Clarence Page

About the author: Clarence Page is a syndicated columnist for the Chicago Tribune.

Society often blames unwed mothers for causing poverty and raising violent and underachieving children. Unwed mothers can raise children as successfully as two-parent families can. The number of parents a child has matters far less than the quality of parenting he or she receives. Teenage unwed mothers should be given help to become good parents and to avoid poverty.

Put the word "unwed" together with "mother" and suddenly you have a convenient target to blame for just about everything that ails modern American life.

Former Vice President Dan Quayle sounded pretty lonely in 1992 when, in a speech about urban unrest, he castigated television's "Murphy Brown" for encouraging the notion that unwed motherhood was "just another life-style choice...