Do We Really Value Children?

Ross Douthat makes a compelling case in this NYT OpED piece that acceptance or rejection of abortion is the most significant difference in why the liberal regions of the country exhibit a seemingly more stable family life as evidenced by lower divorce rates, fewer teen births, and higher household incomes. Extrapolating from his thesis suggests that both the family stability in liberal areas and the family instability in most red states reflects how little both groups truly value children.

Teen pregnancy rates are about even in all regions, but the abortion rate is much, much higher in the blue states. There a child is deeply valued (think trophy children in upper middle suburbs) as long as they aren't an inconvenience or get in the way of the parents push toward the good life. (If my teen keeps her baby how will she ever do college? If my son has to support a child now with a job he'll be starting on the bottom rungs of the success ladder.) Yet for all the talk of valuing life in the red states, the life of a child still plays second fiddle to the parents desires. Abstinence and setting aside ones own desires for the sake of the future of the children that are the inevitable result of sexual activity isn't inculcated into family values.

The proof of all this. Teen birth rates AND abortion rates are lower in a few sections of the country, both red and blue, where valuing children appears to receive more than lip service. Douthat briefly references Mormon Utah among those places.

Yes, I know I painted a caricature of a very complex issue when it comes to choosing abortion or carrying a child to term. But in some respects the abortion debate is a tangent to a bigger question. Do we really deeply value the life of children in our culture, or do we just hold a more sophisticated version of the agrarian disposable child philosophy that some contend was common in the early centuries of American life? What do you think?