OT: "The westernized world"

[Victor]

I am a bit concerned about such generalizations in any case, but,
particularly, on this subject. Although some European countries,
including all the Scandinavian ones, have greatly diversified over the
last two decades, they are still largely culturally homogeneous, even
across socioeconomic strata. The same cannot be said in the US. There
are three obvious sources of "single mothers" as they are classified in
the census. Two of these have already been identified--those in
long-term relationships without the formality of marriage (although
"long-term" to some is less than three years), those who have no
significant interactions with the father(s) (although, again, some might
have been in relatively long-term relationships prior to separation),
and those who have divorced the fathers. I suspect, the original point
was about what used to be "out-of-wedlock births", which would have
eliminated the third category, but "single mother" certainly includes it.

But, whatever the concern is, all three categories are of substantial
size. I would be hesitant to make any claims on this account without any
kind of hard data. To make a comparison based on pure speculations
strikes me as somewhat insulting. (Not that it was necessarily
intended.) More to the point, the connection with the original subject
of the quoted text only holds for one of these categories.

Going back to the actual subject of the thread, "westernized world"
makes even less sense than "Western civilization", which is a fairly
common conservative code. It certainly makes no sense in the context of
comparing nations or countries. If someone was trying to make sense of
this, I am wondering if the meaning is actually more convoluted and is
meant to apply to social strata in non-"western" countries that might be
more influenced by western cultural and material values than others. For
example, village residents in China, Russia and Nigeria would be far
less westernized than the respective big-city dwellers. It's a stretch,
but it seems to be a better stretch than trying to figure out which
*countries* are in or out of the "westernized world". Now, how someone
might be able to divine the relative teen pregnancy rates is anyone's guess.

On the other hand, it may not be necessary to figure what the authors of
the pamphlet really mean because it's all just noise any way.
"Westernized" may simply be an attempt to make "western" more PC. The
claim is so vague that it really doesn't make any difference. Truth and
facts are irrelevant--the goal is rhetorical, to convince people to
donate money. No one expects the reader to actually pay attention to the
content, except for the punchline. Since this pamphlet clearly comes
from the more liberal circles, the phrasing IMO is simply a sloppy
version of PC speech.

    VS-)

Herb Stahlke wrote:
> What I wrote may be reflecting the fact that the town of 9000-odd that
> I live in has the highest single (female) parent family incidence in
> Indiana, as well as one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy.
>
> Herb
>

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