The Two-Biological-Parent Family and Economic Prosperity: What’s Gone Wrong
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.
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Great article and blog as it proves that SSM will hurt society and in the long run cause ruin to our economy.