There is a wealth of empirical data and anecdotal evidence that points to something I think we know is instinctively true, even as it’s not a large enough part of public discussions about poverty and socioeconomic status: motherhood before marriage is a disaster for all involved.
According to government data, the U.S. illegitimacy rate has increased substantially since 1970. It also varies widely by ethnicity: approximately 22 percent for white women, 44 percent for Hispanic women, and 68 percent for black women (2002). There is some minor good news in these numbers, however: the rate black illegitimacy is down from its high of 71 percent in 1994. Can there be any doubt this is a central cause of much harm, to the children and to society, and that it should be discussed more? To state that kids need a responsible father is not to denigrate single moms (I am the product of one), but rather to highlight an unchanging truth we have sadly forgotten.
William Raspberry has written that “there is a crisis of unprecedented magnitude in the black community, one that goes to the very heart of its survival. The black family is failing.” It’s not just the black family.
Why the dramatic break between marriage and childbearing, especially among the poor? Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas suggest it’s not only large-scale welfare programs, begun in the mid-1960s, which subsidize destructive behaviors. They want readers to take at face value what these mothers tell them: there is purpose and redemption in having a child. There is status and few regrets. They prize both marriage and motherhood, but not necessarily in that order. Marriage is a luxury; children are a necessity.
The breakdown of the family is the single greatest problem our country faces. And men have failed women.
John Paul tells us:
“Willed by God in the very act of creation, marriage and the family are interiorly ordained to fulfillment in Christ and have need of His graces in order to be healed from the wounds of sin and restored to their “beginning,” that is, to full understanding and the full realization of God’s plan.”
City Journal has done some outstanding, sobering investigative work into the decline of the institution of marriage, here and here and here.
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