Rolling back the assault on the family
by Robert W. Patterson
Second of a three-part series
While boasting the know-how to fix the health care system and rebuild the economy, the political class claims a curious impotence when it comes to family breakdown.
From the retreat from marriage to rising cohabitation and out-of-wedlock birth rates, policymakers of both parties echo sociologist James Q. Wilson’s dictum: “If you believe, as I do, in the power of culture, you will realize that there is very little one can do.”
Such fatalism, however, is merely an excuse to duck responsibility for indicting the legal and policy experiments of the 1960s and 1970s that departed radically from American ideals, history, and law.
By giving aid and comfort to the sexual revolution, these changes deconstructed America’s family system that flourished in the middle decades of the 20th century, leaving the country less free, less equal, less fair, and less prosperous.
Consequently, declining family demographics are not endogenous factors but phenomena that could be reversed, if Congress were willing to repeal the policy excesses of that earlier era.
That means taking on the Supreme Court, which has led the pernicious assault on the family by gutting state laws that had — since the founding — either privileged matrimony or stigmatized behaviors that weakened the marital bond.
In particular, Congress should nullify Roe v. Wade, the 1973 edict that spearheaded the retreat from marriage by eroding the custom of the shotgun wedding, the conventional response to “unintended” pregnancies for generations of Americans.
As economist John Mueller observes, the court’s elevation of abortion to a legally protected “choice” for unmarried pregnant women not only elevated abortion rates and sent birthrates into a tailspin but also prompted a precipitous drop in marriage rates.
It’s also time to bring down the no-fault divorce regime. In addition to triggering an immediate and permanent boost in divorce rates, no-fault divorce put the government on the side of family breakup, not family preservation.
And by undermining the idea of marital permanence, no-fault has caused couples — fearing easy divorce — to pull back from the robust commitment that makes lifelong marriage an economic bargain for both sexes.
Many in Congress argue they can’t interfere with state prerogatives related to family law — whether no-fault or the latest aberration, same-sex marriage. Yet that didn’t stop the federal government from taking over child-support enforcement in the 1970s, an intervention that turbocharged the no-fault machine.
In effect, Congress incentivized family breakup by creating a child-support system that virtually guarantees divorcing mothers and their children an income stream without requiring those women, who initiate two-thirds of marital disruptions, to demonstrate any wrongdoing on the part of the father.
All this needs to go. As does another policy monstrosity of the 1970s: sex-based affirmative action that favors not just women over men in the workplace but the privileged career woman over the homemaker-wife who depends on her breadwinning husband. According to a 2007 Pew Research Center study, this blatant rent-seeking has resulted in employment patterns that neither American men nor women consider ideal.
Most important, the workplace bias that Uncle Sam sanctions, in collusion with big business, has facilitated the movement of mothers out of the home economy and into the market economy, undermining the family as an economic unit, marriage as a lifelong partnership, and the well-being of children.
Moreover, by advantaging young women over their male counterparts, affirmative action has disrupted the marriage market and helped lead to dramatic increases in cohabitation and single households.
There’s a lot here to consider. Yet this isn’t sufficient to return the married-parent family to the centerpiece of American life. Tomorrow’s piece will add the finishing touches.
There are 2 ways to improve the stats this guy is talking about. One is more feminism and one is to use the power of the state to force people’s compliance. The first is possible and desirable the second is just silly. Most women and for that matter men are not going to support returning to the social structures of the 1950’s.
This is one of those “do as I say, not as I do” articles. Some people want others to conform to perceived ideals, regardless of their own behavior. If the state makes divorce harder to get, how do you know the result won’t be fewer people getting married, fearing the difficulty of getting out of a marriage?
I think the state should make it harder to get married, and not just for gay people. Making it harder to get married might make couples value marriage more, if marriage really is valuable anymore. Like other ideas and concepts, if the marketplace is losing interest, then maybe the idea or concept is less relevant than before.
@Mont D. Law
It is not clear what you mean by more feminism, but I suspect it means what the author of the post would call further dismantling of traditional social structures.
I lived through the fifties. The era was not silly, and many, though not all, of its social structures and outcomes were better than today’s structures and outcomes.
However, we are not likely to return to the fifties. What we will become will be determined by the cultures of the higher birth rate immigrants who will gradually displace the current low birth rate culture.
[I lived through the fifties.]
So did I.
[The era was not silly,]
A lot if it really was. It was almost Victorian in its repression of sexuality and inordinately concerned with purity and cleanliness, yet garish like a Kewpie doll.
[and many, though not all, of its social structures and outcomes were better than today’s structures and outcomes.]
There were lots of good things about the ’50s, things that I mourned when I realized I could not give them to my son. But outcomes were not great for everyone – non-white, non-straight, non-male, non-protestant, non-adult people suffered great indignities and their lives were severely limited at best or totally destroyed. And almost everybody raised in the ’50s came away with a single certainty – however they raised their kids – it wouldn’t be like that.
And so the world has changed. Trying to use the power of the state to force women to give up the gains they have made is neither just nor practical. Particularly if you want women to have more children because until you can accommodate women’s needs they will just stop reproducing. Even immigrant women revert to the mean in 2 generations and only the poorest countries have the incredibly high birth rates that used to be common worldwide. There is no way back.
I disagree with your characterization of the fifties and view the sixties as a real mess and the source of many of our current problems including the feminization of poverty.
The power of the state has grown since the fifties. The fifties had greater income equality and less state interference in our lives. If the traditional family structure continues to be eroded, it will bankrupt the government as it tries to fill the void. Traditional societies can and have existed with relatively little state interference. The modern state is becoming indifferent to the traditional family and appears increasingly hostile to it.
There is no getting around the fact that the future belongs to those who will actually be born. Our future will inevitably look more Catholic and Hispanic and more Islamic for that matter. Europe is facing the same problem. Two generations of the old culture not reproducing itself will have profound effects.
@Mont D. Law
If we can’t manage our society, someone else will.
History repeats itself.
“accommodate women’s needs”
Ah, but that’s a loaded statement, as many of the ills of our society stem from mistaking “needs” for “wants.” The root of societal ills are more due to selfishness, as opposed to genuine needs not being filled, at least in wealthy societies, such as ours (in my humble opinion).
[The fifties had greater income equality and less state interference in our lives.]
Only if you were a white man.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3hkfrtr
http://preview.tinyurl.com/fyvb9
http://preview.tinyurl.com/44lymac
Everybody else suffered greater income equality and more state interference.
[If the traditional family structure continues to be eroded, it will bankrupt the government as it tries to fill the void.]
If that is the only solution you’ll allow then prepare for the apocalypse now, because no one is going back. I personally think there are a lot of things that could be done to fix the problems your talking about but if your only choices are back to the ’50s or the death of civilization as we know it, you better prepare for the end.
[Traditional societies can and have existed with relatively little state interference.]
I don’t think this is true, but if you want to provide some evidence I’d be happy to consider it.
[The modern state is becoming indifferent to the traditional family and appears increasingly hostile to it.]
I don’t think this is true either, but again if you have some examples we can discuss it.
[There is no getting around the fact that the future belongs to those who will actually be born.]
No the future belongs to those who are not just born but also raised.
[Our future will inevitably look more Catholic and Hispanic and more Islamic for that matter.]
I’m not sure why you think this is a problem? From 1820 to 1860, 1,956,557 Irish arrived in the US. That was about 6% of the total population – did they make the US more Catholic?
[Europe is facing the same problem. Two generations of the old culture not reproducing itself will have profound effects.]
But the old culture is still reproducing just not as fast as the immigrants. I can’t find any US #’s but in Canada Muslim & Hindu women have 2.6 & 2.4 children respectively, native born Canadian women have 1.6. Muslims in Canada are 2% of the population, Hindus are 1%. So the discrepancy between the birth rates are very small and the populations reproducing at a higher rate are are also very small and by the time they get bigger, most of the women will have the low 1.6 child/woman ration. In fact, to me, it is pretty clear the problem Europe, Canada & the US are having is simply dealing with the problems all immigrant populations create, their general distaste for immigrants and people like Mark Steyn writing incendiary crap that scares people to death. This doesn’t appear to be any different then the response to the Irish immigrants in the 1900s in the US & Canada and I don’t see the result being any different.
[If we can’t manage our society, someone else will.
History repeats itself.]
This is not in anyway an argument. If you would care to flesh it out we can discuss it.
[Ah, but that’s a loaded statement, as many of the ills of our society stem from mistaking “needs” for “wants.” The root of societal ills are more due to selfishness, as opposed to genuine needs not being filled, at least in wealthy societies, such as ours (in my humble opinion).]
So then women getting an education, having paid work and wanting to have only the children they can afford to raise & educate properly are wants not needs?
@Mont D. Law
The fact that anyone is seriously discussing two men, or two women, marrying each other is proof positive that we are headed over the falls.
We can come to our senses and repent, or we can go down.
We will not be the first country to do either.
[The fact that anyone is seriously discussing two men, or two women, marrying each other is proof positive that we are headed over the falls.
We can come to our senses and repent, or we can go down.
We will not be the first country to do either.]
This too is a fact free statement, impossible to discus.
Thursday, May 7, 2011 is the National Day of Prayer.
http://nationaldayofprayer.org/
Let’s get real.
The upper Midwest where I grew up in the fifties was not characterized by Jim Crow. Was Canada, or is segregation just a red herring here?
Much of the progress in racial equality since the fifties, which I applaud and which began in the early fifties, was undone by the sexual revolution of the sixties and its weakening of traditional families in America including black families.
See http://inteldaily.com/2010/05/plight-of-black-poor-worsens/
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2784216
http://www.blackgenocide.org/black.html
The third part of the series mentioned in the thread suggests non- coercive government policies to promote the traditional family.
“…the old culture is still reproducing just not as fast as the immigrants.”
A fertility rate of 1.6, the rate cited, will not and cannot sustain a population or a culture. This is like compound interest in reverse. Over time, a modest effect is inevitably telling. Sustaining the old culture requires convincing wave after wave of immigrants that they, too, should adopt below replacement fertility levels. The old culture, if it persists in below replacement levels of reproduction, will have to impose its values on all the immigrant cultures and on domestic cultures that have large families or in due course be swept aside. This is not the end of the world or of civilization, just the end of an old and dying culture that doesn’t value reproducing itself.
[The upper Midwest where I grew up in the fifties was not characterized by Jim Crow.]
I wasn’t speaking about Jim Crow specifically but the level of social and economic inequality that was prevalent in the US & Canada if you were not a white male. You original comment indicated that these inequalities were less severe then. The lack of Jim Crow laws in the upper Midwest in the fifties are irrelevant to my point. Minorities and women made less money, had less access to education, weren’t allowed to live where they chose & could afford to & were discriminated against in a myriad of other ways official & not.
[The old culture, if it persists in below replacement levels of reproduction, will have to impose its values on all the immigrant cultures and on domestic cultures that have large families or in due course be swept aside.]
Do you have any credible evidence that current immigrant are assimilating at a slower rate then previous immigrant populations? Your Even though you are discussing birth rates the argument you are making is about assimilation.
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