Young, unwed parents create grim cycle

First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage, right?


Wrong.


This is just one of the rhymes the fourth-graders taught us on the playground I recently realized is, in fact, false.


As I distractedly perused my Facebook friends last week, I noticed a startling trend among my young, unwed friends—babies.


The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2010 unwed mothers gave birth to almost half of American babies.


Don’t get me wrong; babies are cute. I used to be a baby, but I just can’t see any advantages to loud, dependent and expensive creatures.


MTV just finished the first season of “Teen Mom 2,” which is a spin-off of “16 and Pregnant.”


As you can guess, it is a fairly convoluted series documenting several teenage mothers as they literally create life.


Many of the teenagers’ parents have to step in to help raise the babies, and some even take custody all together.


At the end of the show, many of the teen moms said they would have done things differently, implying waiting to have children.


What is it about their 16-year-old brains that make them believe they can or would want to provide for a child?


There aren’t many benefits to being a single parent, other than always having something that is forced to love you.


Only 8 percent of single parents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, and nearly half of single parents in the United States live in poverty, according the U.S. Census Bureau.


A study conducted by the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth stated children of adolescent mothers are significantly more likely to give birth before the age of 18.

Also, daughters of adolescent mothers are more susceptible to economic dependence and less likely to escape poverty.

Florida State University Center for Prevention & Early Intervention found children born to teen mothers are more likely to grow up in a poor, mother-only family, live in poor or underclass neighborhoods and experience high risks to both health status and potential school achievement.

It is a vicious cycle.

Young, unwed parents statistically don’t continue their education, which puts them at a huge disadvantage in the job market.

Their children grow up in underprivileged environments, which is exactly the atmosphere from which many teenage parents come.

So, come on people. Break the cycle. Get a dog if you have to; just wait a while before you start producing the next generation of incorrect fourth-graders.