We Need More Wives to Stay Home

America needs more social capital than it has, but “many of the important forms of social capital take more time than a person holding a full-time job can afford,” observes Charles Murray on the AEI website. Stay at home wives, whether mothers or not, are the main people who create that social capital.

If you live in a place that you cherish because “it’s a great community,” think of the things you have in mind that make it a great community (scenery and restaurants don’t count), and then think about who bears the brunt of the load in making those things happen. If you live in a place that is not a community — it’s just a collection of unrelated people, living anonymously, without social capital — think of the reasons why it is not a community. One of the answers will be that no one has spare time for that kind of thing.

An obvious truth, though not one you’ll hear from the president, who seems to feel that the only valuable life is a life lived within the system, in business, education, or politics.

My thanks to Judy Warner for the link.