Undead Sexist Cliche: teenage marriage is a good thing

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was much concern about teen pregnancy. The percentage of babies born to teens was skyrocketing though historian Stephanie Coontz pointed out in one of her books that was largely an illusion. Married women were having fewer babies, ergo unmarried women and teens became a larger share of the total.

At the time everyone agreed this was bad, though not how to fix it. Conservatives wanted a No Sex, Abstinence Only message in sex ed. Liberals (though not all of them) favored comprehensive sex ed and making birth control available. A standard right-wing talking point was that using contraception increased the chance of abortion: if the contraception failed, the girl/woman had already decided not to have a baby! Statistics have proven that’s bullshit: Colorado offered free contraception and slashed the pregnancy and abortion rate. Republicans killed the program. For all their lies that abortion is “the American holocaust,” they’re more horrified by women having premarital sex.

They’ve also argued that teen marriage is a good thing. Missouri State Senator Mike Moon, for instance, thinks 12 year olds marrying is a win: they’ll be happy and if she gets pregnant she won’t need an abortion (only slutty single women in Republican fantasies have abortions). Besides, parental rights to marry their kids!

For decent human beings, this is a lousy idea. 12 or even 15 is way too young to make a life-changing decision like marriage. However it has several upsides for Republican misogynists. Women who get married that young will have less chance to become independent or learn the skills to support themselves. Plus they’ll have year to churn out Aryan babies for the American Reich. The ever-odious Federalist website, for instance, argued that Republican theocrat Roy Moore hitting on teenage girls was sound family planning. If you want a big family, a teenage girl has years of fertility while an older man has the money to support lots of kids. Isn’t that great? Besides, Joseph married Mary when she was under-age.

And for all their clamor about fighting the groomers, a lot of right-wingers are groomers.

Framing teen pregnancy as the alternative to abortion lets them pretend its a good idea. Lauren Boebert argued her son getting a girl pregnant shows the superiority of Republican morals, because they don’t get abortions (a lot of them do, of course). Efforts to raise the age of acceptable teen marriage face Republican opposition in multiple states. It’s no surprise that “a spokesperson for U.S. Health and Human Services confirmed to Stateline on Friday that the agency is canceling 53 out of 67 grants, worth about $68 million, under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, affecting grantees in more than two dozen states.” Teen pregnancy advances their misogynist agenda; if the parents can pressure the girl into a good old shotgun marriage, then it’s an even bigger win. Jessica Valenti breaks down the details, including an anti-masturbatory slant.

As I blogged about last month, conservatives are trying real hard to present the life of a submissive wife and mother as true, liberating femininity. How can feminists think it’s oppression? No, feminists are the oppressor, using their Jedi Mind Tricks to trick women into forgetting how much they loved the tradwife life.

As I put it in an earlier post, “The issue for feminists isn’t that motherhood is inherently a bad choice, it’s that it’s a choice, period. Not destiny. Not their “natural” role, any more than being the breadwinner is “natural” for fathers. It’s not about working in journalism or finance being better than stay-at-home parenting, it’s that we should have the freedom to pick the path that works best for us and our families.”

As Jessica Valenti says, if tradwife is that wonderful a choice, “why not show young women what their life would look like 20 yrs from now?” Where are the endorsements from the older tradwives?

For more on this kind of misogyny, and others, check out my book Undead Sexist Cliches, available in ebook and paperback. Links here. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights are mine.