The stated problem is more single mothers (obviously affecting welfare) so they ask 'why?' and get the answer 'people are copulating outside of marriage'. So instead of asking the next 'why?' they say 'well, let's stop people doing that then!'

Idjits.

Young adults are having sex outside marriage (and the committment that usually goes along with that) because society is making it hard for adults to become adults. Many adults see sex as just another toy that they play with to have fun. And a very fun toy it is, too, as I imagine all those reading would agree with. However, what's the purpose of playing with this toy? Most children play with toys for a grander purpose: many of them teach things like dexterity, eye-hand co-ordination, logic or problem-solving. Children's play also extends to exercising building social skills as well, such as team sports. It also nurtures skills that can be later used to produce income and hopefully raise their own children.

And there is the conflict. I'm sure we've all heard the popular stories about men afraid of 'commitment'. The average age of marriage in western culture is slowly rising. Men and women want to stay teenagers longer, and that means ducking responsibilities for as long as possible. Popular culture encourages this. "If it feels good, do it". "Sex sells." And so on and so on.

But we have a society that is fracturing. More and more children don't have effective parents, more and more teenagers are turning into adults outside but are still children inside. They don't have the skills to control themselves in a lot of ways, giving rise to more and more violent crime, more and more divorces and broken familes and more and more demand for psychological and counselling services for all these children in adult bodies.

I'm drawing a pretty broad brush, true. I'm a victim of this, too, more than I am usually willing to admit. As a limited example, in my small workspace, I'm physically the oldest in my group of 6, yet from time-to-time I feel like I'm behaving younger than my youngest colleague.

Teaching abstinence is one part of the equation. But it doesn't work alone. It can't work along. What works about abstinence needs a society that doesn't hold sex up as a god to be worshipped. Because that is what today's western society does. It teaches young men and women to worship at the alter of sexual gratification, and then discovers to it's horror that that's all they want. Governments then bemoan so much single parenting and sexual disease, but they're in the wrong position to do much about it. This is a problem with the social fabric. Fixing it isn't something a govenment can easily or simply do and governments have trouble doing things that are not easy. The solution needs to be down at the social level. But I don't know how to work that.

Wade, 2¢ deposited.

That tells me that your coping mechanism for life's daily shit is sex. I don't think that's a good thing, Bill. I know it's not your only coping mechanism, as I recall a recent post about things such as your favourite chair. But if your life is setup so that sex is the goal, then you're worshipping it.

I agree that sex is a gift that should be treasured. But we're encouraged to treat it like a toy. And that cheapens it and eventually breaks it and we don't usually treasure cheap things. Nor broken things.

I also don't think marriage should be the goal of sex, but inept social commentators have been making that mistake for many centuries. Sex is a damn nice reward for an intimate relationship, but not the goal.

Wade.

I think that assumption is faulty.

What's to say that the act of bearing children doesn't help finish the development of the brain? Or, closer to my original argument, raising children?

It is western industrialized society that has largely created the nuclear family of mum, dad and kids, IMO. Grandparents live their own lives and so do aunts and uncles. I'm generalizing, but in my limited research, non-industrialized societies aren't like that. Children are raised by more people than just their parents. And in a way, the parents are still undergoing education from their peers and elders and having their own children is likely to be a vital part of that.

In addition, many such societies have a type of initiation process to turn children into adults. It differs between boys and girls, of course, because they have different things to learn. And it is not always the tribal trial anthropologists write about and what you would normally associate with 'initiation': farming communities in Sussex in the 1500's would have had a recognisable process for boys to become men (and girls to become women). And the Jewish Bar Mitzvah is part of the same ancient process for Jewish societies. Many of them happen in the period of 12-15 years old, after which these newly minted adults are usually considered candidates for having their own children. Not fully mature yet? :-) These social groups have been around for many centuries. And a lot of the problems with where 'adulthood' starts is a relatively recent phenomenon.

I agree that education is important, but it is too limited and too short-sighted. It needs to include parental education about how to handle the transition their child is making, and oft-times how the parents themselves can finish their own transition. This is hard.

Wade.