[quote name='alonzomourning23']Teen pregnancy is something that democrats and liberals are trying to limit, problem is we got all these people who don't want to teach kids about safe sex, maybe you've heard of them? Those same people also don't seem to want teens to be able to have access to these emergency pills that stop pregnancy, or abortions.
Divorce rates are not a concern I have, people get married and find out it was a bad idea, it's better they go their separate ways than stay together. If there's a kid more of an effort should be made, but if the relationship isn't working it isn't worth it. There's a family down the street that has stayed together for their kids, the father has repeatedly said (to my mother) that he can't stand his wife, and his wife has said similar things. You can hear them shouting every other night or so about 12 houses away when you stand outside my house. That's not a healthy environment for a kid. Besides, the same people who want to lower divorce rats often don't want people to live together before marriage, the same thing that would allow people a better understanding of what they are getting into.
Single parent families often go back to the unwanted or teen pregnancy issue. Something you could do is institute job training, improve schools, increase access to higher education, put more of an emphasis on rehabilitation in prison (since it isn't uncommon that the father has been imprisoned and didn't actually leave the kids). Also, to improve conditions of such families, you could have free daycare and more monetary aid so the single parent isn't forced to spend all day working (often more than 1 job), essentially leaving the kid either in someone elses care all day, or on the streets throughout the day when they are older.
I think your wondering of "why don't we focus on the real issues" reflects your own personal biases and concerns. Abortion, gay rights (and civil rights overal), the environment, access to education, poverty, sex education etc. are all real issues, some even effecting what you've mentioned. As far as I'm concerned, many of the issues republicans are focusing on are non issues. You just have to realize, those same non issues are very important to some other people.[/QUOTE]
Let's look at teen pregnancy. My personal bias is that kids shouldn't be having sex. If they do have sex, it should be safe sex; but that doesn't change the fact that they shouldn't be having sex at all. If I decide to treat the issues that arise from kids having sex without making any attempt to encourage kids not to have sex, then I'm not really dealing with the problem. Can't we teach safe sex without condoning it? I just feel that the way the situation is approached sends kids a message I'm uncomfortable with: There's no problem with you having sex, just watch out for these problems that could arise as a result. Now, I don't neccessarily think that it's the job of the government to help us instill the correct values in our children, but conversely they shouldn't hinder it. And conspiring with a child to keep important information from their parents does interfere with a parent's ability to do his/her job. I think that the 'well, these things will happen, might as well make the best of it' attitude has caused many to lose faith in the liberals. There has to be some kind of solution that addresses the fundamental problem without ignoring the stuff you mentioned. Simply saying that the other side's approach isn't really satisfactory doesn't mean that yours is.
Now that divorce is common, has the idea of marriage being a real lasting committment changed? Or did just as many people want to get divorced before but weren't allowed to?