Anybody else remember how Dan Quayle was slammed and pilloried by the liberals? He observed that a popular TV show had a character who had a baby without a husband, and how TV was presenting it as just another lifestyle choice.
He was slammed mercilessly by the liberals for his statements about unwed parenting. Ever since, politicos have barely ever touched this subject.
Since it’s politically incorrect to talk about marriage and parenting and how it’s better to raise children in intact families, we’re not allowed to talk about it anymore. The fact that so many children, especially minority children, are brought up in single parent households or ad hoc circumstances, is not allowed by liberals to be discussed as among the problems of ghetto life.
And then a few years later, Candice Bergen basically came out and all but said that Quayle was right.
The media did a hatchet job on Quayle over a number of years; and what is saddest about it, is that had Conservatives taken up that smear job as an issue in and of itself, they could have made considerable progress in waking people up. It is one of the clearest examples from the period of how few really understand tactics.
Of course, the Welfare State has done an immense job of promoting disintegration of the social infrastructure. See How The Welfare State Works.