If you read no other story tonight, or early this week, read this one from Saturday's New York Times. In it, two women who started from similar positions in life find themselves a few years down the line in dramatically different positions. The culprit? Marriage, or more correctly, the failure to marry. Read closely, as you find the NYT figuring out (finally) that the dreaded "income inequality" and "decline of the middle class" has not actually been a plague visited upon our society by depredations of the 1%; rather, they are in no small measure the result of the explosion in out of wedlock births to women of all races.
Are there men to be blamed here? Yes, indeed. But in these days of ridiculously inexpensive birth control, the accumulation of out of wedlock children (above the first in a relationship) seems somewhat preventable. Additionally, this "lack of marriageable men" phenomena must in some way be enabled by the easy availability of commitment-free sex, reinforcing their status as not worthy of marriage.
Here's Mitt Romney--speaking the truth before the NAACP: "A study from the Brookings Institution has shown that for those who
graduate from high school, get a full-time job, and wait until 21 before
they marry and then have their first child, the probability of being
poor is two percent. And if those factors are absent, the probability of
being poor is 76 percent."
Yes folks, that's Brookings--as in left of center. Was the NAACP listening? Will they go back into their communities and "preach" this gospel? One hopes, but one would likely be disappointed.
When George Bush and Karen Hughes said these things, they were sneered at by the liberal intelligentsia. Hell, when Dan Quayle said it, he was vilified. Perhaps now that the NYT has said it, liberals and Democrats (why, I repeat myself) will listen.
School - job - marriage - kids. In that order. Working with young soldiers and sailors, I see that the struggles come when you try to do them out of order, (doing college as a working mom) or, most of all, omit the marriage piece.
ReplyDeleteI am not holding out hope that the NYT readership will accept these truths. Despite this well-written, researched, and thoughtful, insightful article outlining the imporance of marriage and the blindingly obvious economic (two people funding one household) and workload (two parents to divide to-do lists) benefits, the comments section - "NYT Picks" in particular, is rife with statist (bigger earned income tax credit, public school-linked activities), faulty logic (calling this a symptom, rather than a cause) and my favorite, Lee from MN, who posted a screed on the 1%, wealth transfer, loss of unions, living wage - summed up in her final line "So she didn't finish college, and made stupid choices (having 3 kids with a deadbeat father - btw, men rich guys are also great deadbeat material) - she still deserves to earn a living wage!" Sigh.
That's what I've been trying to say! Marriage does matter. Families do matter. I personally could give a good God-damn if some chick want 15 kids out of wedlock, but I care when they're out gang banging.
ReplyDeleteWonder what our economic situation would be like if our rates of divorce and illegitimacy rates were the same as they were in 1960.
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