What America Has Done To Its Young People Is Appalling

Critics are perhaps too quick to judge America’s young people, citing declining SAT scores, obesity, drug overdoses, addiction to smart phones, bizarre alterations of personal appearance and high rates of (alleged) mental illness. It’s just too easy to be annoyed at how some of the cashiers at the local grocery store seem unable to carry on a conversation or have chosen to mutilate their faces with pieces of metal. We are perhaps too quick to condemn the crazed behavior of young protesters in recent years without fully considering what our government, society and culture have done to these poor souls.

Let’s begin at the beginning. Forty percent of Americans are now born out of wedlock. Single parent families are associated with a long list of social maladies:

“Children who grow up with only one of their biological parents (nearly always the mother) are disadvantaged across a broad array of outcomes. . . . they are twice as likely to drop out of high school, 2.5 times as likely to become teen mothers, and 1.4 times as likely to be idle — out of school and out of work — as children who grow up with both parents. Children in one-parent families also have lower grade point averages, lower college aspirations, and poorer attendance records. As adults, they have higher rates of divorce. These patterns persist even after adjusting for differences in race, parents’ education, number of siblings, and residential location.” Sara McLanahan, “The Consequences of Single Motherhood,” American Prospect(Summer 1994).

In addition, a large number of marriages will fail. That means that close to sixty percent of children will not grow up in the classic nuclear family of the 1950’s. How much of this change is due to government policies is hard to say, however, as government grows, the traditional family shrinks. When government subsidies to single parent families increase, so do the number of such families. As Jack Kemp used to say, when you subsidize something, you get more of it. Yes, culture also plays a role but don’t forget that government can change the culture as well. Women tend to come out ahead in Family Court—they get the house, the kids and much of the man’s spare change thanks to unrealistic support formulas. This provides an incentive in marginal cases for women to seek a divorce. Increases in divorces made them more socially acceptable over time.

Even with intact families, the idyllic norm of the 1950’s, where the mother typically stayed home to take care of the kids until they reached school age and perhaps even long afterwards, has been destroyed. These days, in the typical American family, both parents work fulltime which means that a very large percentage of children are consigned to daycare. Daycare was virtually unknown in my world growing up in the 1960’s. On the working class South Buffalo street where I grew up, I don’t recall any mother with young children working full-time. The overwhelming majority were housewives while a few would get part-time jobs after the kids started school. I was not aware of any daycare centers in the neighborhood and certainly do not recall

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