Make marriage matter more

Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | August 31, 2003 | Jim Wooten

[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.

[Twinkie]

You know how it is. Both parents have to work two jobs,
married or not (four total). Those 3 paks of cigarettes a
day, couple paks Bud Light every night, not to mention
those expensive tattoo essential works of body art, plus
the usual five or six body piercings that require multiple
changes of gold studs and rings are all expensive habits
to maintain. Don't forget the leather duds necessary to
carry off the disgusting tough image that's needed in order
to put the right example in front of the kid as it is
growing up. Oh yeah, the Coke, liquid and powder, and
weed can run up there, too, it that's in the mix.