Posted on 08/30/2003 4:17:23 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
While the black family disintegrates, with two-thirds of children born to single women and only a third of adults married, the state of Georgia struggles desperately and often ineffectively with the consequences.
The child welfare system is again under assault following the deaths of two children. Inquiry is, of course, essential. But in all these tragedies, the failing comes down to a caseworker who should have been wiser, smarter or more attentive.
But with 14,494 children in state custody as of June, we are asking state employees to be omniscient who are, under the best of circumstances, poor substitutes for parents and only occasional intervenors into the children's lives. They're also asked to be appropriately respectful of parental rights.
Even when such a system is designed, staffed and managed to perfection, it will succeed only in keeping alive children who have been abused by the manner of their birth.
Not all children in the state's custody are the sad victims of never-formed families, but there is a correlation between the fate of children and decisions by adults not to marry.
Blacks are disproportionately represented in prisons, in children who fall into state custody and in academic unpreparedness, as demonstrated last week by Georgia's 183-point difference between scores of black and white students on the SAT. In each instance, it is possible to blame discrimination -- and that is customarily done.
But while discrimination may or may not be a contributing cause, the never-formed two-parent family disproportionately damages black children.
Georgia's population is 28.7 percent black, 65.1 percent white. Its prison population is 63.6 percent black, 35.9 percent white. About half the prison population was convicted of sex and other violent crimes. About half were raised in homes without fathers.
Another study released last week by the Justice Policy Institute, a left-of-center advocacy organization for prison alternatives, found something intuitively obvious: A strong relationship exists between school dropouts and imprisonment. By the time they were in their early 30s, the institute reported, 13 percent of white male dropouts had prison records, but an astonishing 52 percent of black males did.
And there is the child welfare system. Of the 14,494 children in state custody, 54.8 percent are black and 46.1 percent white. When a child dies, it is usually one raised by a mother or grandmother with a non-parent male present, usually as the abuser.
The never-formed family, then, is a grave national problem, pushing children into an education and social service system that will remain woefully inadequate to deal with the broken lives. When the teacher is expected to perform both as the absent parent teaching values and as the front-line education professional while supervising a class that also includes special education and second-language students, well, it simply can't be done to the public's needs.
What to do? Change the non-marriage culture, obviously. Government has a role. Every public policy, every tax incentive and bully pulpit should be employed to encourage heterosexual marriage and to discourage efforts to make it just another acceptable lifestyle choice. It should, too, aggressively pursue fathers and hold them at least financially responsible.
Hollywood has a role. If it's irresponsible to show adults smoking, then surely people of judgment would recognize the worse harm caused by depicting children as toys for adults.
Reporters have a role, too. We just assume fathers won't be present or part of the solution and rarely explain where they are or why they're not being held responsible.
And of course, all of us have a role. Every conversation needs one person who volunteers that it's not OK to make babies for sport, one person who encourages marriage.
The public systems now are trying to repair the broken lives. And they're overwhelmed. They can't do it.
Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
Let's look at poverty in female-headed households. Divorce and death of the father might explain a small part of why there are so many female-headed households. But the bulk of it is explained by people having children and not getting married in the first place.
Having children is not an act of God. It's not like you're walking down the street and pregnancy strikes you; children are a result of a conscious decision. For the most part, female-headed households are the result of shortsighted, self-destructive behavior of one or two people. They might have bought into the nonsense of "experts" like John Hopkins University sociologist Professor Andrew Cherlin, who said, "It has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes." The real issue, according to Mr. Cherlin, "is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income." That's a call for fathers to be replaced by a government welfare check. ***
A cry in the black education wilderness***The great disappointment of my ongoing crusade to foment a revolution in black education has been the lack of a response, and even hostility, from black leaders in this community. Naturally, I expected everyone to drop what they were doing and hop onto my education movement bandwagon. ***
Yes indeed they are. In a socialist's world view (and religion), government must be the answer to all things. And all the things on your list undermine that goal.
Much was made by reporters and other Democrats, when Dan Quayle was named to the 1988 Republican ticket, of the fact that although Senator Quayle was hawkish he had joined the National Guard rather than upping for Vietnam. The apt rejoinder to that is, "But at the time, you told Mr. Quayle not to go to Vietnam, didn't you?"Well, the same principle holds here. Reporters are far too busy telling men to be irresponsible and telling women to have abortions to be have any moral authority to preach responsibility to anyone.
Bump!
The under-emphasized factor in practically all the abuse deaths we see in the news - the most dangerous person in the world to a young child is the mother's live-in boyfriend.
Check this out. Another "victimized" youth group reaching out to a commie.
Daniel Yang, a delegate of the Native American Movement, performs during an religious ceremony at a news conference at the International Press Center on Friday August 29, 2003, in Havana Cuba. Yang, the leader of the youth movement visiting the island, honored Cuban President Fidel Castro with an 'eagle feather', the highest Native American distinction. (AP Photo/Cristobal Herrera)
Powerful commentary.
As I started reading it , it immediately reminded of me of several people that firmly believe that my daughter should be removed from my custody because her father and I are unfit parents. And then I saw this:
Hollywood has a role. If it's irresponsible to show adults smoking, then surely people of judgment would recognize the worse harm caused by depicting children as toys for adults.
Yes, that it why these people believe it is far better for her to be in state custody - her parents smoke.
My husband has a good job, we have a roof over our heads, food on the table, we are not alcoholics or drug addicts, we are not abusive and we are married and were married before we chose to become parents.
Any thinking person who looks at the numbers in this article will think twice about the removal of children from married two-parent families for frivolous reasons. The "state" has a pretty poor track record for being parents.
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