Bill O'Reilly and Charles Krauthammer agree that having babies out of wedlock is "a disaster for society" and should be stigmatized.
Oh, don't ya just love it when a couple of rich, white, conservative guys slut shame women who don't have a ring on it when they give birth. But such was the case on last night's factor when Bill O'Reilly and Charles Krauthammer used a new Pew research study, which shows that less than 46% of American kids live in a "non-traditional" family, to say that unmarried women with children are a real drag on society.
Bill began his "Back of the Book" segment by reporting on the results of the Pew research. In tossing to his guest, Charles Krauthammer, the divorced O'Reilly noted there has been a "dramatic change in the American family." As Krauthammer couldn't come up with a ready explanation he jumped right into the slut shaming with his comment that the "explanation is most obviously what we used to call illegitimacy, single parenthood, which has exploded." He lamented that the rate of out of wedlock births is now at 41% and that children in these household will have a difficult time in all the major areas of life.
When he claimed that this is "an epidemic that is at the root of all social pathologies," O'Reilly, an expert on the sociology of the black family, interjected one of his favorite racist slut shaming talking points; i.e. that 71% of black births are to unmarried women. When Krauthammer noted that this is also happening in the white working class, O'Reilly asked "why is this happening, we do people having babies, when birth control is very, very accessible, abortion, I don't believe in it but obviously it's accessible, why is that happening?" (Hey Bill, thanks to you and your "pro-life" pals, birth control and abortion is getting less and less accessible!)
In what was a truly spit out the coffee moment, Krauthammer provided the slut shaming answer - "lack of stigma attached to it." He said that for the individual, who deserves our sympathy, "it's a good thing there is no stigma" - BUT - "collectively, for society, when the rate hits 41%, it's a disaster for society, just like - ready for it - food stamps which are good for the individual but bad for society. He kept with the stigmatization theme in opining that it's "hard to figure out" whether we should have more stigma but "certainly, the removal of the stigma, the normalization of illegitimacy has been a catastrophe for society and we're going to suffer the consequences." O'Reilly: "We are, we are now."
The study does not appear to differentiate between those households headed by divorced women and those who never marry. But that wasn't a concern for these two right wing scolds who wanted to make it all about single women who are causing the demise of America. What neither of these jokers seem to know is that single parenthood does not necessarily mean absent fathers. As Amanda Marcotte points out, in an excellent article on this topic, "Single mothers are just a media bogeyman to be dragged out and blamed for all manner of social ills—which serves to distract from our actual social problems. Indeed, a sober-minded appraisal of the realities of single motherhood suggests not that rising rates of single motherhood are the cause of certain social ills but in fact the result—often of the very problems the commentators are trying to distract their audiences from wondering about."
But yeah, let's shame unmarried women who, in accordance with the right wing gospel, don't have an abortion. And at the same time, let's keep wages low while abolishing programs which help both single and two parent households. Lack of affordable child care pales in comparison to the problem of "illegitimacy" (Hey, Chuck, the 50's called, they want their language back!) But O'Reilly and Krauthammer do need their distractions - or, in this case, scapegoats!