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Lithuania considering turning single parents into second-class citizens

Jill

This sounds like horrendous legislation.

The Lithuanian Parliament is currently weighing an unprecedented bill that would legally redefine the concept of family and that would establish a government-sanctioned concept of family limited exclusively to the traditional notion of a married man and woman and their children. With the stroke of a pen, this new concept of the Lithuanian family would relegate other family forms-single mothers and fathers raising children, unmarried partners raising children, and grandparents caring for their grandchildren-to second-class status.

Demographic analysis demonstrates that the structure of the Lithuanian family is changing. In 2005, almost a third of all children were born to unmarried parents living as partners. The same year, the number of divorces per 100 marriages hit 56. This is evidence of the growing number of single parents, who in 98 percent of cases are women. Until recently, high unemployment in Lithuania also encouraged migration, and half of all workers who emigrated in 2005 were married men or women. As a result a new family structure-the long-distance family-emerged. A poll conducted in 2006 showed that all these different family forms are considered as families by a majority of Lithuanians. However, the new concept of family would have practical implications, as it could ostensibly be used to prevent nontraditional families from receiving the same level of government assistance and from benefiting from government programs meant to support and strengthen the family.

This bill, the first of its kind in Europe, has been applauded as a breakthrough by the Catholic Church and conservative politicians.

You mean conservatives and the Catholic Church support something under the guise of “family values” that is, in reality, really really bad for families and children? Well knock me over with a feather.

Contact information for members of the Lithuanian parliament is here. Email and tell them that the international community opposes turning women and members of non-traditional families into second-class citizens.

Thanks to Natalia for the link.

17 thoughts on Lithuania considering turning single parents into second-class citizens

  1. The link on Natalia’s name is not working.
    Lithuania’s record in gay rights is pretty horrendous too. Sadly, I don’t really know enough about the country’s politics to know what drives this, since it seems to be a bit more extreme than even Poland.

  3. This bill, the first of its kind in Europe, has been applauded as a breakthrough by the Catholic Church and conservative politicians.

    This is ridiculous. It’s completely ideological, and has nothing to do with being pro-family.

    Not surprisingly perhaps, Lithuania appears to be one of the more reactionary countries in europe. Ranked 42nd in the world, in terms of the ratio of women who serve in their national parliament. 22% of their parliament is comprised of women (sadly, the united states is worse than that).

    http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm

  4. The thing that saddens me about this approach to the family is that, while it might make practical sense (I was raised by a single mother myself and while she did a great job with me and my sister, it would have been far easier for her with someone else around, whether partner, friend or other family-member), it never takes happiness into account. Divorced couples likely get divorced for a good reason and though the upheaval might affect a child, is that not preferable to being brought up by parents who just don’t love each-other anymore?

  5. Sadly, even before divorce was common, single mothers were. One thing that a lot of ‘family values’ rhetoric ignore is that divorce merely legally recognizes the unfortunate truth that not all married couples can stay living together and raising children together. Partners leave – what then? In societies that don’t allow divorce, single mothers can’t marry again and have no guarantee of financial support from an absent or abusive husband. Laws should be made to protect members of a society, not to legislate morality.

  6. I’ll just say that in Lithuania things are a bit different now. Many lower class women, unable to find even the basest employment in Lithuania, leave the country with the promise of money, usually elsewhere in the EU, as migrant workers, restaurant/pub workers, and worse. Given the people they are mingling with, you can imagine that when they get pregnant and cannot continue to work abroad, they can only return home to Lithuania.
    Should the country of the parent enforce the father to contribute, or just throw the burden on such a small country like Lithuania? I know for a fact that kids who are half-white, and half-“other” don’t do so well in Lithuania, even in the bigger cities. Poland has many more other-than-white kids and people than Lithuania, and even that isn’t anywhere near the cosmopolitan environs of Boise or Salt Lake City.
    Lithuania is a country of relatives, being in that if you don’t have relatives there, it will be extremely hard to get a decent job. If you don’t fit in, you go abroad. That’s all. You usually don’t come back, because your space is gone.
    While I don’t like Lithuania’s soviet attitude toward homosexuals and others, I do know that as a white person, I don’t go to certain countries in africa. For the same reasons, if I weren’t white, I wouldn’t go to Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, or even most of Russia.
    There are “good” reasons why people want this kind of law to be, Lithuania is a country of tradition, not a despicable and easily disposable ruling “elite”, as the past has shown.

  7. There’s an argument against this even the crowd that thinks divorce is terrible and children out of wedlock are evil might understand: how about widows and widowers? If your spouse dies, are you not a single parent?

  8. Hey, people need to learn that actions have consequences. Sure, it will be a bit hard on some, but maybe this will finally make people think twice before being born to unwed parents.

  9. Here’s what one of politicians, proposing the law, said, ‘It is single mother’s choice to become one and society shouldn’t be paying for that choice’. Having in mind, that abortions are about to be banned in Lithuania too, I guess she means that it is some 12-year old’s choice to be raped and impregnated.

    Also, the domestic violence law was passed over, stating that there is no domestic violence in Lithuania. Just general violence. Although two thirds of all women dying every year are killed at home.

    To Mike: 80% of Lithuanians are opposed to this and abortion-ban law. There is no good reason for this kind of law. But, yes, I agree, Lithuania is a country of tradition. Tradition of women rape and abuse, violence against children and intolerance of anything that is not male, white, straight and catholic.

  10. Politicians in Lithuania are trying to push such conservative laws every four years. Just before the election, since catholic church gives support to parties which initiate them. Period.

  11. This is the kind of random sourceless blogging I expect to find on right-wing blogs, not here!

    There’s no date on this information. There’s no context. There’s no link to the news source where it was found. There’s not even a link to the blog where you read it first, only a means of e-mailing the blogger who herself told you.

    Without the framing information, this is nothing but scaremongering.

  12. Thanks for posting, Jill. My last name is Antonova.

    The link above my name takes you to the Russian feminist community where this was posted. I personally had no reason to distrust the woman who posted this, since her activist contacts in Eastern Europe are solid and she’s not some spewing reactionary type. I haven’t seen anything about this in the English-language news, but I hardly ever see Lithuania in the English-language news in general. When the Ukrainian president made sexist comments about women, it didn’t hit the headlines in the West either.

    Here’s a news news source in Russian, about a liberal politician’s reaction to the proposed re-definition of family. Since I can’t read Lithuanian, this is presently the best I can do.

    I’d like to note that the conservatives are not in majority power in Lithuania, so the likelihood of this legislature passing is slim, from what I understand. If someone wishes to correct me on this point, it would be most welcome.

    The problem is religious figures using “baby steps” to erode women’s rights. It’s a sneaky approach.

  14. Also, (previous comment in moderation, this one will probably go there as welll), here’s an article, in Russian, on the proposed re-definition of family. The politician quoted in it mentions protests.

  15. This is the kind of random sourceless blogging I expect to find on right-wing blogs, not here!

    Yeah, that’s because I put this post up in a hurry and forgot to include the link in the opening line. I did include it in the contact information (there’s a link to the word “here”), so it isn’t actually totally unsourced. I’ll add it in at the beginning.

    And Natalia, sorry for fucking up your name! That’s what I get when I type it quickly instead of coying and pasting. That’s fixed now, too.

  17. poor Lithuania…

    you have been so fucked up by the Catholic church…

    i have written a couple of compare/contrast papers on Lithuania (vs. Russia and vs. Poland, specifically). its kinda… weird, all told… so many centuries of competition with Poland… decades of abuse by Soviets (and yes, that was ABUSE.) and now… the Church again.

    i don’t actally mind religion. i mind religion buying the political process. as it does in Lithuania. and here. and everywhere damnit.

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