There’s Still A Lot To Say For Marriage In 1994, About 1.29 Million
After a 12-hour labor on Oct. 14, an unmarried woman named Madonna Ciccone gave birth in Los Angeles to her first child: a healthy, beautiful girl with a headful of black hair.
Newspapers trumpeted the event, TV reports theorized what brand of bootees the infant might wear and MTV ran continuous Madonna videos in honor of the birth.
After 12 hours of labor on the same day here in Washington, an unmarried woman named Danielle Epps gave birth to her first baby: a healthy, beautiful boy, also with a headful of black hair.
Except for Epps’ family and friends, few noticed.
Why would they? Epps is a freshman at Bowie State College and a part-time employee at a local TV station not a celebrity whose comings and goings are media events. She isn’t a star who can announce she’s having a baby outside of marriage and receive the media’s - and much of society’s - blessing.
Epps is just another scared young woman whose sporadic use of birth control caught up with her. She’s yet another single mom who, just two weeks after her son’s birth, is starting to realize what she’s gotten into.
“I was so spoiled,” Epps, 18, says of the days when sleeping late, hanging out with her boyfriend of two years and focusing on classes were easy things to do.
Now, however, life consists of “getting up in the middle of the night, maybe three, four times - I’ve never been so sleepy,” she says. “Worrying about if (the baby) is getting enough to eat. … I never had to worry about anything.”
Epps sat in her robe in her mother’s comfortable suburban town house, staring at her baby. For more than an hour, she sat there, tracing little Robert’s cheek with her finger, looking radiant, like a painting of the original Madonna.
As for the current Madonna, Epps is “happy for her - it seems like she wanted a baby for a long time.”
What concerns Epps - and me - is the surrounding hoopla, which Epps says “glamorized being a single mother.”
The only child of a single mom herself, Epps doesn’t find unwed motherhood wrong. “I just don’t think it’s easy. Unless you’re like Madonna, with unlimited resources, being a single mother is hard.”
Tell me about it. Despite my college degree and decent-paying career, the years I spent raising two sons alone after my first marriage collapsed were my toughest. The increased financial burden, the endless responsibility, the buck always stopping with you - it can wear you out.
And more women are learning that. In 1994, the most recent year for which figures are available, about 1.29 million American babies were born to women out of wedlock. That’s 32.6 percent of births, the highest percentage ever. About two-thirds of women receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children are single mothers, half of whom never have been married.
Compared with many, Epps has it good. She expects to marry her boyfriend, 22, who is employed, joined her in the delivery room and is “very caring” to their baby. Thanks to financial support from him and her mother and to an aunt who will baby-sit, Epps will return next month to work and her studies, which she hopes will lead to a career at the FBI or in law.
“But I’m worried about not being there,” she admits. “I’m thinking I’m going to miss something that happens in his life.”
Suddenly, tears are rolling down her cheeks.
“I just really want to be a mother to him.”
Invariably, life surprises. You think you’re just having a good time - and you end up pregnant. You know abortion is a choice - and discover you’re incapable of choosing it. You plan how to resume your life after a baby - and find your heart gets in the way.
The most joyful thing in your life turns out to be the most difficult.
In many ways, it’s laughable to compare a 38-year-old superstar with a part-time clerk of 18. But both Madonna Ciccone and Danielle Epps are responsible for precious new lives; both, I know, are rethinking all they thought they knew. Babies make you do that.
I wish them the best, but their situations sadden me. Though marriage offers no guarantees and although I know courageous single mothers who are triumphing, I can’t forget the statistics. They show married moms - and their children - fare better.
And not just because of economics. There’s something about promising God, your loved ones and the legal system to be there that helps to keep you there. There’s something about acknowledging that children need both fathers and mothers that shouldn’t be dishonored. Children deserve the best that women - and the men who make babies with them - can give.
More often than not, that’s marriage. Media - and a society - that pretend otherwise about any beautiful baby’s birth are nuts.
No matter how many records its mother has sold.