On the Benefits of Social Stigma

David C. Stolinsky, M.D., who is of the Jewish faith, lives in Los Angeles. He is semi-retired after 25 years of medical school teaching at the University of California at San Francisco and the University of Southern California. 

Not long ago, three young adults in Florida received long prison terms for removing stop signs from a road. Why such severity? The lack of road signs contributed to a fatal collision in which three teenagers died. There was much righteous anger at the irresponsible young adults. But something about the discussion struck me as hollow, even hypocritical. Is it farfetched to suggest that these thoughtless vandals on that road in Florida were only imitating us, their thoughtful elders?

For a generation now we have been busy removing crucial signs from the winding and dangerous road of life. Hoping to be nonjudgmental, wishing to increase freedom, believing even that we were being compassionate, we have almost systematically deprived the young and inexperienced of much of the benefit of our experience. Life holds as many sharp curves, steep grades, and hazardous intersections as ever, but we have conspired to render them unmarked.

For example, we removed most of the signs that warned teenagers of the dangers of premature sex and pregnancy. When I went to school in the 1950s, only one girl became pregnant in six years of junior and senior high. Pregnant girls had to leave school and go live with relatives or attend Continuation School, where returning dropouts went. There was stigma attached to unmarried pregnancy. This was hard on pregnant girls, but because of it there were far fewer of them.

There was little sex education then, but there also was little teenage pregnancy. Pregnancy rates rose as sex education increased, but this unhappy fact has not dampened our enthusiasm for sex education. Indeed, we are convinced that high teen pregnancy rates mean that even more sex education is needed.

Past generations would not have dreamed of rewarding pregnant teenagers with government checks, with which they could afford their own apartments. Pregnant girls had to live with relatives, which was difficult, or at homes for unwed mothers, which was embarrassing. The responsible boy was usually given a very hard time by his family, if not the court. In some states, birth certificates bore a notation that the baby was illegitimate. Stigmatizing a child seems unjust, but the effect was to add to the mother’s stigma. There were, in short, penalties rather than rewards.

Moreover, abortion was unsafe, illegal, and rare. Some women were killed or injured by illegal abortions — a terrible price to pay. But maybe that’s one reason why there were so few abortions. On the other hand, adoption was encouraged. Most cities had places — e.g., a St. Anne’s home — where pregnant girls could stay and have their babies delivered. Then, as now, there were many couples eager to adopt newborns. There is now a waiting list for every newborn, regardless of race or state of health. This fact is often denied, which makes one wonder why “freedom of choice” refers only to abortion, not adoption.

We have removed the signs saying, “Danger: Pregnancy,” “Stigma Ahead,” “Adoption This Way,” and “Abortion Prohibited,” and then we pretend surprise when teen pregnancy rates soar. We hand out condoms to middle-school students and teach them how to use them. The message we are sending is, “Have safe sex,” but the message teens hear is often, “Have sex.” Films and television shows and novels are filled with sex between unmarried partners. Teens who wish to wait until they are married are often made to feel they are in a weird minority. (Curiously, in this case stigma has not actually been removed; it has been shifted from the promiscuous to the abstinent.)

Studies show that teaching kids to avoid dangerous things — e.g., hard drugs — can have a deterring effect, while teaching them in a value-neutral manner about mildly dangerous but intriguing things — e.g., sex — has the opposite effect of increasing the behavior in question as well as all the attendant problems. But who believes studies when they refute prevalent biases?

Adolescence is a difficult time; finding one’s identity is not easy. Past generations of teens were guided along this path by a host of signs, both explicit and implicit, which told them that the ideal was marriage — and, of course, heterosexuality. These signs warned that pain, and sometimes persecution, lay ahead for teens unable or unwilling to follow the road they indicated. We now realize that biology may impel some to homosexual feelings. But what about the many young people whose sexual orientation is still unformed? They are deprived of the guidance that signs provided, and are taught instead that homosexuality and heterosexuality are equally desirable. Some are taught details of homosexual behavior. Only one unfamiliar with teens would claim that such descriptions do not induce some to try the behavior. The reported increase in teen bisexual behavior is evidence of this effect. We could teach that heterosexuality and marriage are the ideal, but that it is wrong to look down on those unable to achieve it. That is, we could have removed the road signs that were mainly hurtful, but kept the ones that were mainly helpful. Yet we did not, for fear that any sign at all would be too restrictive.

While removing road signs from private life, we removed them from public life as well. When I went to public school, we had to memorize two verses of the national anthem, the Gettysburg Address, and the Preamble to the Constitution. American history and civics were required courses. National holidays were marked by patriotic music at school and on the radio. My classmates were of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, but we celebrated our ancestors’ cultures at home. At school our books, teachers, assemblies, and even the pictures on the wall reminded us that we were all citizens of one nation. Today all cultures are celebrated equally. In some schools, students march on Flag Day holding the flags of all nations. If young people do not feel like Americans, they may satisfy their need to belong by joining cults, street gangs, or private militias. It is difficult to know where we are when the signpost has been pulled down, and the flagpole as well.

We’ve also removed lots of religious road signs. Go to a liberal Protestant church, a liberal Catholic par
ish, or a Reform Jewish temple, close your eyes, and listen to the sermon. Does it teach how to feel good rather than how to do good? Does it devote sympathy to the 30 to 40 murderers who are executed in America annually while ignoring the 24,000 to 25,000 homicide victims? Does it sound like a political speech? Does it stress protecting the environment from pollution rather than protecting one’s character from pollution? Does it recommend recycling trash instead of discarding it, but not mention recycling babies instead of discarding them (i.e., having them adopted instead of aborted)? Is being judgmental the only action it condemns? Must you open your eyes to remind yourself you’re in a house of worship?

Not content with removing signs from where they belong, we have also placed them where they should not be. We would never put a stop sign in the middle of a long stretch of 70-miles-per-hour freeway. Such a sudden transition would invite fatal crashes. Yet this is just what we are doing in the case of abortion. We teach that a fetus is not a human being, even after nine months of gestation, and that until the head of a full-term, healthy baby actually emerges from the mother, it is perfectly legal to kill him or her. But we then expect the teen to regard a newborn one moment later as a human being with all the rights of a human being. And if this instantaneous, profound, and illogical reversal in attitude is not made, we profess dismay (and indict for murder) when the young mother and father throw their newborn into the trash.

In short, we have removed many of the road signs that helped the inexperienced to find their way. At the same time, we have placed a stop sign in such a way that it is sure to be ignored and cause fatalities. Florida punished the young people who stole the traffic signs — and they caused only three deaths. We have caused many more, as well as untold suffering. In the name of true compassion, we should start replacing some of the signs we have removed from dangerous roads.