Spence was back on the air this week

Now that the semester is over, I’m back at the Barbershop. In this episode, me, Jimi Izrael, Reuben Navarette, and Roland Martin talk about among other things the increasing rate babies born to single mothers. It got pretty heated, as this is something I feel pretty strong about. Hopefully they’ll offer the extended version on the web, because we kicked this topic around for at least 20-25 minutes….

It was interesting, not least because, though Michel Martin couldn't walk past the discussion it didn't make the blurb on NPR's website.

'Shop' Guys Discuss Steroid Report, Vick Sentencing

Tell Me More, December 14, 2007 · Jimi Izrael, Ruben Navarette, Lester Spence and Barbershop newcomer Roland Martin weigh in on the Mitchell Report, which implicates Major League Baseball players on possible steroid use. The men also discuss the recent sentencing of former NFL star quarterback Michael Vick and the tense race for the White House among contenders Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.

As I listened I heard some increasing birthrate stuff that morphed into missing Black men stuff, and thought maybe I'd point out that morphing. And I had a comment about the moralizingtoo. I thought about it deeply because I was pretty sure the topic was one we're supposed to discuss Monday on News and Notes. But then I'd never seen Farai or Michel step on each other's feet so I checked and LO!

I was wrong.

But I had come up with some stuff which I no longer need to work into a conversation, so...

I thought Roland Martin opened it up beyond teens, saying part of the reason for the increase in births to unmarried women is some are choosing to have children. Michel Martin could not restrain herself. She said among her cohort she hears more about the lack of marriageable men, and as I write that I realize she didn't say that marriageable Black men aren't there. She said marriageable men aren't there. Being a Black man, I heard that as referring to me. Fact is though, you can find more than enough articles, books and such to show white women have the same issues.

It strikes me that this problem is something of a class issue. Men, who tend to marry "down" (however you define that), increase the number of the size of their pool of potential mates as they ascend the hierarchy. Women like to marry "up" and as you climb there are fewer people "up" from you. You're looking for a mate from that ever shrinking subset of the hierarchy, many of whom are excluded for other reasons.

Unless this up-down dynamic changes, and it doesn't look to me like it will, mates will always be harder for women to find as they ascend the hierarchy.

But many still have children. They want to be a mother. Biological clock, physical imperitive. Maybe they always wanted it and put it off. Whatever reasoning they used to not get pregnant goes right out the window.

This brings us to the second point, the moralizing.

The American Dream Family is a pretty good incubator if you can maintain it. Americans have been able to maintain them with unions, federally subsidized homes and cheap credit (or, in the case of Black folks, sheer willpower). Those conditions do not obtain, and until all the Iraq War veterans come back and scare the hell out of everyone the way World Wat II veterans did, they will not. And maybe not even then. The social habits developed in those conditions has turned to bite us in the ass. We may be forced to give up the American Dream, much less the American Dream Family.

And consider this: sexual maturity comes at an earlier age than it used to, in the population as a whole and(if I remember correctly) Black folks in particular. And with sexual maturity come sex.

When I was in high school during the Reagan years, teen pregnancy wasn't just taboo, it was the worst possible situation you could find yourself in. Equal parts personal tragedy and quasi-criminal act, getting knocked up (not to be confused with knocking someone else up, which might have been a tiny bit cool) was the ultimate wrong move -- not least because it was preventable in so many ways.

It also was pretty much a moot concept, because I'm talking pregnancies that were actually carried to term, which were conspicuously absent in my affluent, suburban public high school. In the 1980s, most girls who found themselves "in trouble" would either proceed directly to an abortion clinic -- some with the goal of getting out of there in time for an AP history exam -- or be shuffled off to mysterious group homes designed to keep pregnant teenagers out of sight. Not that these weren't terrifying and wrenching propositions, but honestly, in the post-Roe vs. Wade, pre-AIDS, pre-Columbine, pre-9/11 world, true terror had less to do with physical loss and dying than with dying of embarrassment. And nothing was more embarrassing than the prospect of showing up at school with a basketball-sized protrusion under your Member's Only jacket.

Really, it's that simple. The question is, as it has always been, what are your options?

No, it's not about more moralizing.

So maybe the birthrate increase isn't because of lack of education but lack of mortification? After all, if teenage girls were even half as embarrassed to be pregnant as they were in my day, wouldn't they use five different methods of birth control out of sheer paranoia? (If you were a teenager in the 1980s, don't pretend you don't know someone who tried this.) Moreover, once they realize that, thanks to their multiple barrier method, sex feels a lot like stubbing your toe, might they just throw in the towel and abstain?

Evidently not. The CDC report also noted that between 1986 and 1991 (some of the years I was in high school), the teen birthrate actually hit an all-time high of 61.8 births for every 1,000 girls. In other words, our heightened sense of shame did nothing to curb our behavior.

It's about letting young folks know what the options are and letting them use those options. While folks who do marry do so later in life yet sexual maturity...and the winding of the biological clock...comes earlier, we need to recognize that reality.

What does that mean? Basically, that means trying to do what's necessary to support healthy children. Physically and mentally healthy children. It means giving support to these folk as a community when they're too poor or too young to handle it themselves. And it means not calling them sinful, or "not cool" for having a physical body.

That's what a lot of Black folks need, and most want. Upper classes want you to pull up your pants too, but that may be negotiable.