I gave an example in the same post you were quoting of another country which lets non-resident singles adopt. I don’t know if Bulgary has a ban on same-sex-couples, but they definitely let single gays adopt, and once the kid has been legally adopted by the foreign parent there it’s out of Bulgary’s hands.
The number will be small, but it is not 1.
South Africa has both same-sex couple and single person adoptions, and allows foreign adoption (as long as the adopter’s country also consents, and provided a local adopter is not found first within 60 days of the kid entering the system)
The UK allowed same-sex couples and individual gay people to adopt well before the introduction of same-sex marriage, but has a pretty restrictive attitude to adoptions from the UK to another country, for anybody.
I am aware that out of wedlock births occurred before ten years ago.
You are moving the goalposts. We said it would increase and it has.
The first rule of holes is when your in one stop digging. The gay marriage question did not put traditional marriage into the hole, merely made the shovel more effective.
You’re still going by correlation = causation. In order to assert that legalized gay marriage caused any of this, you’d need some data – for example, perhaps you could show the out-of-wedlock rates in two neighboring countries, one of which legalized SSM and one of which did not. Or something like that. Absent that, you’re just guessing.
You’re the one who’s moving the goalposts. First you claimed that SSM was causing more out-of-wedlock births. Now that others have pointed out that was just a continuation of an existing trend, you’re changing the argument to “SSM made it worse.” But you have yet to show SSM contributed, or that there’s a connection at all. Not to mention the underlying question of “why would anyone care?”
Yes - is there any evidence that the rate of increase in out-of- marriage birth rates increased?
The graph for Canada’s birth rates cited by Grey showed a steady increase in such births, which if continues, will mean an increase in the actual number of such births.
But is there any evidence that the rate of increase of those type of births has increased in Canada since SSM?
But the point is that out of wedlock births were already in a well established pattern of substantial increase before ten years ago.
[QUOTE=puddleglum]
You are moving the goalposts. We said it would increase and it has.
[/quote]
:dubious: When a well established trend of increase before a particular event continues increasing after a particular event, it is not very convincing to try to claim that the post-event part of the increase was caused by the event itself.
By your “logic”, we could also “argue” that legalization of same-sex marriage has decreased the percentage of white people in the US population. A more plausible explanation, of course, is simply that the US population has been growing more nonwhite for a long time, and the existence of marriage-equality laws doesn’t really have anything to do with it. Same for the long-term trend of more births occurring out of wedlock.
[QUOTE=puddleglum]
The gay marriage question did not put traditional marriage into the hole, merely made the shovel more effective.
[/QUOTE]
That doesn’t even make sense. Same sex couples and their allies have labored for decades to gain the right to participate in legal marriage like everybody else, and you’re claiming that this somehow makes legal marriage less popular or less meaningful to society as a whole?
If same sex couples had been agitating for years to abolish legal marriage so that nobody could be married, you might have some kind of a point that their activism had decreased the perceived value of marriage for society as a whole. But the reality is the exact opposite of that: gay people have been boosting the perceived value of marriage by making such a big deal of wanting to be allowed to do it too.
The fact that other contemporary societal trends (birth control, women’s rights, relaxed restrictions on divorce, incarceration patterns, laissez-faire economics depressing real household incomes, etc.) have had a negative impact on the perceived value of marriage for society as a whole is not in any way the fault of gay people.
In 1990 the US and Canada had 27/28% of children born outside of marriage
In 1995 the US and Canada had 32/30% of children born outside of marriage
In 2000 the US and Canada had 33/32% of children born outside of marriage
In 2003/2004 almost all provinces in Canada had legalized gay marriage becoming legal federally in 20015
In 2005 the US and Canada had 37/30% of children born outside of marriage
*In 2010 New Hampshire legalized gay marriage
*
In 2010 the US and Canada had 41/32% of children born outside of marriage
*In 2011 New York legalized gay marriage
*
In 2011 the US and Canada had 41/33% of children born outside of marriage
In 2012 Washington legalized gay marriage
In 2012 the US and Canada had 41/33% of children born outside of marriage
Note no change in children born out of wedlock in Canada despite gay marriage legalization. It’s almost as if it had no affect.
So what’s your explanation for why out of wedlock births have also been steadily increasing over the same time period in Ireland, which didn’t legally recognize same sex marriage until 2015?
Percent births outside marriage in Ireland in 1990: 14.6%
In 2000: 31.5%
In 2010: 33.8%
In 2012: 35.1%
Your correlation/causation-conflating “argument” is completely unsupported by actual data.
I have vague recollections of this argument being advanced in Canada in the early 2000’s. It was along the lines of **Puddleglum’**s position in this thread: that gay marriage would devalue marriage as a whole, and make straight couples less inclined to get married, resulting in greater out-of-wedlock births.
Not inclined to go poking around on the bowels of the net for that stuff, 15 years on, but I do remember it.
Some of those out of wedlock births even happen to be categories which weren’t possible forty years ago: test tube babies by single mothers, hired-womb babies, adopted-embryo babies by single mothers. For a lot of those parents, it’s not that they don’t want to get married, but that they really want to be parents and have given up on finding a partner.
Advances in technology and the disminution of the negative attitudes about single-parenthood have made those possible. Note that the negative attitudes about single parents didn’t just affect never-wed ones, but also widow(er)s with children and divorced parents (both divorced/widowed fathers and divorced/widowed mothers used to be viewed very negatively, although in different ways). And “comes with kids” is still viewed as a negative more often than not.
If we take 2005 as the year that Canada recognized gay marriage since you say almost all provinces had done so. The out of wedlock birth rate was essentially unchanged from 12 years before. Since then the out of wedlock birth rate has gone up to 33% in the last year measured. In other words no change in 12 years and then a 13% increase over eight years. That is not no change. It is not definitive but it seems like it had an effect.
:dubious: Let’s try this again
The US and Canada had effectively identical rates of children born out of wedlock in 1990.
By 2005, the US had a rate had changed from 27% to 37% while Canada’s had grown from 28% to 30%.
You’ll note the relatively large shift in the US plays out without any legalization of gay marriage.
Then the rate in the US stabilizes at 41% roughly when NH and NY legalize gay marriage.
So you’re argument “gay marriage legalization erodes the number of children born into conventional marriage” fails the historical review of US/Canadian child births from 1990 to 2005 (erosion happens without GM legalization) and fails the predictive view as there is no increase in US children born out of wedlock following legalization in NH/NY.
So if there is an influence it is likely masked by other larger drivers of family composition like access to birth control, increasing common law family structures and education patterns in women.
Of course I’m not making any argument related to gay marriage’s impact so necessarily I don’t have to prove anything. I simply have to show that your arguments are unconvincing.
If we can find other socioeconomic elements that have also changed in this period, would you say they seem like they had an effect?
But did you cross-check those figures with the dates those countries instituted fluoridation and/or forced vaccination?
I was going to suggest the rise of the internet and the widespread adoption of cellular phones as things that have also happened since the 1990s and thus “seem like” they “had an effect” on the increase in out-of-wedlock births.
Certainly an argument can be made that these (especially the internet) contribute to the “weakening of marriage as an institution”, or at least I know that some people have tried to do so.
Anyway, we’re using logic to try to argue puddleglum out of a position that doesn’t seem to have been based on logic.
ISTM that the people moving the goalposts in this thread are the pro-SSM posters.
The OP asked whether any changes such as were predicted for SSM came to pass, including an increase in OOW children. This was followed by a whole bunch of posts declaring that no, everything had stayed the same. Now it turns out that WRT one specific prediction at least, the evidence is at least inconclusive as to whether the predicted impact happened. So you’re back to square one.
People who then try to reframe the discussion as being about whether the link to SSM was conclusively proven are moving the goal posts, as that was not the initial position of the pro-SSM people in this thread, and apparent premise of the OP.
[FWIW, I’m personally skeptical as to whether SSM had any impact of this sort. But the evidence is not inconsistent with this argument.]
Do you think attitudes toward marriage have an effect on out of wedlock births? Do you think the gay marriage movement has had an effect on how people think about marriage? If the answer is yes to both, then logically one can affect the other. Of course judging by your “arguments” in this thread, logic may not be your forte.
Yes for the first, no for the second. Legalizing gay marriage was a result of changing attitudes about marriage, not a cause of it.