We can stop the cycle of poverty, despair, and even more broken lives simply by returning to a society that sees marriage as a decision that benefits all.
Commentary
On May 19, 1992, then-Vice President Dan Quayle gave a
speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in which he said: “Ultimately, however, marriage is a moral issue that requires cultural consensus and the use of social sanctions. Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong, and we must be unequivocal about this.
“It doesn’t help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.”
Within minutes, leftist elites, especially those in Hollywood and academia, descended on the vice president with self-righteous scorn for saying what the research was rapidly showing, even then: that children born in two-parent families, with a father and a mother in the home, do empirically better in life than those raised in single-parent families, with nary a male influence in sight.
I mention the Quayle speech because in recent weeks, as rates of single parents continue to rise with more than 40 percent of children
born out of wedlock and research continues to document how children in two-parent married families do appreciably better than those raised in single-parent homes, the same left that castigated Mr. Quayle for his comments is, grudgingly, coming to agreement with him.
Sadly, the United States now has the highest
rate of single-parent homes in the world. And most of that shift hasn’t come among the highly educated elite, who seem to be marrying and having children, but among those on the lower end of the economic spectrum who are the ultimate victims of the “anything goes” mentality toward marriage that these elites profess but actually don’t practice in real life.
But the ramifications of nonintact families are so startling that it’s now transcending political ideology.
According to the
Institute for Family Studies, 40 percent of millennials who grew up in two-parent intact families graduated from college, compared with just 17 percent in nonintact families. When they got to their mid-30s, 77 percent of millennials who grew up with two parents in an intact family had reached the middle class or higher, compared with 57 percent of those raised in a single-parent home.
In a recent piece in The New York Times, Melissa Kearney, an economics professor at the University of Maryland and author of a new book, “The Two-Parent Privilege,”
wrote: “Children from single-parent homes have more behavioral problems, are more likely to get in trouble in school or with the law, achieve lower levels of education and tend to earn lower incomes in adulthood. Boys from homes without dads present are particularly prone to getting in trouble in school or with the law.”
Nicholas Kristof, a noted liberal columnist, also for The New York Times,
said: “Children in single-mother homes are less likely to graduate from high school or earn a college degree. They are more likely to become single parents themselves, perpetuating the cycle.”
Even The Washington Post agrees, albeit reluctantly, that marriage makes a difference in the lives of children. Columnist Megan McArdle
wrote: “If we want to build a healthy society in which everyone has the best possible chance to flourish, we need to be able to say that bad things are bad. ... Let’s talk about family structure. The evidence is overwhelming that the decline of marriage over the past few decades has been very bad for children and, by extension, for society.”
And the answer to creating more two-parent homes doesn’t rest with the federal government, but through personal responsibility, as Ron Haskins of the center-left Brookings Institution
said: “To mount an effective war against poverty, we need changes in the personal decisions of more young Americans. Unless young people get more education, work more, and stop having babies outside marriage, government spending will be minimally effective in fighting poverty.”
That’s the exact type of personal responsibility that Mr. Quayle referred to and was mocked for back in 1992. Yet it’s that type of personal responsibility that will restore hope to future generations if current Americans realize the importance of marriage and family stability ahead of personal pleasure and autonomy.
We can stop the cycle of poverty, despair, and even more broken lives simply by returning to a society that sees marriage not as just another “lifestyle choice” but an imperative decision that benefits all involved, including our society.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
