
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 12, 1994                   TAG: 9408030010
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ANOTHER URGENT REMINDER

EFFORTS in Roanoke and elsewhere to devise a campaign against teen pregnancy take on fresh urgency in light of a new study that nails out-of-wedlock births as the single most critical factor in many children's health problems and behavioral and learning difficulties, and in crime.

The study also confirms that illegitimacy breeds illegitimacy, generation after generation. All of which promises only more unhappiness, and spiraling costs to taxpayers, unless effective strategies can be developed to help stem the tide of teen pregnancy.

The study, by Patrick Fagan, a senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation, is sure to have critics. He indicts the current welfare system (yes, some still defend it). His neglect of poverty as a major cause of above-noted social problems is itself illegitimate.

But even comparing single-parent and two-parent households with similar financial circumstances, Fagan concluded that a child raised by a single parent almost inevitably will have more problems, and more serious problems, than a child raised by two parents.

Fagan takes care not to fall into Dan Quayle's "Murphy Brown" trap. His study notes that "many single mothers work wonders and raise their children well despite the obstacles they encounter" - as indeed many do. But, even among those understandably reluctant to moralize against single mothers, few will argue with the report's bottom line: "From the very beginning, children born outside of marriage have life stacked against them."

How stacked? A sampling:

Babies of unmarried teen-agers are more likely to be born prematurely, to die in the neonatal period, and to have low birth weights, which put them at higher risk for serious medical conditions. As children, they have twice as many reported behavioral problems - inability to control anger and sexual urges, for example - as those from two-parent homes. They have lower educational achievement, which diminishes their ability to find jobs as adults.

Children born outside of marriage are three times more likely than others to go on welfare when they grow up. Single mothers' daughters are twice as likely to become single mothers themselves. Boys from single-parent homes are twice as likely to father children out of wedlock as boys from two-parent homes. Finally, as other studies have suggested, illegitimacy is a key contributor to crime in both white and black neighborhoods

"The root cause of these ills is not poverty but in the lack of married parents," Fagan argues.

With nearly one-third of all U.S. children now being born out of wedlock, it's understandable that the Heritage Foundation labels illegitimacy "America's social catastrophe," and faults welfare policies for "subsidizing a national tragedy."

We doubt, though, that welfare reform is the cure-all, or that the complete solution can come from law-makers. We don't know where it ultimately may be found. But considering the rising costs of out-of-wedlock births - economic, physical, spiritual and otherwise - groups such as Roanoke's recently formed task force must search high and low.

by CNB