In a bygone day, children came home from school to a glass of milk and plate of cookies baked by a mom with a ready ear and an encouraging word. Today they are left to surf the internet or roam the streets foraging for affirmation and advice from their peers. This tectonic shift has not come without significant social costs.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, juvenile courts processed 4500 cases per day in 2004, compared to 1100 cases in 1960. Thus, during the same period that the number of children in non-traditional families increased by a factor of three, the number of juvenile offenders increased by a factor of four. In some areas of the country, this has had tragic consequences.
Meredith May of the San Francisco Chronicle writes of Oakland, California: “There are entire blocks without a single two-parent family, where drug dealers have become the predominant male role models, and children fend for themselves in crowded, chaotic homes where they are routinely exposed to drugs, sex and guns.”
The lack of stable families has led to a generation of feral kids without any moral compass. As one police official observed, "Talking to these suspects day in and out, there's a higher percentage today with no sense of right and wrong. It's frightening, but we are creating super-criminals."
The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the number one factor putting young people at-risk for “undesirable life outcomes” is living in a home without both parents.
Turning the tide, and securing a brighter future for children, will require a comprehensive strategy.
A get-well plan
Foremost, marriage laws should support the arrangement that, throughout civilized history, has proven the most effective in the flourishing of children—one man and one woman for life. In concert, divorce legislation--which made it easier to end a 30-year marriage than cancel a two-year cell phone contract—should reflect marriage as a covenant between life-long partners as opposed to a legal contract between consenting parties.
Welfare and entitlement programs need to be revamped. Instead of ushering in the much-touted “Great Society,” they are largely responsible for a permanent underclass sustained by misery merchants whose power is derived from keeping the downtrodden in their back pocket. Able people on the margins don’t need a work-free, life-long dole that holds them captive in a perpetual orbit of idleness and dependence; they need training, job skills, and temporary subsidies. Essential is the elimination of embedded disincentives to marriage and the active involvement of fathers in their families.
