I hope you are not one of those people who are offended by talk about unwed mothers. Frankly, I think it’s high time we did talk about it, and seriously. I was reading a report by Ursula Gallagher, the US Children’s Bureau specialist on services to unmarried mothers and some of the statistics staggered me. The National Vital Statistics Division of the Public Health Service has estimated the number of births in 1960 to unmarried girls 17 and under to be 48,000. This figure represents about 20 per cent of the estimated 224,000 births out of wedlock that year. These are US statistics, but I would assume they would reflect the situation here in our own country pretty accurately. I’m no authority, but I feel that one reason for this situation is the emphasis our society puts on being accepted. When they are 12 and 13, kids are being pushed into social situations that are way over their heads. Can you imagine a 12 year old boy going to a dance with a date twenty-five years ago? Today it happens in millions of homes right across the country. When they are 15 they get a motor scooter and the following year they have their own car. When they are 14 and 15 they are “going steady” and acting more like old married folks than their mothers and fathers. Then to top it off they have as their examples people like Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies. No one can reverse these trends but YOU father and YOU mother, but I doubt you’ll do it. After all, it would be TERRIBLE if your precious little lamb was not “accepted”.
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