Divorce and the breakup of a family are still seen as their own social tragedies, and unwed childbearing and cohabitation can still provoke religious and/or moral objections. For the most part, however, our nonjudgmental age leaves it at that. The citizens of "Whatever" America either say nothing about the broken American family, lest somebody's feelings get hurt, or take the view that it ain't nobody's business but my own or their own. It's all so very civilized or so very tolerant. And so very wrongheaded.

You see, we now know, for the first time, what the breakdown of the family is costing all of us in terms we can all understand: dollars and cents.

Oh, we have an excellent sense of the breakdown. More than a third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock today -- 25 percent of non-Latino white babies, 46 percent of Latino babies and 69 percent of African American babies. Though the divorce rate has tapered off in recent years, it remains high compared to the years before 1970. This and the number of babies born to unwed mothers have changed the makeup of the American home. From 1970 to 2005, the proportion of kids in two-parent homes declined from 85 percent to 68 percent.

We also have an excellent sense of social-educational impacts of this family fragmentation. Kids from broken or never-formed families are at higher risk of poverty, mental and physical illness, juvenile delinquency and adult criminality, sexual and substance abuse, and educational failure.

Full text here.

posted by Imapp Staff at 10:06 AM | link

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