Twenty years ago, Vice-presidential candidate Dan Quayle gave a much-ridiculed speech in which he warned about the dangers of single-parenthood, specifically attacking the way it was becoming socially-accepted through the example of TV shows such as Murphy Brown. Today, writes Isabel Sawhill in the Washington Post (no less), it is evident that Dan Quayle was right.
You should read what she has to say. The evidence abounds that children do much better when their parents are married to each other. She cites many interesting facts, such as this seemingly-easy-to-follow plan to avoid poverty:
If individuals do just three things — finish high school, work full time and marry before they have children — their chances of being poor drop from 15 percent to 2 percent.
One point she makes I found particularly striking. She says that even when children are raised by both parents, the children do much better if their parents are married, as opposed to just living together. The reason this is so, she says, remains a mystery.
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