All Children Deserve a Chance : Stigmatizing those born out of wedlock makes it politically expedient to deny them rights.

For 14 years now I have been paying Pete Wilson’s salary, and yet this ingrate keeps denigrating me and millions of other taxpayers born out of wedlock as illegitimate. This inherently pejorative description is a favorite of conservatives, and Wilson used it again last week in applauding the Draconian welfare reform bill passed by the House.

Wilson has every right to argue that out-of-wedlock births should be discouraged. Under the best of circumstances, it is harder for a single parent to raise a child, and conditions of poverty can make that task nightmarish. But how does it improve the outlook for such children, their self-esteem, to constantly stigmatize them as illegitimate for a decision made by parents before they were born?

Instead, why doesn’t Wilson refer to such children as “born out of wedlock,” and assure them that they are as legitimate as anyone else in this country, with the same legal rights and entitled to the same opportunities? Why doesn’t he remind them that Alexander Hamilton, the principal author of the Federalist Papers, which conservatives extol, was born out of wedlock? He can cite a long list of achievers from Desiderius Erasmus to Ella Fitzgerald, Jack Nicholson and Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s. Why doesn’t he quote the words of Pope John Paul II that “each and every child is a gift from God,” a sentiment endorsed by virtually every major religious leader?

But despite such noble sentiments, the labeling of people as illegitimate is acceptable usage even by reporters, columnists and the editors of our leading dictionaries. For example, the Random House unabridged dictionary now blithely offers as the first definition of illegitimate: “Born of parents who are not married to each other.” That is followed by other definitions “not legitimate, unlawful, illegal,” which 20 years ago occupied first place.

When challenged, the editors of dictionaries argue that this is just common usage. But if you look up all the familiar hate words for ethnic and racial groups in the Random House dictionary, you will first be warned that the word in question is “slang; disparaging and offensive.” Even WASP, when it refers to a white Anglo Saxon Protestant, carries the same caution. Jesse Jackson was once roundly denounced for referring to Jewish people as “Hymies,” but it’s somehow acceptable to call him “illegitimate” because his parents weren’t married.

The word illegitimate is not only “disparaging and offensive” but it is also inaccurate. What law have we broken? True, there was a time in English common law when we were a despised subcategory of the population with severely limited legal rights particularly as to inheritance. But that is no longer the case, even in England. At 31%, their rate of out-of-wedlock births is actually higher than in this country. England finally had the good sense in 1987 to pass the Family Law Reform Act, which formally ended the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children.

This is a worldwide phenomenon not tied to the peculiarities of the U.S. welfare system. In the United States, out-of-wedlock births among the poor have leveled off in the last two years, while the biggest increase of such births has been to women who are professionals and managers. While much has been made of the fact that 30% of births in the United States are out of wedlock, this is not inconsistent with the experience of other Western countries: It is 29% in Canada, 33% in France, 46% in Denmark and 50% in Sweden.

Conservatives can bemoan this changed reality, but they have no right to punish children for being born into such a world. But that is just what their unrelenting and demeaning attack on “illegitimacy” intends. William Bennett, the self-proclaimed keeper of virtue, has said openly that he wants “greater social stigma” to be attached to “illegitimacy.” But who is being stigmatized? Not the parents, particularly the fathers, who often disown the children, but rather the children themselves. What is the virtue in slandering them?

The political purpose, not the virtue, is clear. At a time when the welfare system is to be eliminated without any serious thought as to what will replace it, it is politically expedient to dismiss the children supported by that program as expendable. Once labeled as illegitimate, they can be dismissed as counterproductive from birth. If we think of them as throwaway children, then undermining their life support system does not suggest a societal loss.

That is an ugly thought, and it is time for the millions of us who surmounted such adversity and now help pay the government’s bills to provide witness that this attitude is not only heartless, but also factually wrong.