My theory is that thanks to the Carter inflation, somewhere in the mid 80's it became almost impossible for a one-earner family to make ends meet. About that time many mothers went to work and dumped their young children off in "day-care". The government has helped that along by providing subsidies - and reaps the benefit of two tax payers in the place of one.
We have a whole generation now that was brought up by other than their birth parents. They were never disciplined properly (or at all); They were never loved properly.
There was a better way.
I believe that a mother’s role in the life of a child (especially a very young child) is more important than anything else in that child’s life. If, in order for a mother to serve as the primary role model and nurturer for her child, avoiding the ‘two salary’ pitfall requires a family to live in even a one-bedroom apartment (rather than a three bedroom picket-fence home), and drive one old car (rather than two new ones), and eat two meager (rather than three abundant) meals a day, then I say that child who spends his early years being lovingly nurtured in a one-bedroom, one-old-car, two-meal-a-day home not only knows deep maternal love in his early years, but he is also learning the valuable, character building lesson of what it means to do without.
Even though, to his day-care-raised classmates, he may appear materially deprived, he is really experiencing the best of both worlds: fulltime parental emotional support and nurturing, and temporary material deprivation. And I truly believe that children raised in somewhat materially deprived conditions tend to build lifelong character, which, in their later years serves them well, and which, more often than not, leads to a strong work ethic, and eventual material success (and appreciation of that success as well).
I like your Carter era theory, but I think it goes back farther, and runs deeper, than that.
If it were necessary to lay the blame for lack of personal responsibility (and the many society-destroying tentacles that that fatal characteristic engenders) at the feet of only one source, I would in all seriousness lay it at the feet of Dr. Benjamin Spock (and, in particular, his mega best-selling child-rearing Bible, Baby and Child Care). That unfortunate book (which spawned many copy-cat leftist, feminist child-rearing publications), is still the best-selling book in North America -- second only to the Bible.
His book was published in, of all times, 1946 – as the postwar baby boom was beginning – so the number of new bodies and minds which were affected by his liberal child-rearing philosophy couldn’t have been greater.
Without going into the gory details of his philosophy on child rearing, the putting into practice of that philosophy by tens of millions of American families, both immediately post-war, and for the decades that followed (up to this very day) has contributed more to a generation (and now two) of callous, me-oriented, irresponsible adult human beings than any other factor in our history.
As Robert Bork observed in his Slouching Towards Gomorrah, ‘every new generation constitutes a wave of savages who must be civilized by their families, schools, and churches.’ Beginning post-war, and continuing to reverberate like a eternal, mocking gong, Spock, and his baby care bible, instructed American parents not to civilize their children, but to teach them that (1) there is no work/reward correlation, (2) they are the center of their world and others’ wants and needs are pretty much irrelevant, and (3) men and women are really not all that different from each other (although, due to negative societal stereotypes, men tend to wield too much power over women and children).
Those who read, and accepted those theories presented in, his book learned to ignore the beautiful instinctual aspect of parenting, and following the fabricated (leftist) intellectuall parenting mantra.
Those who read, and accepted those theories presented in, his book learned to raise narcissistic children who had little or no sense of responsibility, and who knew few or no repercussions as a result of aberrant/lazy/destructive/self-centered behavior. When such children grow into adulthood, and are passed the national moral and ethical leadership baton (witness the Clinton coterie), the nation whose future rests on their particular brand of superficial, self-oriented, lacking-in-knowledge-or-appreciation-of-their-roots decision-making and example is in grave peril.
To borrow .... and bend .... a phrase from Lincoln (spoken in another context, but appropriate here as well), such a nation cannot long endure ....