When politicians, activists, and social commentators talk about inequality, they often leave out the critical role that married parents play in keeping children
Commentary
In a recent
article written by Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, he writes about the response to a question he asked his students via an anonymous online poll, “Is it morally wrong to have a baby outside of marriage?”
Two-thirds of his students answered “no.” Yet, 97 percent said “yes” when he asked a follow-up question, “Do you personally plan to finish your education, work full-time, marry, and then have children?”
While the bulk of Mr. Wilcox’s students come from intact, two-parent, and in many cases, elite families, they have also grown up in a time of moral relativism, resulting in a complete disconnect between their personal choices and a fear of being seen as intolerant or critical of poor choices made by others—choices that not only negatively affect the people involved, but our greater society.
Mr. Wilcox, the author of a new
book, “Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization,” writes, “On family matters, [elites] ‘talk left’ but ‘walk right’—an unusual form of hypocrisy, that, well intended, contributes to American inequality, increases misery, and borders on the immoral.”
This is illustrated by an example that he shares of a survey of California adults between the ages of 18 and 50 with a college or post-college degree. Eighty-five percent agreed that family diversity (meaning everything outside of the traditional two-parent family) should be publicly celebrated, but 68 percent said it was personally important to them to have their own kids in marriage.
Mr. Wilcox
writes: “College-educated educated elites have outsized power over American culture and politics, and on matters of family they are abdicating it. They typically don’t preach what they practice, despite the megaphones they hold in traditional and social media, and elsewhere. Sometimes they preach the opposite, celebrating the practices they privately shun.”
In 2002, the late social scientist James Q. Wilson stated that the U.S. marriage crisis would not be solved “from the top down by government policies, but by personal decisions.” What often occurs with elites such as academics, policymakers, and the entertainment industry is that while they refuse to be critical of bad personal choices, they adopt a “nothing to see here” attitude, or discount the overwhelming evidence that marriage benefits not only individuals but also society.
Instead, they assume that government will just take care of the societal problems caused by a society that has devalued marriage and awarded sexual license—an attitude that only leads to more dysfunction and despair.
So, while Mr. Wilcox’s students might answer “no” to whether it’s “morally wrong to have a baby outside of marriage,” the evidence, and their own personal inclinations, produces a completely different answer.
For instance, young men who grow up in fatherless homes are
twice as likely to end up in jail as those who come from traditional two-parent families.
Secondly, according to the
U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate and need for government assistance for children living with two unmarried parents is similar to the rate of those living in a single-parent home.
When politicians, activists, and social commentators talk about inequality, they often leave out the critical role that married parents play in keeping children above the poverty line. As the Census Bureau data documents, there is plenty of
evidence that the breakdown of marriage, and thus the family, is the primary reason why the gulf between the “have-nots” and the “haves” continues to widen. Married, college-educated couples raise children who, in turn, are successful in life. Meanwhile, the bottom economic half of society are children born out of wedlock or living in a single-parent home.
As Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, writes in his
book, “Marriage Done Right,” “[Marriage] is a sacred union of a man and woman that confers myriad benefits on the spouses, their children, and society at large—benefits that cannot be replicated by any other relationship.”
This is something that elites may understand, but trapped in their web of moral relativism, are fearful to publicly address. But deep down they know what is true: Marriage is not relative; it is essential for children and society to flourish. That’s the lesson that needs to be taught rather than what is presently being preached by those reaping the benefits while either remaining silent on the benefits of marriage or denying them completely.
It is my hope that work such as Mr. Wilcox’s will open their eyes to these truths.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
