The Two-Biological-Parent Family and Economic Prosperity: What’s Gone Wrong
Research shows the positive economic effect of two-biological-parent families on our society. Single parenthood and other alternative family structures not only hurt our economy, they hurt our children, those who care for them, and those for whom our children will care later in life. The first in a two-part series.
For the last two years, the United States has been suffering from an unemployment rate of around 9 or 10% and a stagnant economy. Solutions offered by American political leaders have plunged the country into a plethora of debt that threatens the nation’s economic integrity. The unprecedented size of the economic stimulus package has done little to restore the monetary vibrancy of the nation and the hope for a better life that formerly was widespread among America’s youth.
The present political and economic strategies proposed to resolve our problems are patently superficial, especially when one considers that the surge of non-traditional family structures has unleashed deleterious forces upon the American economy for nearly five decades. It is probably no accident that, statistically speaking, the United States reached the pinnacle of its economic power in the mid-to-late 1950s. At that time, although the United States comprised just slightly over 5% of the world’s population, it produced 56% of the world’s goods. The United States then enjoyed the highest marriage rate in the world. By contrast, today America has the world’s highest divorce rate.
After a slight but steady decline from 1948 to 1962, the American divorce rate skyrocketed in 1963 and continued to rise for 17 consecutive years; the levels have hardly abated since. Daniel Lapin expresses the conclusions of countless social scientists when he argues that “for less than fifty years we have been living with the result of saying all ways of organizing families and societies are equally valid.” Aside from their pervasive effects on a number of behavioral and academic outcomes, non-traditional families produce a prodigious drag on the American economy. It is distressing that we apply what are nothing more than band-aid solutions to fix the American economy when these family factors are some of the most substantial long-term forces debilitating the country’s financial health.
The relationship between the two-biological-parent family and economic prosperity is an immense one. As Harnish McRae observes, “the conventional family is an efficient mechanism for combining bringing up children and making a living.” There are a number of reasons why non-traditional family structures constitute such a drain on the American economy. In fact, unless this trend is reversed, the United States appears destined to lose its position as the world’s foremost economic power, a position it has enjoyed since about 1900.
First, non-traditional family structures are the greatest cause of American children’s living under the poverty line. In the United States, only about 10% of children raised in a two-parent family live below the poverty line. Approximately 66% of children from single-parent families live below the poverty line. In addition, nearly 50% of adults who have lived on welfare consistently started there after becoming a single parent. Nicholas Wolfinger notes, “Divorce often takes a dramatic toll on women’s incomes. Partially as a result, rates of poverty for mother-headed households traditionally have been about five times those for two-parent families.” Since the rates of single-parenthood have risen so greatly, the largest proportion of the poor is no longer the elderly, but children.
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Two-income families, whether headed by straight couples or gay couples, are still the best way to guard against poverty. Single income families can really struggle to make ends meet. Our economy is now structured around the assumption that a familiy will have two breadwinners. That’s why it’s as important as ever to legalize same-sex marriage and create more two-income families.
I get that you folks believe that “two-biological-parent” families are the optimal way to raise children. But given that this is not always possible or even desirable, how do you justify allowing some non-traditional families to exist (adoptive parents, for example) but not others (same-sex adoptive parents, for example)?
I wish they had used “mother-father family” instead of “two-biological parent family” because it gives people the idea that same-sex reproduction would solve the problems. But I guess people have sabotaged the word mother to mean “unrelated female parent” instead of the biological meaning, so they had to find another term to express their point. Perhaps “normal family”? Or “natural family” like the World Congress of Families defends? But saying “two-biological parent” just makes my skin crawl with dread.
Sean says, “That’s why it’s as important as ever to legalize same-sex marriage and create more two-income families.”
Does that make sense in anyone’s mind besides Sean’s? Sean, you could find an article about puppies and somehow make it relate to SSM. You’re a one-trick pony.
@Betsy
I was wondering the same thing Betsy. I referred to it on another thread: The world according to Sean.
Unfortunately his type of empty rhetoric is rampant in this “I want what I want” generation. It’s such a sad commentary on our society.
@Sean
Two income families, especially those families that don’t face the burden of pregnancy, do have a real financial advantage over single income families. No doubt about it. However, if the family comes to rely on two incomes and spends up to the limit of those incomes with minimal savings, they will find raising a family a serious financial burden, and if one breadwinner has to drop out of the economy to bear and raise a child or for any reason, then the family faces a serious financial crisis. That is why it is critical to have an income from one breadwinner sufficient to support the whole family. That used to be common in the United States, and we need to get back to that situation. There are other alternatives, of course, such as extended family support, government support, giving up children for adoption for financial reasons, foundling hospitals, etc., but those alternatives have real limitations and drawbacks. A most common pattern in many countries is a reduction of fertility below a sustainable level. In the long run, that won’t work either. Childbearing should not be a luxury that only the rich can afford, and we can’t count on rich same sex couples to conceive the children necessary for a sustainable economy. We do know what works: traditional family structures. Nothing else has withstood the test of time.
@Emma
True, there are cars on the road that now have low gas mileage or which have worn out brakes. That doesn’t mean we should sanction the manufacture of new cars with these characteristics. There are fatherless and motherless homes, but the existence of those unfortunate circumstance doesn’t require us to give the same sanction to the creation of new families in which a mother or a father is automatically and permanently excluded as we give to traditional family structures. The state should not be forced to deprive a child of the right to have a mother and a father.
So just out of curiosity, do you then disagree with Michele Bachman’s outrage at the government trying to get us to use more energy effeciant light bulbs? (This along the lines of the government creating more strict regulations for gas mileage, which you seem to support.)
Actually Anne it is not so much the world for Sean as it is the world for him and his homosexual activists.
@Emma,
I do not share Michelle Bachmann’s outrage over the government promoting energy efficient light bulbs. I am sure that if I studied lighting in greater depth, I might have stronger convictions on the issue, but I am in principle in support of our government encouraging energy efficiency and energy independence. Thank you for asking.
“Two income families, especially those families that don’t face the burden of pregnancy, do have a real financial advantage over single income families.”
The “burden” (what? children aren’t a blessing from God?!) is in raising children, not being pregnant with them. There are straight couples and gay couples who won’t raise any children. There are straight couples and gay couples who will.
@Sean
What makes you, who suffered the loss of your own mother, so anxious to deprive children of their mothers?
Is giving birth to a child a blessing? Yes. It is also a burden and a risk? Also yes.
Sean can’t conceive, so he apparently can’t conceive of any burdens of pregnancy: not morning sickness, not the health risks of pregnancy, not the physical and emotional trauma of problem pregnancies, not having to at least temporarily drop out of the workplace with the corresponding consequences on one’s career and the associated economic opportunity costs.
Here are some common burdens and risks of even a fairly normal pregnancy: restrictions on medication, exhaustion, nausea and vomiting, heartburn, indigestion, constipation, weight gain, dizziness and light-headedness, bloating, swelling, fluid retention, hemorrhoids, cramps, infections, backaches, and strain, headaches, difficulty sleeping, incontinence, bleeding gums, breast pain, joint pain, high blood pressure, anemia, extreme pain on delivery, hormonal mood changes, post-partum depression, muscle weakness, pelvic floor disorder, changes to breasts, varicose veins, scarring, and the loss of dental and bone calcium (cavities and osteoporosis). Some of these burdens are long-lasting or even permanent and cumulative with multiple pregnancies. Historically, pregnancy carried a much higher risk of death than it does today, but the risk of death is still there.
There have never been any same sex couples that have conceived a child just between the two of them. It has also hard to imagine a heterosexual couple deciding to conceive a child just so a same sex couple could raise it for them.
Pregnancy is not only hard and risky work and a blessing in the view of religion, it is necessary for the preservation of the human race.