somewhere along the way, i started sleeping with the radio on. i'm not entirely sure why, most of the time i turn it so low i can barely hear it anyway. but there are the times when i'll wake up and npr's playing "Lakme" and i listen to it in the silence and seclusion of the night. but most of the time i just turn it up when the first excruciating notes ring out from my alarm clock and listen to the news whilst debating whether or not to take the day off.
This morning was different, though. First I dealt with those few milliseconds of confusion. One by one I realized: my head is very heavy and in pain, my lungs hurt, my eyes will not open. Then the conclusion: “I appear to be hungover”. And a resolution: “I will be late for work” and I slammed the snooze button. After three unsuccessful attempts to will myself out of bed, I tried to slowly ease myself into consciousness with the soothing voices of npr’s newspeople. But then I heard about this.
Before I get any further into this, I’m sending out a call for assistance:
"There was never a ring, and after 1,000 proposals, it doesn't really mean anything," says White, who never felt pressure to marry, since her unwed parents have been together 22 years. "It was getting old. I was becoming a statistic, shacking up out of wedlock. And I didn't know if we were going downhill."
The woman who spoke the above words, whose parents have been together for 22 years, is 28. Anyone?
So anyway, I’m listening to this story (which, for whatever reason, is not on the npr or wnyc websites and which the post and ny1 and –duh– the times have ignored!) and I’m half asleep and all I’m hearing is “blacks don’t marry” “high percentage of out-of-wedlock children” the phrase “baby daddy” used in total seriousness and that this novelist thinks it’s her job to make people marry each other.
It's time to marry your baby daddy, says one Brooklyn woman. So she's helping 10 couples get hitched.
Who the fuck is she? I don’t care if people marry their “baby daddies”. If you’re going to do someone a favor, like give them a free wedding, don’t make it some moral soapbox so you can run around telling unwed couples with children (black ones only, it seems) that they need to get married. It’s none of your business.
The argument is that there is a very high rate of unmarried families in the black community and that there are too many children born to “baby momma/daddy” situations. While these things may be true, making a whole bunch of people get married is not going to make one damn bit of difference. You’re just married. That’s it. You can be married to someone and still not really give a shit about that person or the relationship. You can not be married to someone and be fully committed to and caring for your partner.
Basically, I think it’s really fucking irritating when people run around saying they need to save their communities by making them do stupid shit like getting married. How about some education? And family planning and birth control? Don’t go doing people favors to further your own social agenda.
I am a tad cranky this morning. afternoon. but come on, Marry Your Baby Daddy?
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