Understanding the Motivation of the Right Wing Fundamentalists

There is a DIFFERENCE between the outcomes of the children of teen mothers IN GENERAL, as compared to the children of older mothers.

Children of teen mothers are:
More likely to be abused
More likely to be taken away and put into foster care

More likely to be premature and low birth weight
Less intellectual development
More likely to stay back in school
Viewed less favorably by teachers
More likely to drop out of school
Boys more likely to go to jail
Girls more likely to be teen mothers
More likely to be raised in single mother families and to live in poverty

There is a DIFFERENCE between the outcomes of the children of teen mothers IN GENERAL, as compared to the children of older mothers.

The children of adolescents are more likely to be born prematurely and 50% more likely to be low-birth weight babies (less than five and a half pounds) when compared to the children of mothers whose age was 20 or 21 when they had their first child.

[I]nfants of adolescent mothers, data suggests that this special class of children, when compared to children born to adult mothers, is at greater risk for a variety of developmental problems.

As they grow, the children of adolescent mothers tend to suffer poorer health than do the children of women who were age 20 or 21 when their first child was born.  

The children born to the youngest teen mothers are at greater risk of being an “indicated case”*** of child abuse or neglect (and being placed in foster care) than are those born to older mothers.  Children born to mothers age 15 and younger are two times more likely to become an indicated case of child abuse/neglect in the first five years of their lives than are the children born to mothers ages 20-21.
***The result of the investigation will be that a report is either indicated (if ACS decides there is some believable evidence of child abuse or neglect) or unfounded (if ACS decides there is no believable evidence). If a case is indicated, that goes in your record at the SCR even if ACS decides not to remove your children or take the case to court. Indicated records are available to many employers and to foster care and adoption agencies so it is important that you be aware of any SCR records about you and that you decide whether you want to try to amend (change) or seal (prevent the release) of those records. “Often ACS tells a person who is being investigated that the case is being closed and it is not clear that even though the case is closed, the person is going to have a record in the SCR. It is important for you to take steps to find out if you have a record, so that you can challenge the record if you want to do so.”
http://www.fpafoundation.org/resources.html

Quote:

The children of adolescent mothers are at higher risk for aggressive behavior.

The negative effects on the cognitive development of children born to adolescent mothers are evident.  A study of children ages four to 14 showed that those born to the youngest teen mothers performed more poorly on tests of cognitive ability, were more likely to be retained a grade, and were less likely to be perceived by their teachers as performing favorably by the time they reached high school.

Children of adolescent mothers are more likely to drop out of high school when compared to the children of mothers age 20-21.
[T]he sons of young teen mothers are nearly three times more likely to be incarcerated than those born to adult mothers.

When compared to women born to mothers aged 20-21, the daughters of adolescent mothers are significantly more likely to give birth themselves before the age of 18. In addition, daughters of adolescent mothers are more susceptible than their mothers to economic dependence and less likely to escape poverty.

Children born to teen mothers often do not have an even start in life.  They are more likely to grow up in a poor and mother-only family, to live in a poor or underclass neighborhood, and to experience high risks to both their health status and potential school achievement.
http://www.cpeip.fsu.edu/resourceFiles/resourceFile_78.pdf

Why It Is Better To Be An Ex-Wife Than An Ex-Girlfriend

ex wives vs. ex-girlfriends

Never-married mothers not only go on welfare in greater numbers than divorced women, but they also stay on longer. While divorced women typically use welfare as a temporary measure until they get back on their feet, unmarried mothers become trapped in long-term welfare dependency.

77 percent of divorced mothers received child support awards, compared to only 20 percent of never- married mothers.
http://www.welfareacademy.org/pubs/welfare/testimony-0395.shtml


Children living with a divorced parent typically
have a big edge over those living with a parent who
has never married an even bigger edge if that parent is the father.


Never married parents are significantly younger
than divorced parents and on average tend to have
fewer years of school completed and lower levels
of income. Nonetheless, although age does have
an effect, the differences remain.

DIVORCED PARENTS ARE
MORE EDUCATED

CHILDREN OF DIVORCED
PARENTS ARE LESS LIKELY TO LIVE
IN RENTAL HOMES...

AND LESS LIKELY TO BE POOR

Employment was an important reason. While many single par
ents had jobs, there were 7.4 million children living with single
moms who were unemployed or not in the labor force.
Children of never married mothers were twice as likely (59
percent) to have their moms unemployed or not in the labor
force as children whose mothers were divorced (29 percent).


http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:-1Tu_0s5pz0J:www.census.gov/prod/3/97pubs/cb-9701.pdf+divorced+vs.+never+married+mothers&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShDf4R4roGXERKqZFH4tfMspAyThdzVFNH7gVa1BEa2UFFfgcv6AxhIiVPpEjLX5UKwut4uTFPRAs8_bFhXs9ua2Zp2SJ_dwjxrLxxPs4nI992IPCnHoj7YXbScQGxYqAAA3hXi&sig=AHIEtbQ4-NoxhTgMBWFg3gYAouAZfICy1g


Despite attempts to equate married couples with people who are living together as "domestic partners," married couples are in fact better off than people who are not married, by almost any standard you can think of. Married couples have higher incomes, longer lives, better health, less violence, less alcohol and less poverty.

Women who are shacking up are four times as likely as wives to become victims of violence, and their children are 40 times as likely to be abused by live-in boyfriends as by their own parents.

http://www.adherents.com/misc/marriage.html


At any given time, roughly 50% of women are married, 7% are cohabitating

http://www.psychpage.com/family/mod_couples_thx/cdc.html


 

Married women are less likely to experience poverty. Marital status is strongly and significantly correlated with the likelihood of being impoverished. Compared to never-married peers, women who had ever been married were substantially less likely to be poor—regardless of race, family background, non-marital births, or education. Ever-married women have a poverty rate that was roughly one-third lower than the poverty rate of never-married women. Currently married women had an even lower probability of living in poverty—about two-thirds lower than other women.

    •    Lichter, Daniel T.
    •    2003
   
    •    Unmarried first-time mothers face a greater risk of poverty and welfare dependence. Women who had their first birth out of wedlock were more likely to live below the poverty line (30.1 percent vs. 8.4 percent); more likely to be living below 180 percent of the poverty line (52.3 percent vs. 20 percent); more likely to be receiving food stamps at the time of the survey (35.7 percent vs. 7.8 percent) than women who had their first birth within marriage. The relationships between out-of-wedlock first birth and the three measures of poverty were all statistically significant and held for all racial groups; although, the percentages varied for the different racial groups.
    •   
    •    Lichter, Daniel T.
    •    2003
   

http://www.familyfacts.org/topten/topten_0701.cfm

The 3.8 million families maintained by a never-married mother in 1998 represent a major concern because only about one-third of the children in these families have had their paternity established; for the other two-thirds, a child support obligation cannot be established until a paternity determination is made.

http://www.policyalmanac.org/social_welfare/archive/child_support_01.shtml

MARRIAGE	COHABITATION (Living Together)
Marriage requirements -- which vary from state to state -- include a license, a waiting period, blood tests, minimum ages, a ceremony officiated by a clergyperson or an officer of the court, and witnesses.	Cohabitation can be entered into any time, by anybody of any age and any gender, with no formal requirements.
Marriage must be ended by a formal, legal divorce or annulment process that can be costly, time consuming, complicated, and emotionally draining.	Usually can be ended simply and informally upon the agreement of the parties. Often, however, the emotional costs are the same as or similar to those experienced at the end of a marriage.
Divorcing spouses have the obligation to divide their property by legally prescribed methods.	At the end of a cohabitation relationship, the parties can usually divide property however they wish. However, the absence of legal guidelines may create even more conflict as to who gets what.
A higher-wage-earning spouse may have the obligation to provide financial support for the other spouse upon separation or divorce.	Couples who live together and then split up usually do not incur the obligation to support each other after the break-up, unless they have entered into a contract providing otherwise.  While this may seem a boon to the supporting partner, a partner who has become accustomed to being supported may face unexpected financial hardship after the split.
If one spouse becomes ill or incompetent, the other spouse generally has the right to make decisions on the ill spouse's behalf, on issues including health care and finances.	No matter how close the bond or how long the relationship has existed, a cohabitant may need to defer to immediate family members when it comes to making decisions for an ill or incompetent unmarried partner, unless a general power of attorney or health care power of attorney give that authority to the cohabitating partner.
When one spouse dies, the other spouse has the legal right to inherit a portion of the deceased spouse's estate.	When one cohabitant dies, his or her property will pass to whomever is named in the will or, if there is no will, to family members according to state laws. The surviving partner has no claim to the estate unless he or she was named in the deceased partner's will.
Children born during the marriage are presumed to be the offspring of the husband and wife.	The father of a child born to unmarried cohabitants is not entitled to a legal presumption of paternity, and may have to establish his paternity through blood tests and a legal action.
Children born to married couples must be financially supported during the marriage.	The male in a cohabitating partnership does not incur an immediate legal obligation to support children born during the cohabitation, but may do so voluntarily (and MUST do so if paternity is established).
After separation or divorce, the non-custodial parent generally is legally obligated to help financially support the children of the marriage.	After a cohabitating relationship ends, the non-custodial parent has the same legal obligation to support his or her children as legally separated or divorced parents, if parentage has been established.

---

http://family.findlaw.com/marriage/living-together/cohabitation-comparison.html

KINSHIP The Point of Marriage and Kinship Ties Why Create Kinship Bonds?

A group of people can sign a contract for the purpose of setting up a new business, but they don’t thereby become kin or family. Two people can sign a contract assigning one the legal authority to make medical decisions for the other, but they don’t thereby become kin or family. Two people can sign a contract to jointly share property, but they don’t thereby become kin or a family.
When two people marry, however, they do become kin — they are now related to each other. Furthermore, they also establish kinship ties with one another’s families — and in some cultures, establishing kinship ties between the two families has been regarded as the purpose of marriage, not establishing kinship ties between the two people actually getting married.
All of this is makes marriage fairly unique among all other sorts of contracts that can exist in society — only adoption is at all similar. In fact, this is the one characteristic of marriage which seems to be common to all forms of marriage in all cultures and societies through time. The only natural kinship ties are biological, and the only obvious biological kinship which exists is that between a mother and her children. All other kinship ties are established through culture — even fatherhood, which is often as much a matter of social convention as it is assumed biological paternity.
Kinship and familial relationships create the smallest social units of any society. The importance of kinship as a means for structuring relationships and behavior is evinced in the way societies have had so many systems (formal and informal) for establishing pseudo-kinship between people who have no biological relationship and for whom there are no means for creating traditional kinship ties. Common examples of this are the informal ways people refer to one another as “uncle” or “son” regardless of actual familial ties, the prevalence of “blood brotherhood” ceremonies in various groups, and ritual kinship bonds created by different social groups.
Kinship is an important thread in the social fabric. It isn’t an “institution” like marriage because there are generally no specific legal, religious, or social rules regulating it. Kinship is, instead, an amorphous creation of many other institutions which help people structure their relationships with one another.
If you know that someone is your kin, you know that you have different legal, social, and moral obligations to them than you do to total strangers. If you know that two people are kin, you know that they not only have different obligations to each other than they do to you, but also that you have different obligations to them as a group then you would to them as individuals if they weren’t kin.
Marriage establishes a relationship which does not and cannot exist for people who are simply living together. However much a cohabiting couple may love each other and however long they may have been together, their relationship is not such that it can be described as “kin” and, as a consequence, they cannot make any legal, social, or moral claims on others to treat them individually and jointly as if they were kin.
There are many situations where kinship creates bonds and obligations not otherwise available to people. Commonly cited is the example of a person who has been in a serious accident and who needs someone to make major medical decisions for them — perhaps even the decision to take them off life support. Whom do the doctors wish to speak to? The next of kin. If married, the “next of kin” is always the spouse, and if that person is not available, the doctors move through children, parents, and siblings.
Gay activists often use a situation like this to point out the injustice done to gay couples who cannot marry, but I wanted to bring it up in order to ask you to take a fresh look at it. Why is the “next of kin” the spouse? After all, doesn’t a person have a stronger biological relationship with parents or children? Yes, but a stronger biological relationship isn’t the same as a stronger kinship relationship.
The relationship with a spouse is often treated as more important because it is a chosen relationship. You can’t choose your parents or children, but you can choose your spouse — the person you wish to spend your life with, share all levels of intimacy with, and establish a family with.
Heterosexual couples have the option to establish kinship with one another by marrying. Homosexual couples, whose love and intimacy cannot be judged as any less valuable or significant than those of straight people, do not have this option: they cannot form a kinship bond with one another. Because of this, their relationships are at a social disadvantage. There is, after all, much more to being “kin” than the legal benefits like what I describe above.
To begin with, there exist important moral obligations kin owe one another. These obligations may be enforced legally, as in some cases with marriage, but very often they are informal and unspoken yet nevertheless supported by one’s social milieu. Kin are expected to, wherever possible, financially and emotionally support one another when a crisis hits. A man who lets his mother become homeless will be ostracized by those around him, while siblings are expected to support one another when there is a death in the family.
The flip side of this are the obligations which the rest of the community owes to those who are tied together through kinship bonds. People who are kin are not supposed to be treated as if they were complete strangers to one another. If you invite a married man to a party, it is expected that the invitation is also extended to his wife — to deliberately exclude her would be a serious insult which would not exist if you invited one roommate but not the other. When a woman’s son achieves some success, you congratulate her as well — you wouldn’t act as though she had no significant connection to him.
is there any social and moral significance to the marriage certificate which goes above and beyond merely living together and which gay couples are justified in desiring for themselves? Absolutely — just like there is social and moral significance to marriage which straight couples are justified in desiring for themselves.
There should be no puzzlement over a gay couple, whose love and relationship may be every bit as deep and enduring as a those of a straight couple, would want to become recognized as kin, thus creating a new relationship and new ties not otherwise available. There is also no surprise that many gay couples have chosen to have one “adopt” the other, which is the only way such a bond is even remotely available to them outside of marriage.
Yes, gays are asking the body-politic to recognize their relationships as being kinship bonds — and there is no good reason why they shouldn’t be so recognized. There is nothing about the relationships of straight couples which makes them any more “worthy” of legal, social, and moral obligations we traditionally structure as “marriage.”
But what about Chris’ final question, “why am I being forced to acknowledge gay relationship as marriage?” As a private citizen, he would be under no such obligation — at least not legally. He would be under no more obligation to acknowledge the marriage to two men or two women then he would be to acknowledge any other marriage — the marriage of a Catholic and a Jew, the marriage of a white woman and a black man, the marriage of an 60-year-old and an 18-year-old, or my own marriage for that matter.
There will be social pressures to acknowledge gay unions as marriages, however, just as there are social pressures to acknowledge the other listed relationships as marriages. When a person acts as though a spouse is little more than a random stranger, that will normally be perceived as an insult — and with good reason. But if Chris Burgwald or anyone else chooses to act in such a fashion, they will be as free to do so with gay marriages as they are to do so with other marriages today.

In summary, what’s the point of gay marriage? The point of gay marriage is the point of all marriage. Marriage is different from other contractual relationships because it creates bonds of kinship. These bonds are in turn different and more important than other bonds: they create significant moral, social, and legal obligations both for those who are married and between those who are married and everyone else. Some individuals may not choose to acknowledge those obligations, but they exist and they constitute the basis of human society — a society which includes both heterosexual and homosexual human beings.

http://atheism.about.com/od/gaymarriage/a/whymarriage_2.htm

The Marriage Gap: Women with lower educational and income levels are much more likely to have children out of wedlock

 

RECENT FERTILITY statistics show something that has been widely noted for years: Women with lower educational and income levels are much more likely to have children out of wedlock and to enter into a life of single motherhood. They are also much more likely to get divorced. Fifty years ago, college-educated women were slightly less likely to be married than their less educated counterparts, and the majority of women at all education levels exhibited the maturity to enter into and maintain marriages early in adulthood. The difference today in marriage rates among the classes is often known as the “Marriage Gap,” a subject which author Kay Hymowitz and others have explored.

According to the American Community Survey of 2008, 47 percent of women with only a high school diploma who gave birth in 2008 were unmarried. By contrast, just under ten percent of the college-educated who gave birth were not married, and six percent of those with a graduate or professional degree. These differences are striking. The lower the income and education level, the dramatically higher the rate of single motherhood.
http://www.thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2010/04/the-marriage-gap/

Real Women and Men Speak about Living Together Unmarried (Cohabiting)

On Security:

Brian: The best relationships probably are made by people who don't really need them, just want them.
Brian's Cohabiting Partner Lauren: If you ever need me, we're going to be in trouble.

Pauline: You don't know how long it will last for, even if you do your best to please him. You can't be sure whether there will be a tomorrow with your partner in the first place... But you have to accept things as they are, I suppose ... it affects you in many ways. You cannot plan for the future, you cannot think of buying a car together or a house, to have a child, or even to love him fully, if you know that tomorrow he may not be there.

Wendy: I was wrong and I know it. All that stuff about freedom and independence are empty words... it did offer convenience and freedom all right, but only for Jim. De facto relations as an arrangement works for the males and not for us ... After six months I could realise how this relationship was putting me deeper into insecurity and exploitation. I was investing my time and effort looking after him, I was neglecting my career, and had nothing in return, except that I could leave him at any time, which for me was far from a privilege... This is not a reward for our contribution to our families but an easy escape for males...Living in this arrangement offers a lot of freedom to one partner to exploit the other. 24

Or in the words of another woman: It can go on indefinitely. A lot of people will say we'll see how it goes and one year turns into five years and you see people with five kids and there's still not commitment. 25

On Money:

Adrienne: We always make everything incredibly equal. But he makes about twice as much money as I do.


Stewart: I am not going to spend money that I earned for something Adrienne wants unless I want it too.

Jane: Morton was not particularly thrilled when I took the bonus and traded in the Volvo for the Alfa. Well, too bad. I let him alone and I expect him to let me alone.


Morton: I would not always make the same decisions she does. I would save and invest more. But it's her money and I don't dare interfere. 26

On Children:

He said: It was her who fell pregnant . . . I thought she'd caught me, you know what I mean, so I was just against her having any more-just add more [responsibility] onto me. [The second child] wasn't agreed neither. She fell pregnant and she was born.. . .

She said: He was quite reluctant, he did not want children, he was very clear about that, he didn't want any children. So we both sort of really tried in a very difficult situation, but it wasn't going to work. It was never going to work.

Another cohabiting mother said: He carried on as he would have done, and regardless of whether the children were there or not. He was the third child. 27

http://www.civitas.org.uk/hwu/cohabitation.php

Social Security and Unwed Mothers

What every stay-at-home mom should know about Social Security and Medicare

An unmarried stay–at–home parent who has children with a partner has no protection. If she has her own work history, she may have access to a benefit of her own. But if she were a teenage or young mother and continues to have a minimal employment history, she’s at risk of becoming a very poor old lady.

Here’s the rub: A person’s Social Security benefit—which is the value of the monthly check she will receive in old age—is based on having a total of 35 years of paid employment. For each year worked, a certain number of “credits” are provided. You need to have 40 credits to be eligible for your own Social Security retirement and Medicare health insurance benefits. (At the current four credit maximum per year, that requires at least 10 years of employment.)

THE 50 PERCENT SOLUTION For MARRIED women:

In lieu of recognizing that stay–at–home parenting is work, the government allows a married woman to collect off of her spouse’s work history instead, if receiving 50 percent of his benefit amount calculates to being more than 100 percent of hers. (And this scenario is also true in the other direction, with the husband collecting based on his wife’s earnings.) So if a woman and her spouse make it to retirement together and an anniversary of more than a decade of marriage, she can collect either her benefit or an amount that’s half of his. For example: If John gets $5,000 a month, Jane gets $2,500, so as a couple living together they bring in $7,500 monthly.

A divorced woman can collect spousal benefits, so long as the marriage lasted 10 years. In such a scenario, a divorced Jane who had 10-plus years vested in a marriage can still claim the 50 percent spousal benefit, but since she’s no longer in the same household as John, unless she remarries, the Social Security income coming into her home is just $2,500 instead of the $7,500 she would have had access to had the marriage not dissolved.

For more information about your Social Security eligibility and benefits, visit the Social Security Administration website at www.ssa.gov or www.ssa.gov/women.
http://www.reallifesupportformomsblog.com/2009/05/social-security-stay-at-home-moms.html



Social Security Reform
As Ann Crittenden, author of The Price of Motherhood, warns, “Many are skeptical now that Social Security will exist when they retire. On this they are wrong -- it is, and will remain the single greatest source of income for older American women.” It is more likely, however, that there will be major Social Security reform during your lifetime.
http://www.mothersmovement.org/features/soc_security.htm

Unwed relationships Are Inferior to Marriage In General

Unwed relationships Are Inferior to Marriage In General

Percentage of Births to Unmarried Women
An increasing proportion of unmarried births occur to cohabiting parents.8 Although children born to cohabiting parents are more likely to see their parents eventually marry than are those born to non-coresidential parents9, nevertheless children born to cohabiting parents experience higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage and fare worse across a range of behavioral and emotional outcomes than those born to married parents.10
National Goals
Reducing the number of out-of-wedlock births was one of the goals of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PROWRA).  Although
specific targets were not set, annual bonuses were awarded to states that reduced
the percentage of births to unmarried women by the largest amount (without increasing abortions).

More information is available here, under Title IX: Miscellaneous.
8Kennedy, S. & Bumpass, L. (2008). Cohabitation and children's living arrangements: New estimates from the United States. Demographic Research, 19(47), 1663-1692.
  9Carlson, M., McLanahan, S., & England, P. (2004). Union formation in fragile families. Demography, 41(2), 237-261.
  10Brown, S. (2004). Family structure and child well-being: The significance of parental cohabitation. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 66, 351-367.

http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/?q=node/196
The relative stability of cohabiting and marital unions for children
Wendy D. Manning1, Pamela J. Smock2 and Debarun Majumdar3

[W]hite, black and Hispanic children born to cohabiting parents experience greater levels of instability than children born to married parents.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u347mq424j8378l2/

Cohabitation Versus Marriage - Is Lack of Marriage Undermining the Family Structure?
Results also indicate that children of cohabitation are more likely to do poorly in school and have an increased likelihood of suffering from emotional problems. This is partially attributed to lack of stability in the relationships.

Unmarried couples with children are also more likely to break up. In some cases of cohabitation where children are involved one partner is willing to become a sort of stepparent to his or her partner's child or children while the other partner is not as willing to do likewise. Such an attitude on the part of the unwilling partner causes friction in the relationship and is one major source of dissolution. One or both partners often enter into cohabitation with children. When the relationship dissolves they soon move on to a new relationship, possibly with more or less children and a new proxy stepparent. Such behavior can be very confusing for a young child. Children receive nothing but mixed messages from unions such as these. When parents are dealing with a partner that is unwilling to accept their children as part of the package they need to reexamine the relationship. Their child or children should be the main concern and priority over the partner.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/261741/cohabitation_versus_marriage_is_lack_pg2.html?cat=41


 
THE FACTS BEHIND COHABITATION

Stability
Cohabiting relationships are fragile. They are always more likely to break up than marriages entered into at the same time, regardless of age or income. On average, cohabitations last less than two years before breaking up or converting to marriage. Less than four per cent of cohabitations last for ten years or more. 2 Cohabiting also influences later marriages. The more often and the longer that men and women cohabit, the more likely they are to divorce later. 3
Cheating
Both men and women in cohabiting relationships are more likely to be unfaithful to their partners than married people. 4
What happens to children born to cohabiting parents?
Some people believe that if a cohabiting couple have children together, then they must be committed and stable. However, cohabitations with children are even more likely to break up than childless ones. 11 About 15 percent of one-parent families are created through the break-up of cohabiting unions. One study found that less than ten per cent of women who have their first child in a cohabiting relationship are still cohabiting ten years later. About 40 per cent will have married, but 50 percent will be lone unmarried mothers because their relationships have broken up. 12
Today, more than 20% of children are born to cohabiting couples. However, only about one third of those children will remain with both their parents throughout their childhood. That is partly because cohabiting couples who have children are even more likely to break up than childless couples, and partly because cohabiting couples who subsequently marry are more likely to divorce, and to divorce earlier. 13
All this means that children born to cohabiting parents are more likely to experience a series of disruptions in their family life, which can have negative consequences for their emotional and educational development. Children living with cohabiting couples do less well at school and are more likely to suffer from emotional problems than children of married couples. 14
Financially, children of cohabitants are less well off than children whose parents are married. Married fathers are more likely than cohabiting fathers to support their children. Even after the break-up of their parents' relationship, children of divorced parents are more likely than children of cohabiting couples who have split up to receive support from their fathers. 15
Unmarried fathers, even those cohabiting with their children's mother, do not automatically have the same parental rights as married or divorced fathers. If their parents break up, children born to cohabiting couples are less likely than children of divorced parents to maintain contact with their fathers. 16

Waite, L. and Gallagher, M., The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, New York: Doubleday, 2000, p. 46. Return to text
4 Wellings, K., Field, J., Johnson, and A., Wadsworth, J., Sexual Behaviour in Britain: The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, London: Penguin Books, , p. 116; Steinhaiser, J., 'No marriage, no apologies', New York Times, 6
11 Ermisch and Francesconi, Cohabitation in Great Britain: Not for Long, but Here to Stay
12 Ermisch, Pre-marital Cohabitation, Childbearing and the Creation of One Parent Families
13 Ermisch, Pre-marital Cohabitation, Childbearing and the Creation of One Parent Families
14 Sarantakos, S., 'Children in three contexts: family, education and social development', Children Australia, Vol. 21, No. 3, Meltzer, H. et al., Mental Health of Children and Adolescents in Great Britain, Office for National Statistics, London: The Stationery Office,.
15 McClean, M. and Eekelaar, J., The Parental Obligation, Oxford: Hart Publishing,  Seltzer, J.A., 'Relationships between fathers and children who live apart: The father's role after separation', Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 53,  pp. 79-101; Beller, A.H. and Graham, J.W., 'Child support awards: Differentials and trends by race and marital status', Demography, Vol. 23, pp. 231-45.
16 Burghes, L., Clarke, L, and Cronin, N., Fathers and Fatherhood in Britain, London: Family Policy Studies Centre

http://www.civitas.org.uk/hwu/cohabitation.php

Why Illegitimacy is a Social Problem

Why Illegitimacy is a Social Problem

Understanding Illegitimacy

1.72 million out-of-wedlock births amount to an overwhelming catastrophe for taxpayers and society.

The steady growth of childbearing by single women and the general collapse of marriage, especially among the poor, lie at the heart of the mushrooming welfare state. This year, taxpayers will spend over $300 billion providing means-tested welfare aid to single parents. The average single mother receives nearly three dollars in government benefits for each dollar she pays in taxes. These subsidies are funded largely by the heavy taxes paid by higher-income married couples.

America is rapidly becoming a two-caste society, with marriage and education at the dividing line. Children born to married couples with a college education are mostly in the top half of the population; children born to single mothers with high-school degrees or less are mostly in the bottom half.

The disappearance of marriage in low-income communities is the predominant cause of child poverty in the U.S. today. If poor single mothers were married to the fathers of their children, two-thirds of them would not be poor. The absence of a husband and father from the home also is a strong contributing factor to failure in school, crime, drug abuse, emotional disturbance, and a host of other social problems.

Single mothers are inherently in far greater need of government support than married couples, so an increase in single parenthood leads almost inevitably to an increase in government benefits and services and a thriving welfare industry to supply them.

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/04/12/understanding-illegitimacy/

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Broken Homes, Broken Hearts

Karl Zinsmeister of the American Enterprise Institute has said, "There is a mountain of scientific evidence showing that when families disintegrate, children often end up with intellectual, physical and emotional scars that persist for life." He continues, "We talk about the drug crisis, the education crisis, and the problem of teen pregnancy and juvenile crime. But all these ills trace back predominantly to one source: broken families."

Broken homes and broken hearts are not only the reason for so many social problems. They are also the reason for the incumbent economic difficulties we face as a culture. The moral foundation of society erodes as children learn the savage values of the street rather than the civilized values of culture. And government inevitably expands to intervene in family and social crises brought about by the breakdown of the family.

Social commentator Charles Murray believes that "illegitimacy is the single most important social problem of our time--more important than crime, drugs, poverty, illiteracy, welfare or homelessness because it drives everything else." The public costs of illegitimacy are very high. "Children born out of wedlock tend to have high infant mortality, low birth weight (with attendant morbidities), and high probabilities of being poor, not completing school, and staying on welfare themselves. As a matter of public policy, if not of morality, it pays for society to approve of marriage as the best setting for children, and to discourage having children out of wedlock."

In her famous article in Atlantic Monthly entitled "Dan Quayle Was Right," Barbara Dafoe Whitehead warned Americans of the cost of ignoring the breakdown of the family:

    If we fail to come to terms with the relationship between family structure and declining child well-being, then it will be increasingly difficult to improve children's life prospects, no matter how many new programs the federal government funds. Nor will we be able to make progress in bettering school performance or reducing crime or improving the quality of the nation's future work force--all domestic problems closely connected to family breakup. Worse, we may contribute to the problem by pursuing policies that actually increase family instability and breakup.

[T]he evidence from social-science research is coming in: The dissolution of two-parent families, though it may benefit the adults involved, is harmful to many children, and dramatically undermines our society."

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/broken.html
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The Real Welfare Problem Is Illegitimacy
Heather Mac Donald

Illegitimacy is the greatest cause of long-term poverty in this country; unless it comes down, the poverty rate won't, either. While some welfare mothers will thrive under the new welfare-to-work regime and will succeed in creating a stable home for their children, the majority will drift in and out of low-paid work for the rest of their lives, futilely seeking the grail of a permanent, "living-wage" job.

But the most pressing goal for welfare reform is ensuring the welfare of the children. While having an illegitimate child often dooms the mother to a life of poverty, illegitimacy may doom her child to far worse. Prisons, foster-care homes, and homeless shelters teem with fatherless children.

An unwed teen's baby is three times more likely to fail at school, three times more likely to commit suicide, and from 20 to 33 times more likely to suffer child abuse than are the children of low-income married parents. His prospects in later life are just as grim: 70 percent of long-term prisoners, 60 percent of rapists, and 75 percent of adolescents charged with murder grew up without fathers. The risks to children living outside a two-parent home go beyond social failure, as witness New York City's never-ending cortege of tiny coffins containing children beaten, suffocated, and scalded by their mothers' boyfriends.

No urban reform could have a greater effect, if successful, than attacking the culture of single parenthood.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_1_a1.html
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Single Mothers And The Illegitimacy They Bring

America Keeps Encouraging The Biggest Social Problem To Get Bigger
By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin
Wednesday, April 08, 2009

The eminent social scientist Charles Murray says, “Illegitimacy is the single most important social problem of our time — more important than crime, drugs, poverty, illiteracy, welfare or homelessness because it drives everything else.”

“Seventy-two percent of juvenile murderers and 60 percent of rapists come from single-mother homes. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents, and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers. Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous and more likely to end up divorced. A 1990 study by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that after controlling for single motherhood, the difference between black and white crime rates disappeared.”

A British journalist Martin Newland in Maclean’s magazine wrote, “Increasingly, but belatedly, politicians are beginning to identify the decline of marriage and the family as the major cause of … social dysfunctions including ill health, crime, rampant promiscuity and welfare dependency.”

A 2008 study led by Georgia State University economist Benjamin Scafidi found that single mothers — unwed or divorced — cost the U.S. taxpayer $112 billion every year. That estimate doesn’t include the huge expenditure of law enforcement resources in dealing with the behavior flowing from single motherhood.


http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/04/08/herb_denenberg/doc49dc278e8e4ff020049158.txt
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$112-billion: What Divorce and Illegitimacy Costs the Taxpayer
Sunday, June 29, 2008
By David R. Usher

The Institute for American Values (IAV) has issued a major report titled “The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing“, conservatively estimating the cost to taxpayers at $112 billion.

This is a very conservative estimate because it either understates or does not include federal expenditures driving decisions to not marry or to have children for profit. Programs that stimulate marriage-absence include Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), and programs that are widely abused to abort marriage such as the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA).

It is estimated that three-quarters of our massive national health care insurance problem would go away if mothers simply married the fathers of their children.


http://mensnewsdaily.com/2008/06/29/112-billion-what-divorce-and-illegitimacy-costs-the-taxpayer/
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Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem.

Evidence abounds that fatherlessness correlates very highly with poverty, criminal behavior, and myriad other social dysfunctions.

Fatherlessness is...the leading cause of declining child well-being in our society. It is also the engine driving our most urgent social problems, from crime to adolescent pregnancy to child sexual abuse and to domestic violence against women."

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Fatherless+America:+Confronting+Our+Most+Urgent+Social+Problem.-a017380722
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Research Findings That Show Cohabiting couples break up at MUCH higher rates than married people.

Marriage doesn't guarantee anything, however, it is, in general, the most stable form of relationship.

Children of married parents in general have better outcomes in many important areas than children of unmarried parents. If a couple stays together in a life long commitment without being married, then their children will probably have the same likelihood of good outcomes as children of married parents.  The problem with that is, couples merely living together have a much higher risk of breaking up than married parents.  The subsequently single, unwed mother faces, in many cases, poverty and her children face fatherlessness.  


Cohabiting couples break up at MUCH higher rates than married people.
Cohabiting parents break up at much higher rates than married parents.6
6  McManus, 2008, p. 41.
Do not cohabit if children are involved.  Children need and should have parents who are committed to staying together over the long term.  Cohabiting parents break up at a much higher rate than married parents and the effects of breakup can be devastating and often long lasting.   Moreover, children living in cohabiting unions are at higher risk of sexual abuse and physical violence, including lethal violence, than are children living with married parents.
One of the greatest problems for children living with a cohabiting couple is the high risk that the couple will break up.25
Fully three quarters of children born to cohabiting parents will see their parents split up before they reach age sixteen, whereas only about a third of children born to married parents face a similar fate
 Parental break up, as is now widely known, almost always entails a myriad of personal and social difficulties for children, some of which can be long lasting.  For the children of a cohabiting couple these may come on top of a plethora of already existing problems.  One study found that children currently living with a mother and her unmarried partner had significantly more behavior problems and lower academic performance than children from intact families.27
25.  Zheng Wu, "The Stability of Cohabitation Relationships: The
Role of Children."Journal of Marriage and the Family 57:231-236.
27.  Elizabeth Thompson, T. L. Hanson and S. S. McLanahan.. "Family
Structure and Child Well-Being: Economic Resources versus Parental
Behaviors." Social Forces 73-1:221-242.
cohabiting couples break up at a rate five times higher than for married couples
Poponoe.
http://www.zenit.org/rssenglish-23056

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The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies reports that by the age of 30, 81 percent of White women and 77 percent of Hispanics and Asians will marry, but that only 52 percent of Black women will marry by that age.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_1_59/ai_110361377/
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Cohabitation
It is believed that married couples make an attempt to compromise and accommodate to each other’s life because the marriage is supposed to last for life.  It is believed that cohabiting couples do not do this because they don’t have a life long commitment.

Sociologist Linda Waite of the University of Chicago contends, “Cohabitating couples lack both specialization and commitment in their relationships.”  She also goes on to say these couples will make less money and since they are not legally married, have to pay separate taxes on their separate incomes.  Waite believes that cohabitating couples are not the same as married couples and that their behavior proves this.
http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Probweb/Presentations/cohabit.html
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The Negative Effects of Cohabitation
Linda J. Waite

Cohabitation is a tentative, non-legal coresidential union. It does not require or imply a lifetime commitment to stay together. Even if one partner expects the relationship to be permanent, the other partner often does not. Cohabiting unions break up at a much higher rate than marriages. Cohabitors have no responsibility for financial support of their partner and most do not pool financial resources. Cohabitors are more likely than married couples to both value separate leisure activities and to keep their social lives independent. Although most cohabitors expect their relationship to be sexually exclusive, in fact they are much less likely than husbands and wives to be monogamous.

Cohabiting men tend to be quite uncommitted to the relationship; cohabiting women with children tend to be quite uncertain about its future


http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/rcq/rcq_negativeeffects_waite.html
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What Young Adults Need to Know about Cohabitation before Marriage

A Comprehensive Review of Recent Research

 David Popenoe and  Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

Cohabiting couples report lower levels of happiness, lower levels of sexual exclusivity and sexual satisfaction, and poorer relationships with their parents.13  One reason is that, as several sociologists not surprisingly concluded after a careful analysis, in unmarried cohabitation "levels of certainty about the relationship are lower than in marriage."14

It is easy to understand, therefore, why cohabiting is inherently much less stable than marriage and why, especially in view of the fact that it is easier to terminate, the break-up rate of cohabitors is far higher than for married partners. Within two years about half of all cohabiting relationships end in either marriage or a parting of the ways, and after five years only about 10% of couples are still cohabiting (data from the late 1980s).15  In comparison, only about 45% of first marriages today are expected to break up over the course of a lifetime.16
13.  Nock; Brown and Booth; Linda J. Waite and Kara Joyner,
Men's and Women's General Happiness and Sexual Satisfaction in
Marriage, Cohabitation and Single Living. Unpublished manuscript.
Chicago: Population Research Center, Univ. of Chicago;  Renate Forste
and Koray Tanfer. "Sexual Exclusivity Among Dating, Cohabiting, and
Married Women." Journal of Marriage the Family 58:33-47; Paul R. Amato
and Alan Booth.
. A Generation at Risk. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, Table 4-2, p. 258.

14.  Bumpass, Sweet, and Cherlin, p. 926

15.  Bumpass and Sweet

16.  Latest estimate based on current divorce rate.

WHY COHABITATION IS HARMFUL FOR CHILDREN
One of the greatest problems for children living with a cohabiting couple is the high risk that the couple will break up.25  Fully three quarters of children born to cohabiting parents will see their parents split up before they reach age sixteen, whereas only about a third of children born to married parents face a similar fate.  One reason is that marriage rates for cohabiting couples have been plummeting.  In the last decade, the proportion of cohabiting mothers who go on to eventually marry the child's father declined from 57% to 44%.26

 Parental break up, as is now widely known, almost always entails a myriad of personal and social difficulties for children, some of which can be long lasting.  For the children of a cohabiting couple these may come on top of a plethora of already existing problems.  One study found that children currently living with a mother and her unmarried partner had significantly more behavior problems and lower academic performance than children from intact families.27

It is important to note that the great majority of children in unmarried-couple households were born not in the present union but in a previous union of one of the adult partners, usually the mother.28  This means that they are living with an unmarried stepfather or mother's boyfriend, with whom the economic and social relationships are often tenuous.  For example, these children have no claim to child support should the couple separate.

Child abuse has become a major national problem and has increased dramatically in recent years, by more than 10% a year according to one estimate.29  In the opinion of most researchers, this increase is related strongly to changing family forms. Surprisingly, the available American data do not enable us to distinguish the abuse that takes place in married-couple households from that in cohabiting-couple households.  We do have abuse-prevalence studies that look at stepparent families (both married and unmarried) and mother's boyfriends (both cohabiting and dating).   Both show far higher levels of child abuse than is found in intact families.30
It was found that, compared to children living with married biological parents, children living with cohabiting but unmarried biological parents are 20 times more likely to be subject to child abuse, and those living with a mother and a cohabiting boyfriend who is not the father face an increased risk of 33 times. In contrast, the rate of abuse is 14 times higher if the child lives with a biological mother who lives alone. Indeed, the evidence suggests that the most unsafe of all family environments for children is that in which the mother is living with someone other than the child's biological father.31  This is the environment for the majority of children in cohabiting couple households.

http://www.smartmarriages.com/cohabit.html
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The risks of cohabitation

 Cohabiting couples who don't marry also break up at a rate that greatly exceeds the nation's divorce rate.

It's not hard to see why. Compared with married couples, cohabiting couples report lower levels of happiness, lower levels of sexual exclusivity and poorer relationships with parents. Annual rates of depression among cohabitors are more than three times higher than among married couples. By almost every measure, married couples are better off than cohabitors: On average, they live longer, have better physical and mental health, and are more productive in the labor force.

Cohabitation also poses special risks to women and children. (In 2000, 41 percent of unmarried-couple households included a child under 18.) Female cohabitors are victims of domestic violence far more often than married women, and children in unmarried households are at much greater risk for physical and sexual abuse than those in intact families. Indeed, the most unsafe of all family environments is that in which the mother is living with someone other than her children's biological father.

What explains these differences between married and cohabiting couples? Partly, it's ``selection effect'': As a group, people who choose to cohabit differ in certain ways from those who don't. On average, for example, cohabitors are less religious and have lower incomes. In addition, however, the act of cohabitation seems to change people's attitudes toward marriage in ways that make a stable marriage less likely. Cohabitation is governed by an ethic of low commitment. As a result, cohabiting couples are less likely than married couples to sacrifice for each other, or to develop vital skills of communication and conflict resolution.

For contemporary Americans, cohabitation's fundamental attraction is its embrace of a hallmark quality of our age: self-absorption. By definition, cohabitation is more about ``me'' than ``we.'' Each partner is free to leave the moment he or she no longer feels happy or fulfilled. A cohabiting couple do not promise to stand by one another ``for richer, for poorer'' or ``in sickness and in health.'' On the contrary, cohabitation's great attraction is that it preserves the ability to walk out on a partner when times get tough, without legal or social penalty.
http://www.americanexperiment.org/news/op-eds/2002-07-17.php
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Living Together Dangerously

Study Reveals Perils of Cohabitation

One major problem with cohabitation, the book explains, is that the two partners often start living together for very different motives. While many women look upon it as a stepping-stone to marriage, men often look at it for convenience, and not as a firm commitment.

Popenoe agreed with the McManus book concerning the disadvantages of cohabitation for children. Given that cohabiting couples break up at a higher rate compared to married couples, this brings with it more stress and disruption for children. Higher rates of child abuse and family violence also bring problems for kids.

This disadvantage for children, Popenoe commented, also has a lot to do with the major trend in family patterns in past years with the shift of child rearing from married parents to single parents, mostly mothers. In a number of countries the chances are now better than fifty-fifty that a child will spend some time living with just one parent before reaching adulthood.

Single parenthood stems both from unwed births and from parental breakup after birth. Cohabitation is a factor in spurring higher parenthood due to births to couples not married. It is also responsible due to the higher breakup rate for cohabiting couples who have children -- which is more than twice what it is for married couples with children.

Popenoe tied in the higher break-up rate to the lack of commitment in cohabiting couples, a point also mentioned in the McManus book. Cohabiting partners, he said, “tend to have a weaker sense of couple identity, less willingness to sacrifice for the other, and a lower desire to see the relationship go long term.”

He cited one study carried out in the United States that calculated cohabiting couples break up at a rate five times higher than for married couples.

http://www.zenit.org/rssenglish-23056
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Cohabitation Facts

Cohabiting parents break up at much higher rates than married parents.6
6  McManus, 2008, p. 41.
http://www.citizenlink.org/FOSI/marriage/cohabitation/A000007333.cfm
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www.prepare-enrich.com
Updated March 2007
Overview of Cohabitation Research
David H. Olson and Amy Olson-Sigg


What are some characteristics of couples that cohabit?
• On PREPARE & ENRICH, cohabiting couples have significantly lower scores on most
categories (Olson).
• Couples living together have the lowest level of premarital satisfaction when compared to

Cohabiting couples are less sexually committed or trustworthy (Waite & Gallagher).
Cohabiting males are less involved in housework and childrearing (Waite & Gallagher).
Cohabiting increases the risk of couple abuse and, if there are children, child abuse
(Thompson, Hanson & McLanahan).

Making Abortion Illegal Will Restrict The Lives Of All Women

Abortion cannot be made illegal without many forms of birth control (and many other things) being made illegal, also.  The way the anti-choice movement seeks to outlaw abortion is to grant personhood to the fertilized egg.  Anything that can possibly harm or kill a fertilized egg will become illegal.   Fertile (approximately ages 15 to 50) women's lives will become SEVERELY restricted.  In some cases, the lives of men will be restricted, also.  This is because fertile women could become pregnant anytime and these activities can cause harm and death before she knows she is pregnant. 


Women of fertile age will not be allowed to:

drink tap water, alcohol, coffee, tea, or soft drinks containing caffeine:


Jolt  


Sugar-Free Mr. Pibb     


Mountain Dew        

Mello Yello          

TAB                                             


Coca-Cola                                     


Diet Coke                                       


Shasta Cola                                     

Shasta Cherry Cola                             

Shasta Diet Cola                              

Shasta Diet Cherry Cola                      


Mr. PIBB                                           


Dr. Pepper                                        


Big Red                                           

Sugar-Free Dr. Pepper                            


Pepsi-Cola                                      

Aspen                                           


Diet Pepsi                                     

Pepsi Light                                     


RC Cola                                         


Diet Rite                                      

Kick                                           

Canada Dry Jamaica Cola                        


Canada Dry Diet Cola

Women will not be allowed to smoke cigarettes.

Men won't be allowed to work in certain occupations and still get married and have children.  An example would be pesticide applicators.

Women won't be allowed to work in certain occupations such as nursing, any occupations involving exposure to lead (they obviously wouldn't be allowed to live in houses with lead paint), dental assistants, working in the pharmaceutical industry, dry cleaning and laundry, cosmetology (including hairstylist, hairdresser, shampooer, skin care specialist and nail technician), working in hospitals in jobs involving sterilizing equipment, or have any jobs involving physical straining.

Overweight and underweight women could be charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Women wouldn't be allowed to have more than one child, as the risk of miscarriage significantly increases with each successive birth.

Older men wouldn't be allowed to father children.

Women wouldn't be allowed to use electric blankets.

Women with periodontal disease could be charged with involuntary manslaughter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodontal_disease

Men wouldn't be allowed to drink alcohol.

SPONTANEOUS ABORTION IS A MISCARRIAGE


ALCOHOL, SMOKING, AND INCIDENCE OF SPONTANEOUS ABORTIONS IN THE FIRST AND SECOND TRIMESTER



Thus alcohol may harm human fetuses not only when it is abused but also when taken in moderation.


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T1B-49H7G1C-12W&_user=10&_coverDate=07%2F26%2F1980&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1319425117&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=4a906866e0d598b5905dffd5cc1b2a85



Caffeine intake and the risk of first-trimester spontaneous abortion.


Cnattingius, S., Signorello, L. B., Annerén, G., Clausson, B., Ekbom, A., Ljunger, E., Blot, W. J., McLaughlin, J. K., Petersson, G., Rane, A., Granath, F.



The ingestion of caffeine may increase the risk of an early spontaneous abortion among non-smoking women carrying fetuses with normal karyotypes.



http://www.cababstractsplus.org/abstracts/Abstract.aspx?AcNo=20003037445



Reproductive male-mediated risk: Spontaneous abortion among wives of pesticide applicators


OR for spontaneous abortion is 3.8 times greater than for the control population in the multiple logistic regression model and 7.6 times with interaction effects model.



http://www.springerlink.com/content/h257672160043727/





Risk of spontaneous abortion in women occupationally exposed to anaesthetic gases : a meta-analysis


anaesthetic gases; anaesthetics; anaesthetics, local; operating rooms; operating room nursing;
Auteur(s) / Author(s)
BOIVIN J.-F. (1 2) ;


Conclusions-Epidemiological studies based on data obtained in the prescavenging era indicate an increased risk of spontaneous abortion.


http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=2793441




Moderate maternal alcohol consumption and risk of spontaneous abortion


GC Windham, J Von Behren, L Fenster, C Schaefer, SH … - Epidemiology, 1997 - jstor.org
...

We found an increased risk of spontaneous abortion in women who drank more than
 three drinks per week during the first trimester.


http://www.jstor.org/pss/3702681




Obesity is associated with increased risk of first trimester and recurrent miscarriage: matched case-control study


http://en.scientificcommons.org/49315094







Smoking: a risk factor for spontaneous abortion


J KLINE, ZA STEIN, M SUSSER, D

The conclusion is that cigarette smoking increased the risk of spontaneous abortion twofold 
compared to non-smokers during pregnancy.


http://journals.lww.com/obgynsurvey/Citation/1978/05000/Smoking__A_Risk_Factor_for_Spontaneous_Abortion.4.aspx




Parental cigarette smoking and the risk of spontaneous abortion.


Windham GC, Swan SH, Fenster L.
Reproductive Epidemiology Section, California Department of Health Services, Berkeley.




For both maternal direct and environmental exposure, the association appeared to be stronger in second-trimester abortions. Several studies have found stronger associations of smoking with late versus early abortions, perhaps reflecting smoking-associated placental insufficiency and fetal hypoxia.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1510085



Blood lead levels measured prospectively and risk of spontaneous abortion


Borja-Aburto, VH | Hertz-Picciotto, I* | Lopez, MR | Farias, P | Rios, C | Blanco, J


Low to moderate lead exposures may increase the risk for spontaneous abortion at exposures comparable to US general population levels during the 1970s and to many populations worldwide today; these are far lower than exposures encountered in some occupations.


http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=ENV&recid=4610921&q=&uid=789397928&setcookie=yes




Cocaine and tobacco use and the risk of spontaneous abortion


Ness, RB | Grisso, JA | Hirschinger, N | Markovic, N | Shaw, LM | Day, NL | Kline, J
New England Journal of Medicine [N. Engl. J. Med.]. Vol. 340, no. 5, pp. 333-339.



Twentyfour percent of the risk of spontaneous abortion could be related to cocaine or tobacco use. Cocaine use and tobacco use were common in our study population and were associated with a significant risk of spontaneous abortion.


http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=ENV&recid=4476389&q=&uid=789397928&setcookie=yes





Ethylene oxide exposure may increase the risk of spontaneous abortion, preterm birth, and postterm birth


AS Rowland, DD Baird, DL Shore, B Darden, AJ Wilcox - Epidemiology, 1996 - jstor.org


Ethylene oxide is a gas used in some dental offices to sterilize equipment
These data further implicate ethylene oxide as a possible reproductive toxicant in humans.


http://www.jstor.org/pss/3702053



Nitrous oxide and spontaneous abortion in female dental assistants


AS Rowland, DD Baird, DL Shore, CR … - American journal of …, 1995 - Oxford Univ Press
... 6, 1995 Page 6. 536 Rowland et al.

This group showed more than a two and a half-fold increased risk of spontaneous abortion.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7900720




Sequential analysis of spontaneous abortion. Collaborative study data show that gravidity determines a very substantial rise in risk.


Naylor AF, Warburton D.



It was concluded that risk of spontaneous abortion significantly increase with gravidity and that maternal age, memory errors, and sampling bias related to recurrence risk do not affect this trend.



Gravidity is defined as the number of times that a woman has been pregnant


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/437160




Spontaneous abortions among women working in the pharmaceutical industry.


The odds ratio for spontaneous abortions was greater among those exposed to four or more solvents (odds ratio 3.5, p=0.05) than among those exposed to one to three solvents (odds ration 0.8, p=0.74). Exposure to chemicals was more common among the cases than among the controls.


http://oem.bmj.com/content/43/3/199.

Influence of paternal age on the risk of spontaneous abortion.


Slama, R., Bouyer, J., Windham, G., Fenster, L., Werwatz, A., Swan, S. H.




In conclusion, the risk of spontaneous abortion increased with increasing paternal age, with a suggestion that the association is stronger for first trimester losses.


http://www.cababstractsplus.org/abstracts/Abstract.aspx?AcNo=20053076360




Risk Factors for Spontaneous Abortion


PARAZZINI, FABIO,
    •    BOCCIOLONE, LUCA,
    •    FEDELE, LUIGI,
    •    NEGRI, EVA,
    •    LA VECCHIA, CARLO,
    •    ACAIA, BARBARA




Compared with never smokers, current smokers had about a 40% increased risk of miscarriage and the risk increased with number of cigarettes per day.


http://en.scientificcommons.org/49283074



A prospective study of spontaneous abortion: relation to amount and source of drinking water consumed in early pregnancy.


Swan SH, Waller K, Hopkins B, Windham G, Fenster L, Schaefer C, Neutra RR.


Furthermore, when women with high cold tap water and no bottled water consumption were compared with those with high bottled water and no cold tap water consumption, the adjusted odds ratio was 4.58 (95% CI = 1.97-10.64). Conversely, women with high bottled water consumption and no tap water had a reduced rate of spontaneous abortion compared with those drinking tap water and no bottled water (adjusted OR = 0.22; 95% CI = 0.09-0.51).
This study confirms the association between cold tap water and spontaneous abortion


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9504279






Spontaneous abortion and exposure to electric blankets and heated water beds.


Belanger K, Leaderer B, Hellenbrand K, Holford TR, McSharry J, Power ME, Bracken MB.




Electric blanket use at conception was associated with an increased risk of spontaneous abortion
t indicates that electric blanket use at the time of conception and in early pregnancy may be associated with a slight increase in risk of pregnancy loss.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9430266





Paternal and Maternal Smoking Habits before Conception and During the First Trimester: Relation to Spontaneous Abortion



Liliane Chatenoud ScDa, , Fabio Parazzini MDa, b, Elisabetta Di Cintio ScDa, Giovanni Zanconato MDc, Guido Benzi MDb, Renata Bortolus MDa and Carlo La Vecchia MDa, d




CONCLUSIONS: The risk of abortion associated with cigarette smoking during the first trimester of pregnancy was measurable and noticeable in this population, and accounted for 9% (95% CI, 6–13%) of all cases. The increased risk of spontaneous abortion in women smoking during pregnancy is a further reason to encourage pregnant women to quit.



http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T44-3V98K9J-7&_user=10&_coverDate=11%2F30%2F1998&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1319484525&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=32e813c42e8eba5bfb0b7c71fd7b8fd9




Treatment of periodontal disease and the risk of preterm birth.


Michalowicz BS, Hodges JS, DiAngelis AJ, Lupo VR, Novak MJ, Ferguson JE, Buchanan W, Bofill J, Papapanou PN, Mitchell DA, Matseoane S, Tschida PA;

Maternal periodontal disease has been associated with an increased risk of preterm birth and low birth weight.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17079762/




Spontaneous abortions and congenital malformations among women exposed to tetrachloroethylene in dry cleaning.


P Kyyrönen, H Taskinen, M L Lindbohm, K Hemminki, and O P Heinonen



The study involved dry cleaner and laundry workers


Exposure to tetrachloroethylene was found to be significantly associated with spontaneous abortions (odds ratio 3.6, p less than 0.05). CONCLUSION: The findings, together with other available data, indicate that exposure of pregnant women to tetrachloroethylene needs to be minimised.


http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articlerender.cgi?artid=1350054





Spontaneous abortions among cosmetologists.


John EM, Savitz DA, Shy CM.



With adjusted odds ratios ranging from 1.4 to 2.0, we found associations between spontaneous abortion and the number of hours worked per day in cosmetology, the number of chemical services performed per week, the use of formaldehyde-based disinfectants, and work in salons where nail sculpturing was performed by other employees.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8172989




Spontaneous abortions in hospital staff engaged in sterilising instruments with chemical agents.


K Hemminki, P Mutanen, I Saloniemi, M L Niemi, and H Vainio



Thus the results from the two independent analyses suggest that exposure to ethylene oxide in hospitals may carry a risk of spontaneous abortion among sterilising staff.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1500610/



Alcohol Consumption at the Time of Conception and Spontaneous Abortion (2004)


Henriksen, Tine Brink,
    •    Hjollund, Niels Henrik,
    •    Jensen, Tina Kold,
    •    Bonde, Jens Peter,
    •    Andersson, Anna-Maria,
    •    Kolstad, Henrik,
    •    Ernst, Erik,
    •    Giwercman, Aleksander,
    •    Skakkebæk, Niels Erik,
    •    Olsen, Jørn




Both male and female alcohol intakes during the week of conception increased the risk of early pregnancy loss.


http://en.scientificcommons.org/49768716




Spontaneous Abortions and Birth Defects Related to Tap and Bottled Water Use


Wrensch, Margaret; Swan, Shanna H.; Lipscomb, Jane; Epstein, David M.; Neutra, Raymond R.; Fenster, Laura




The elevated odds ratio of spontaneous abortion was seen among tap water drinkers who used no filters or softener-type filters but not among women who reported use of active filters. Spontaneous abortion rates were reduced in women who reported any vs no bottled water consumption (OR=0.26; 95% CI=0.16-0.43). Among women who reported no tapwater consumption, no birth defects occurred among 263 live births; in comparison, among women who reported tapwater consumption, 4% of 908 live births had defects (P=0.0001). We observed no relation between birth defects and bottled water use.


http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/1992/03000/Spontaneous_Abortions_and_Birth_Defects_Related_to.6.aspx





Maternal underweight and the risk of spontaneous abortion


Authors: Helgstrand, Stine1; Andersen, Anne-Marie Nybo1



Conclusion. 

These results indicate that pre-pregnant underweight may affect the risk of spontaneous abortion negatively.


http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/apl/aog/2005/00000084/00000012/art00014




Spontaneous abortion and physical strain around implantation :


HJOLLUND N. H. I. (1) ; JENSEN T. K. (2) ; BONDE J. P. E. (1) ; HENRIKSEN T. B. (3) ; ANDERSSON A.-M. (2) ; KOLSTAD H. A. (1) ; ERNST E. (4) ; GIWERCMAN A. (2) ; SKAKKEBAEK N. E. (2) ; OLSEN J. (5) ;



During early pregnancy the women recorded physical strain prospectively in a structured diary. Physical strain around the time of implantation was associated with later spontaneous abortion.



http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1266005




Quality of community drinking water and the occurrence of spontaneous abortion.


Aschengrau A, Zierler S, Cohen A.


Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts.



After adjustment for potential confounders, an increase in the frequency of spontaneous abortion was associated with detectable levels of mercury; high levels of arsenic, potassium, and silica; moderately hard water, and surface water.





http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2554824