Problematic Senior Quotes

Indeed, the vast majority of unwed mothers younger than eighteen are indigent, and a substantial minority of their babies’ fathers are men who are at least six years their senior—which in most states legally defines the mothers as child sex-abuse victims.1 Yet teenage mothers usually call these men their boyfriends. And although their attempts to find fulfillment with older partners may in the long run fail, few would call themselves victims of sexual abuse. The lack of better words to describe their problematic experience with older men, and the young women’s own refusal to adopt victim identities, make them easy scapegoats for conservatives anxious to cast them not as innocent children but as sluts—and to justify cuts in welfare spending for them and their offspring.

Mothers who have gone to college, they found, enroll their children in far more organized activities—in large part for the same reasons the best-paid men work so much. These mothers, too, believe that the opportunity cost of not enrolling their children in loads of extracurriculars is too great. It’s the problematic psychology of any arms race: the participants would love not to play, but not playing, in their minds, is the same as falling behind.