The AP is reporting that Levi Johnson, the father of Bristol Palin's baby, is on a plane for Minneapolis to join "the family" at the convention.
And that Levi's mother says there has been no pressure put on Levi to marry Bristol, that the two were already planning to marry before she became pregnant.
I guess it's time to try to make the teenage Hockey player try to look respectable to the conservative Republican crowd.
What I'm sure they won't do is what Slate did in its article on teen pregnancies. To point out that:
"Overall, teenage mothers—and their children—are also far more likely to live in poverty than females who don't give birth until after age 20. Two-thirds of the families begun by a young unmarried mother are poor. These families are more likely to be on welfare and to require publicly provided health care." (All things Republicans hate to fund.) Eighty percent of these young mothers do not marry, and they will get almost no support from the fathers, who are usually also poor. (There's a way Republicans could help single mothers, if Republicans really wanted to do that. Make sure they get their child support.)
The educational prospects of teen mothers are touugh: only 40 percent will graduate from high school; less than 2 percent from college by age 30.
Children of teen mothers are more likely to end up in prison, in foster care due to neglect and abuse, do poorly in school, become teenage parents themselves.
Marrying when below 18 and marrying when already pregnant are two factors that also mean much higher divorce rates.
Slate reports that after 10 years of marriage, those who did so younger than 18 have a 48 percent chance of divorcing; compared to those who waited until 25 or older having a 24 percent divorce rate.
If pregnant, then marrying, the divorce rate doubles for blacks and Hispanics, is 50 percent higher for whites, according to Slate.
I wish someone would say some of these things when Levi is paraded before the cameras at the Republican convention, but doubt anyone will. It will all be glowing praise or at least understanding. They're human. They made a mistake, but they're making it right.
These stats show "making it right" is no guarantee of creating a stable family down the road.
The Slate article is here: http://www.slate.com/...