed basket / river". And Governor Palin's got this huge agenda that's entirely aimed towards making that the only viable options for teenagers who get it on. And. Ew. Ew. Just ew.

*Though you realize there's fairly good evidence that in most of history and most of the world most people just shack up for a while, right? Expecting most people to get married can in its own way be as silly as expecting most people to go to college first. You there! Hike cross-country and find a priest! Now you're stuck with this guy FOREVER! It'll be great!

ETA: If only Governor Palin had used Marryourdaughter.com!

Comments

[sapote3.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this since I posted it, and I think to me the important part is: I think it's a basic good for a women not to marry until they have some kind of competitive education for their area and some measure of financial independence. (I certainly don't think being an unwed teenage mother is better, if you've got no familial support - but if you've got familial support, is it really best to expect those two kids to go keep house / get a job? At this point I am pretty ignorant about what that experience is like, so the question is genuine.)

But anyway, I figured out that the corollary is that I think that this "from your father's household to your husband's" model is a basic bad that stems from some historical expectation that if you've not got a dude to protect you you will be subject to violence and disrespect and have no recourse. And from there my inner Margaret Atwood starts wondering what people who are committed to this model really think the future should look like for people like me.

So basically I've gotten from one family finding a solution to an unexpected event that suits them to OMG HANDMAID'S TALE. I really do hope Bristol Palin is happy and that it works out for their family.

Governor Palin has not been supportive of subsidized daycare or programs that support teen mothers. So. That's straight-forward.