Posted on 01/05/2003 10:47:21 AM PST by Jean S
Daniel Patrick Moynihan remarked recently that the biggest change in American life during the last half-century has been in the family. Of all people, he should know. It was Moynihan who, as a member of Lyndon B. Johnson's administration in 1965, analyzed the trends of marriage and childbearing in the black family and found a troubling pattern of fatherlessness and family disintegration.
Moynihan's call for a broad-based program of social and economic measures focused on the problem of joblessness was lost in the controversy he created with his characterization of the black family. He decried the number of black children being raised out of wedlock - one of every three - and warned that family breakdown would hamper blacks' economic and social progress.
Some prophets have bad timing. What Moynihan decried for one minority group is now the norm: One-third of all American children are born outside of marriage, and the well-being of children is now undeniably affected by the breakdown in the family.
It has taken more than 35 years, but there is a growing consensus that the issues Moynihan put on the table touch at the central question of American life: How do we strengthen marriage as the primary social institution to rear children? Liberals, in particular, heard the wake-up call this past year. No longer confined to the outer reaches of the religious right, the "marriage movement" is moving to center stage, as those on the political left are belatedly adding their voices to this necessary debate.
One example, of many: The National Council on Family Relations, an organization for academic researchers and practitioners, had been so skittish about discussing marriage that some members stopped attending its annual meeting. Not anymore. Last year, there were several panels addressing marriage, and this year's entire conference will be devoted to the subject.
It was conservatives who first framed marriage as a moral matter. (Remember Dan Quayle's clumsy but now famous speech decrying the single motherhood of TV sitcom character Murphy Brown?) It became convenient for liberals to scoff at Quayle's moralizing without peering more closely at the truth tucked into his remarks: Children are best raised by two parents in a happy, stable marriage.
Most people - even most poor, unmarried people - want to marry. Kathryn Edin, an associate professor of sociology at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, interviewed 75 "fragile families" in three cities and found that the desire for marriage was very strong. "In some ways, I didn't want to believe it," she said on "Frontline" in November. "But it was really there."
Trouble is, the traditional conservative approach to the families in Edin's study - that embracing marriage is only a matter of moral choice - doesn't speak to the real obstacles standing in their way. Those single moms and absent dads are not resisting wedlock exclusively out of moral turpitude. Larger economic and cultural forces can thwart even the most fervent will to walk down the aisle.
That's why liberals need to be part of this debate, to recognize this is both a private and a public issue, shaped by individual values and economic factors.
No one seems to agree, at least now, on what exactly should be done. In a sweet irony, it is conservatives who are pushing for government intervention - nationally, with $300 million in welfare money to fund pro-marriage initiatives, or locally in states such as Oklahoma, home to America's second-highest divorce rate, where welfare recipients must take classes in "relationship skills."
The fevered talk and experimentation will undoubtedly engender as many flops as there are failed marriages. The delicate line between expressing value judgments and heaping shame must be placed under 24-hour watch. Promoting marriage as a sacred and sensible social institution need not lead us to the past. Just because Pat Moynihan was early for his time doesn't mean we shouldn't listen to him now.
Philadelphia Inquirer
Lyndon Johnson's so-called, Great Society, that included AFDC, was a good intention that helped pave the road to h*ll for black people in our country. It was a crime committed against the blacks, exceded only by slavery.
Was a vote buy ala FDR. Many black people I know did not surcome the something for nothing lure and have stable families. Most of these people are from the South and are working to middle class.
Not without having big arguments about it. But it's easy to come up with economic factors. When AFDC was in place (and similar programs still are) the combination of cash and in-kind benefits available to the mother and the child exceeded by tens of thousands of dollars per year the best that a guy in that position could hope to bring home. His kid was actually better off financially -- and by a lot -- if he disappeared.
Somebody once calculated the cash value of all the goodies available to a single mother under AFDC, WIC, Food Stamps, the housing programs, the medical programs, etc. at something over $48,000 per year. What 19-year-old ghetto kid can bring that home, after taxes? It was as if the government were saying, "Get lost, kid, we don't need you here."
Two, sometimes three generations of families were rasied under that system. They knew nothing else. Are there 'cultural factors' now? You betcha. Two generations of men do not even have the concept of 'father' in their minds. They don't know what one does. They've never seen it.
The damage done by those programs was enormous. Liberals should hang their heads in shame over what they did there. It will take decades to crawl out of the mess they created.
After living five years as a widow, sometimes I think I'll probably never be married again... and that makes me sad. I can handle singleness better if I think of it as a temporary state.
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