Wednesday, December 29, 2010

She says we've been down this road before

Indeed we have. And then we read something imbecilic like this.

Men have suffered the majority of job losses in the recession, meaning that increasing women's earning ability is essential to stabilizing families in ways not seen in past generations.
I'm in my 50's now and I used to be a liberal. I am not going to recite the stats, but I used to think, as materialist leftists do, that poverty caused crime.

But now I know crime causes poverty. And what causes crime. It's the culture, stupid.

Did we have massive crime during the Great Depression? No. Families were largely intact.

Now unwed mothers bear unwed mothers. And fatherless sons become killers.

It's the culture.

We need an education solution.

We need to put an end to the cowards and killings.

If you finish high school, get married, and then have a baby your chances of success are much, much greater.

Marriage is the foundation of a healthy society.

The first duty in civil society is toward one’s own children; everything else is built around it.

...You have to wonder if this woman has even read the Heritage study. It's worth reading. One key excerpt:

Do Unwed Fathers Lack Earnings?

Some argue that encouraging marriage in lower-income communities is irrelevant because the fathers do not earn enough to contribute significantly to the support of the mother and child. This is not true in most cases. Eight out of 10 unmarried fathers were employed at the time of their child’s birth.[43] Ironically, given the degree to which the earnings capacity of non-married fathers is generally maligned, these men actually earn more than the mothers in the period prior to the child’s birth. If the fathers are economically unprepared to support a family, the mothers are even less prepared.[44]

Most non-married fathers have sufficient earnings to help their children escape from poverty. As noted, if women who had children out of wedlock were married to the actual father of their child, their probability of living in poverty would be cut by two-thirds.[45]

In fact, over 60 percent of fathers who have children outside of marriage earned enough at the time of their child’s birth to support their potential family with an income above the poverty level even if the mother did not work at all. If the unmarried father and mother married and the mother worked part-time, the typical family would have an income above 150 percent of poverty, or roughly $35,000 per year. In addition, at the time of birth, the fathers are young; their wages can be expected to increase over time and are likely to rise faster if they became married and committed to a family.

Is There a Shortage of Marriageable Men?

A related argument is that single mothers do not marry because the fathers of their children are non-marriageable. This is a stunning argument given the fact that 40 percent of all children are now born outside of marriage. Are policymakers to believe that 40 percent of young adult men in America are non-marriageable? In reality, while some of the fathers are not suitable marriage partners, most would be.

Three-quarters of non-married fathers are still romantically involved with the mother at the time of birth. Among these men, alcohol, drug, and physical abuse are infrequent.[46] While many of the men have potential problems, so do many of the non-married mothers. In most cases, both the men and women would be better off if they were older, more mature, and in a stable, committed marriage before conceiving children.

But, this is an argument for encouraging stronger, more mature relationships before conception, not for writing off the men in general. The decline in marriage in low-income communities stems from changing social norms and from a welfare system that for decades has penalized marriage, not from a lack of millions of marriageable men.

2 comments:

Quite Rightly said...

The cruel fact is that a great number of unwed fathers are rewarded socially within their culture and financially by the government for fathering children by multiple women. Result: children in poverty.

Anne said...

It's really sick, isn't it.