John Leo: All in the Family

TownHall.com ^ | September 26, 2005 | John Leo

[Tolik]

It took the media a while to acknowledge that most of Katrina's victims were black. Apparently, it will take longer to mention that most of the victims were women and children. I noticed three commentators who brought up the delicate subject of the mostly missing males--George Will, Gary Bauer, and Thomas Bray, a columnist for the Detroit News. Will noted that 76 percent of births to Louisiana's African-Americans are to unmarried women, and probably more than 80 percent in New Orleans, since that is the usual estimate in other inner cities. Will wrote: "That translates into a large and constantly renewed cohort of lightly parented adolescent males, and that translates into chaos, in neighborhoods and schools, come rain or come shine."

        A good deal of hard evidence shows that this is so. Two decades of research produced a consensus among social scientists of both left and right that family structure has a serious impact on children, even when controlling for income, race, and other variables. In other words, we are not talking about a problem of race but about a problem of family formation or, rather, the lack of it. The best outcomes for children--whether in academic performance, avoidance of crime and drugs, or financial and economic success--are almost invariably produced by married biological parents. The worst results are by never-married women.

        High crime. In a policy brief released last week, the Washington-based Institute for Marriage and Public Policy looked at 23 recent studies dealing with family structure and youth crime. In 19 of the 20 studies that found family structure to have an effect, children from nonintact or single-parent families had a higher rate of crime or delinquency. Neighborhoods with lots of out-of-wedlock births have lots of crime. Ominously, one study said that the more single-parent families there were in a neighborhood, the more crime there was among two-parent kids living around them. Again, these studies are controlled for race.

        Among the other findings:

• Adolescents in single-parent families were almost twice as likely to have pulled a knife or a gun on someone in the past year. This was after controlling for many demographic variables, including race, gender, age, household income, and educational level of parents.
• In a large sample of students in 315 classrooms in 11 cities, the "single most important variable" in gang involvement was found to be family structure. In other words, the greater the number of parents at home, the lower the level of gang involvement. A study of American Indian families found that living in a two-parent family reduced gang involvement by more than 50 percent.
• Another study concluded that out-of-wedlock childbearing had a large effect on the rate of arrests for murder, an effect that "seems to have gotten stronger over time."
• "Adolescents in married, two-biological-parent families generally fare better than children in any of the family types examined here," one study reported. The other family types studied were single mother, cohabiting stepfather, and married stepfather families.
• One study, judged most important by the institute, found that divorce rates had no relationship to violent crime rates but that out-of-wedlock births had a strong relationship to youth crime--nearly 90 percent of the increase in violent crime between 1973 and 1995 was accounted for by the rise in out-of-wedlock births.

        The upshot of these studies is that America is confronted by a form of poverty that money alone can't cure. Many of us think social breakdown is a result of racism and poverty. Yes, they are factors, but study after study shows that alterations in norms and values are at the heart of economic and behavioral troubles. That's why so much research boils down to the old rule: If you want to avoid poverty, finish high school, don't have kids in your teens, and get married.

        But the conventional wisdom is determined to ignore the evidence. It holds that family fragmentation--sorry, diverse family forms--is positive and here to stay. Peggy Drexler, the author of a new book, Raising Boys Without Men, says people who promote intact families are playing a "blame game" against single mothers. She thinks eating dinner regularly with your children is more important than the number or gender of adults in the home. And boys, according to Drexler, have an innate ability to become men, even without a man in the house. (But if boys can raise themselves, why should any father stick around?) The book carries blurbs from various establishment figures. Why not? Her ideas are ordinary ones among our elites.

[Tolik]

John Leo:

... Two decades of research produced a consensus among social scientists of both left and right that family structure has a serious impact on children, even when controlling for income, race, and other variables. In other words, we are not talking about a problem of race but about a problem of family formation or, rather, the lack of it. The best outcomes for children--whether in academic performance, avoidance of crime and drugs, or financial and economic success--are almost invariably produced by married biological parents. The worst results are by never-married women.

... The upshot of these studies is that America is confronted by a form of poverty that money alone can't cure. Many of us think social breakdown is a result of racism and poverty. Yes, they are factors, but study after study shows that alterations in norms and values are at the heart of economic and behavioral troubles. That's why so much research boils down to the old rule: If you want to avoid poverty, finish high school, don't have kids in your teens, and get married.

Nailed It!

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[dirknowitzki]

What is extremely intersting is if you look at the out of wedlock birth rates among the main ethnic groups in the US you will find that a perfect negative correlation exists with IQ scores.

Rank of percentage of out of wedlock births (hi to low)
African-American
Hispanic
White
Asian-American

Rank of IQ scores (hi to low)
Asian-American
White
Hispanic
African-American

Also when you look into the groups and look at the subgroups you will find the same thing as Japanese and Chinese, and Indian Americans have the higher IQ scores and lower out of wedlock birth rates than those found among Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese Americans who have higher out of wedlock birth rates.

Family structure is probably the single most important environmental factor with regard to IQ and genetic factors are the most important overall as studies of identical twins raised apart have shown that those twins correlate on IQ scores at about .80 and that the identical twin's IQ scores have absolutely no significant correlation to their adopted parents or step sibling's IQ scores...

[starfish923]

If you listen to some people, this dyfunction of ONE minoirity race's family, economic and educational life in a country world renown for its wealth, it will be the fault of the dominant race.
According to THOSE people, THAT is the only answer for the abyssmal out-of-wedlock birth rate and the other benchmarkers of failure: crime, drugs, incarceration, poor educational achievements, divorce, welfare, disease and so on down the list.

[starfish923]

That's why so much research boils down to the old rule: If you want to avoid poverty, finish high school, don't have kids in your teens, and get married.

*** Get a job.

*** Keep it.

[FreedomPoster]

Actually, the government programs that lead to much of this dysfunction, were largely the doing of the dominant race, of course with plenty of electoral help from the minority race. Thank you LBJ, et al.

[FreedomPoster]

Boortz hits that simple list for avoiding poverty about weekly on his talk show.

[Night Hides Not]

My dad and stepfather were both positive influences on me as a youngster: I knew that if I was disrespectful, or messed up in other ways, they had the capability to kick my a$$. Not that it ever happened, but knowing the "nuclear option" was there was a great motivator.

Recently, my 16 year old son decided he was going to test me, by first disrespecting his mother, then me. I simply picked him up by firmly grabbing his t-shirt at the shoulders and deposited him on the floor a couple of feet from where he was sitting.

The message was sent, and understood (for how long remains to be seen): his old man still has the ability to employ the nuclear option when necessary. We had an excellent conversation about it the next day.

My son admitted he was not hurt, but boy was he surprised!

"A son does not learn how to become a son until he becomes a father." Ambrose Bierce

Belated thanks to my father and stepfather..may they rest in peace.

[marlon]

Hey you're lucky the police weren't at your door. I once swated my step-daughter on the leg with a belt, not that hard and with thru blue jeans I may add, after she kicked her mother and pulled her hair.

Much to my surprise she dialed 911,as she was instructed to do at school, and the next thing I know there are 5 cop cars converging on my front lawn!

[Night Hides Not]

So how did it turn out?

I think my kids know that the coroner would be called if they physically abused their mother.

AFAIK, we call it "justifiable homicide" in Texas.

You reminded me of the time my mom really laid into me when I was in second grade. Upon learning that I had hit a girl with a rock (it was a "lucky shot" from 40 feet, i.e. she received a slight cut), my mom let me have it with various houshold implements, to include my cowboy holster, for an extended period of time.

Nowadays, she would have been jailed. Back then, it was good parenting. Hey, I survived to tell the tale without stitches, and I NEVER threw rocks at girls again. Looking back on it, I deserved a good butt kicking over that.

[RobbyS]

As the Louisiana delegation salivates at the prospect of an open federal purse we must consider: DO we want New Orleans to fill up with all of those who were flooded out?

[Mrs Zip]

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