Let's Be Smart About Marriage

(Red Skirt also here. Blue Skirt response here.)

The cicada chorus is swelling outside. After a 17 year hiatus they rise up out of the ground in waves, mate and die over the course of a month, and it will take a generation in human terms for their next generation to emerge again.

Things are a little more complicated for humans.

Healthy children, healthy families, healthy society. Laudable goals, but liberals sneer at the need for a healthy family, the need for a healthy marriage, which is the linchpin of the other two. No more Ozzie and Harriet they say. And who needs men anyway.

When the state replaces the dad as the provider we have social pathology---children without fathers suffer. Girls become unwed mothers in large numbers, or are abused or killed by their mother's boyfriends. Boys often turn to gangs, drugs and crime. And many men are in prison or dead. Not all, but the trend is clear and the gap is there. Kay Hyomowitz, of the Manhattan Institute, chronicles this in her book "Marriage and Caste in America".

Welfare reform in the 90's made unwed motherhood less attractive and helped sever the knot tying unwed mothers to government subsidies, continuing childcare but moving them into the workforce as the key to mainstream success in life.

But now we have the next phase. As American society overall settles down after the feminist family-killing excesses of the 60's and 70's, as the Roe Effect takes hold (the children of those who did have babies are more conservative), there are those who are left behind. The Economist on Marriage in America: The frayed knot:

There is a widening gulf between how the best- and least-educated Americans approach marriage and child-rearing. Among the elite (excluding film stars), the nuclear family is holding up quite well. Only 4% of the children of mothers with college degrees are born out of wedlock. And the divorce rate among college-educated women has plummeted. Of those who first tied the knot between 1975 and 1979, 29% were divorced within ten years. Among those who first married between 1990 and 1994, only 16.5% were.

At the bottom of the education scale, the picture is reversed. Among high-school dropouts, the divorce rate rose from 38% for those who first married in 1975-79 to 46% for those who first married in 1990-94. Among those with a high school diploma but no college, it rose from 35% to 38%. And these figures are only part of the story. Many mothers avoid divorce by never marrying in the first place. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among women who drop out of high school is 15%. Among African-Americans, it is a staggering 67%.

Does this matter? Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank, says it does. In her book “Marriage and Caste in America”, she argues that the “marriage gap” is the chief source of the country's notorious and widening inequality.

Yes. But there is hope, even among the needy, if we can recognize it and encourage helpful behavior. Robert Lerman of the Urban Institute, cited in the Economist story, did a study using a major annual database:

Mothers who married ended up much better off than mothers with the same disadvantages who did not. So did their children. Among those in the bottom quartile of “propensity to marry”, those who married before the baby was six months old were only half as likely to be raising their children in poverty five years later as those who did not (33% to 60%).

Here's a pro-active group that works to strengthen marriages from Day One, Smart Marriages. And as a society, we should adopt public policy measures which are pro-marriage. The tax code should not penalize marriage. Marriage generates wealth, helps boys become men and men become better men. It changes their behavior. They think about someone other than themselves, they make a commitment, they work harder. And this is better not only for their children, their wives, but for society.

After all, men need something to do, someone to be for.

So as Father's Day nears, let's appreciate fathers. Celebrate motherhood and apple pie coupled with fatherhood for a healthy America. And view the cicadas as a little background chorus for that circle of life as your family fires up the backyard barbecue or takes a picnic to the park.

UPDATE: A few notes on Blue Skirt's response. A good laugh on "non-ideological scholars" cited by Blue Skirt. Most of the professoriate are heavily biased liberals. The Economist is hardly a right wing rag and the scholars they cited are hardly idealogues. As far as liberals' approach to family it hardly speaks to putting children first, rather the personal financial and social agenda of homosexuals, who overall have higher standards of living than most Americans. The tax code should be flatter and fairer, but should also encourage family formation. Many of the most heavily taxed "wealthy" Americans are families raising children who in turn will be supporting childless Boomers in their old age via punishing Social Security taxes. As far as divorce rates among born-again Christians, I have no idea, but Blue Skirt really likes to beat up on this group, and at least they get married in the first place.

It doesn't take away from the underlying truth that children do best in life if they grow up in a stable family composed of a mom and a dad.

As far as the red herrings of the "living wage", this continues to be a dumb idea which deprives the poor of entry level jobs, as evidenced in Chicago's initial exclusion of Wal-Mart. And all this liberal education blather---the only choice liberals like is to be able to snuff life out in the womb, no questions, no problem, but they would deny school choice and the chance for a better life to millions. Liberals, their politicians and their teachers union allies deny the civil rights issue of our time and like George Wallace, stand in the schoolhouse door.